I have thought long and hard about posting what I am about to post, because I am normally not one to complain, or point fingers, but after much deliberation, feel I have to tell my story. I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but it’s a long story…
My engine is currently out of my car at Blood Enterprises in Auburn, Washington being rebuilt (honed, bearings, rings) to the tune of $4000.00. This engine was built by Performance Engineering in Cincinnati, Ohio and has less than 5000 miles on it. Since day one it has NEVER ran correctly. This is my story:
I ordered my Cobra new from Vintage Motorsports back in October 2006 and took delivery in July of 2007. When I ordered the car, I told Jay at Vintage I wanted a 351 with Webers. To Jay’s credit, he warned me that the Webers could be finicky and may require additional fine tuning. I was okay with the thought of fine-tuning the carbs. Jay recommended Performance Engineering, of Cincinnati, Ohio to supply the engine.
I took delivery of the car right after the Fourth of July 2007 and the second day I had it the throttle linkage pulled out of the firewall. I figured the rivets used were undersized, so I repaired and secured the linkage in its original location, using larger (longer and larger diameter) rivets. All seemed good.
I took the car to the local Ford dealership to have the state safety inspection completed and the head mechanic commented on how rich the car seemed to be running…The exhaust would burn your eyes! I figured it was due to the Webers being overly rich at idle.
Two days later I drove the car to Austin, about 70 miles away and the throttle linkage (at the carbs) locked up on me on I-35. I couldn’t get the car above 35MPH! I pulled into a rest area and checked it out, but had no means to repair it, so I limped in to Austin. Once there I removed the linkage from the carbs, adjusted and lubricated it and got it to where it would function.
Over the course of the next few months the car never ran correctly. I turned to this forum for advice on how to dial in the Webers, as my plugs were ALWAYS fouled. The car would not start when hot and the linkage was still not right. I contacted Eric at Performance for help, but never got any. The members here offered much more help than the guy I paid over $15,000.00 for the engine.
I drove the car very little during that first year, mainly because it ran so poorly. I put less than 1000 miles on it. A year after receiving the car I was sent from Texas to Tennessee on a military move. After settling in I started back on the car in an attempt to get it dialed in. While attempting to sync the carbs, I noticed that one barrel would never change, no matter what I did. I pulled all of the plugs and found one cylinder to be dead. After much troubleshooting and posting on this site I found the intake gasket had shifted and I had a huge vacuum leak. Once again I contacted Eric at Performance and told him what had happened. I even sent him photos. He offered to supply me with new gaskets and I took him up on his offer. I went to Cincinnati got the new gaskets (with steel core) and took them home to install.
After replacing the gasket I again tried to sync the carbs to no avail. More troubleshooting led me to a bent throttle shaft on the left-rear carb. The shaft had bent due to the geometry of the throttle linkage. My linkage came off of the throttle cable between the two left carbs and attached to the forward-left carb. This carb was connected to the left-rear carb via a “balancer.” The left rear carb was then connected to both carbs on the right bank via a rigid linkage across the rear of the carb to the rear of the right-rear carb. The front-left carb “drove” all of the remaining three carbs. This setup put too much torque on the throttle shafts of the remaining carbs. Most Weber small block linkage setups utilize a “center pull” design.
At this point I contacted Jim Inglese (
Home for help. He of course told me my linkage was all wrong and bet that my carbs were never set up properly. I set Jim an email telling him how the carbs were jetted, etc and he told me that they were the “box” settings. He also said I would find that the floats were set too high. I bought a float gauge and he was right, they were WAY too high! No wonder the thing would never start when hot!
Throw in two deployments to Afghanistan and another cross country move and it brings us to last year about this time. I was out for a short Sunday drive, when after about 5 miles the car “pops” and shuts off. I get the thing pushed into a parking lot and do some initial troubleshooting and determine that I am not getting spark. I figure the MSD box failed and call a flatbed to take the car home. Once I get it in my garage I come to find out my dizzy gear had shredded. The next day I call Comp Cams to find out which gear I need and find out that my cam, although a roller is made of iron and is NOT a hardened cam. The dizzy gear was a hardened steel gear.
At this point I have had enough! I have had the car for 6 years and had driven it just a tad over 4800 miles. Never has the engine run correctly! I could never go more than 20 miles from home without worrying about not getting home again. I called Blood Enterprises and made an appointment to have the car repaired.
The first appointment available was months away, so in early August this year I had the car transported to Blood. They had the car for a day when I received the call from Craig Blood with the bad news: Dizzy gear was not only incorrect, but was installed incorrectly too. It was over .05" past the limit and was binding on the block! in addition to that, number 7 cylinder, the one with the previously bent throttle shaft was washed down and had 90 psi. Numbers 2 and 4 were just over 100! The engine would need to be pulled and rebuilt.
Craig is of the opinion this engine was NEVER set up correctly. The linkage was a mess and the carbs were just “bolted on out of the box.” They were never tuned properly and led to the premature engine failure. He said the damage probably started on day one! This is from a shop owner who builds very high-end engines. His (Craig Blood) shop is the one who built the Shelby Supercar Aero’s engine at over 1180HP (World speed record holder) and is currently restoring an original 289 Cobra, complete with Webers. He was astonished that someone would just bolt on a set of Webers and add some linkage as an after-thought and expect it to perform correctly.
I contacted Eric at Performance Engineering with my story. I know that this engine is way past its warranty period as far as time is concerned, but Eric knows this engine was not right when it left his shop. He knows it has NEVER run correctly and he knows it has less than 5000 miles on it. I gave him a chance to address these problems. On three separate occasions, I set him emails even longer that this detailing everything that has been wrong with this engine since day one. I gave him an opportunity to stand by his product and explain what had gone wrong with my build, from the bolted on, non tuned Webers, to the poor linkage design to the faulty gasket to the incorrect and incorrectly installed dizzy gear. He has yet to respond! I know he has read my messages, as I selected a read receipt which shows he read it the day I sent it!
Jay at Vintage has offered assistance. He has offered parts at his cost. Jay has ALWAYS been responsive to any and all of my inquiries.
Bottom line: Eric at Performance Engineering got $15,000.00 of my hard-earned money (I saved every penny I could while deployed to Iraq to buy this car), sold me an engine that was not assembled correctly, bad gasket, incorrect dizzy gear, non tuned carbs, non-working linkage and won’t even answer my emails. Now I will be out at least another $4000.00 fixing all the things he screwed up!!
If you are looking for an engine builder and are considering Performance Engineering, I would re-read this post and THINK AGAIN!
Gun Doc