I towed my '99 BMW M3 into Rogue Engineering, as they were recommended by previous owner of the car.
I was at Autocross, and the car started having issues: battery light came on, power steering with no power assist, and water temperature was raising.
The first call from Ben Liaw, was with a statement: "Hope you are sitting down, your engine does not turn!". I right away told him, the battery is dead and that's why the engine does not turn. Few hours later RE determined the problem to be crankshaft bolt backing out (came loose) and so not turning all pulleys at correct rate. Along with it Woodruff Key broken into two pieces, and hub was scratched up.
At that point, Ben Liaw was telling me we have to open up the Engine and see what else is damaged internally. However, I did not want to take such drastic measures right from the start, so I suggested let's order new bolt, hub, key and pin and put everything back together and run some tests like engine compression test and leak down test to see the health of the engine. He also said that the bolt requires 400 ft-lbs of torque, later I looked it up and it is actually 300 ft-lbs. This should have been a red flag from the start.
Ben sent me invoice for about $1,000+, which itemized: 2-hours diagnostic to determine crankshaft bolt came loose ($240), 4-hours install new crankshaft hub, key, pin and bolt ($480) (here it said for testing only), engine compression test 1-hour ($120), leak down test 1-hour ($120), plus parts. The "testing only" note was put on invoice, because RE was suggesting to open up the motor and rebuild it did not want to be liable for any issues.
Parts came in, and were installed, and compressing and leak down tests were done. But the problem is the tests were performed on a cold engine, they did not start the engine to warm it up. It is recommended to only perform leak down test on a warm engine (not cold, where the car was not driven for a week), I told them this, and they eventually removed the leak down from the invoice. And the compression test on a weak (near dead battery) is not recommended and will yield lower numbers. I later tested the original battery and out of rated 765CCA, only produced 345CCA. The numbers were 165 to 175 across all cylinders.
RE gave me 2 options: (1) buy a used S52 engine on car-part.com, and they would charge me $2,900 for replacement (used S52 cost $2,500-$3,000); (2) open the current engine and replace whatever needs to be replaced $2,900 + $6,000 + any parts, which would be over $10,000. I said no and would like to take the car. They said bring a tow track, because the bolt was not tightened to spec 300ft-lbs and car should not be driven. How come? I paid $1,000 already. Ben told me since the car has lightweight flywheel, they have no way of locking the crankshaft , but said they have a special tool but that requires another 3-hours of labor. So they wanted $1,500 for tightening the crankshaft bolt. So I decided to tow the car out of them.
At home, I replaced the battery, removed the crankshaft bolt (hand tightened by RE), added loctite, and tightened the bolt to 300ft-lbs with big torque wrench, by placing the car in 5th gear, e-brake, and pressing the brake pedal (no special tools, or additional parts removal required). Started the car and it ran perfectly fine, I drove the car to warm it up and performed engine compression test with the results: 180-185 across all cylinders. The engine was rebuild 2 years ago with compression ration of 10.3:1 and was build as a performance engine with schrick camshafts and valve springs, etc producing 238whp.
This all happened about 2 months ago. I already ran the car at 2-days at Watkins Glen and few autocross events, and the car runs great!
In conclusion, if I had listened to Rogue Engineering, I would be spending $6,000 to $10,000 replacing/rebuilding a perfectly fine running engine! And this after I had already spent close to $1,000 with them for a bolt that was not even tightened to spec (they wanted another $400). This is just unacceptable and unprofessional! read more
