Damn, Les, you suck at telling stories! I guess I'll tell it the best way I know of being that you were about to worry the hell out of me the whole way through......

First off, AllmotorX assembled the block.... and I think he borrowed my tq wrench. I know he borrowed my piston ring compressor tool. He wanted me to assemble the head, I told him to take it to a machine shop to make sure that everything was alright with the head and that since we have heard cases of the cams locking up in the heads, the machine shop would make sure that it will spin freely before leaving. He drops the head off at the machine shop to assemble the head with the cam in it. THe machine shop got the head installed and they had an issue with the cam trying to lock up but they insured him that they can fix it, no problem. After everything is all said and done, they give him the head and put on the receipt that the cam was trying to lock up and that was fixed.

He called me up and we tow the car along with the motor and trans down to the shop. We show them were all the parts were that we had at the time and they insured us that what he didn't have that they would go get it and install it for whatever it might have cost them. Real stand up guys in my eyes.

A few weeks later they're putting everything together and they call him up stating that there's an issue with the cam freezing up in the head. AllmotorX told them that was the main reason he took it to the machine shop in the first place was to insure that the cam didn't lock up in the head. they said it's no problem and that they can unfreeze it from the head. They call back and said they got it to unfreeze from the head since they had to degree the cam anyways. Later on, they got the car running, drove it around and said that it was ready, but before they pick it up, the water pump that AllmotorX gave to them was leaking so they'll put one on before he drives down.

So (quite) a few weeks later when he got the money up, he drove to the shop to go pick up the car. He paid via paypal and they insured him the car was good to go. So no more than 15-20 minutes of highway driving and the car broke down. The car got towed back to the shop. THe first think they noticed was the cam gear, which had broken off and damaged the keyway on the cam. They take the cam out and it had spun dry on 2 of the journals. They pull the head off and naturally, the valves were bent on the exhaust side.

He brought the head and the cams home and I was just so in the neighborhood so I checked it out. Upon inspection of the cams, the cams looked as if there were trash in it. It didn't have deep discolored scars on the cam as if it were out of round and it didn't have major wear on the head itself. It did have thick pieces of metal on the cam which appeared to be the trash that might have caused the cam to lock up in the first place.

In all, I don't know who you would peg responsible for for the cam lock up but as a technician and a business man myself, if it were me, I would at least get ahold of the machine shop and ask to go half on the cam being that they did claim to fix the problem and whether or not it was done correctly or not, there's a receipt claiming that they did. And the shop claimed to have fixed what apparrently wasn't fixed properly.

That's the entire story.

Knowing that info, who would you blame for that? THe machine shop or the shop who put it together?