Nissan 200SX Club - South Africa

Hi guys,

It's actually quite sad that it has to be like this but you should learn from other people's mistakes....

Avoid Snail Conversions like the disease that it is - let me tell you the whole story:

As some of you might know, I am a new member to the forum as I only recently bougth my SX. I bought the car because the price was fair and (more importantly) the previous owner gave me proof in the form an invoice from Snail Converisons that the motor had seen a complete rebuild at 179k km's.

Since then the car has covered 7k km's with the previous owner as well as me. However the car suffered from terrible fuel consumption and it didn't go as well as I had anticipated.

I duly sent the car for a proper dyno tune at a REPUTABLE shop that I trust with my life and received the following info: there was no compression in no.2 cylinder.

After removing the head the following problems arose (with subsequent references to the rebuild invoice):

1) Most of the head/manifold bolts were stripped, WELDED!!! or GLUED!!!!!!!!!. The valve stem seals/guides and seats look a bit suspect (for 7k km's) -> The invoice has a total for R2600 odd rand for "head recon"

2) The studs for the turbo were WELDED!!! onto the exhaust manifold -> Nothing on the invoice: the guy from shitty conversions said he did that "a long time ago.."

3) The block was bored and honed -> The invoice states this work done and this is in fact so, but....

4) New 40 thou oversize pistons were installed (don't know from what - I suspect from the N/A CA18DE as Nissan doesn't manufacture 40 thou pistons for the DET but they do for the DE..which means they aren't suitable for turbo and compression is wrong) - but the main problem is that a 0.5mm feeler gauge can easily slip in the gap between the bore and the piston!!! -> New pistons on the invoice for R800 odd rand

Here comes the best bit...

5) The new pistons can be TURNED IN THE BORE!!!! (as in the pistons have clockwise and counter clockwise motion by simply turning them by hand) and the pistons CAN MOVE AROUND FORWARDS AND BACKWARDS!!!! (piston slap, anyone....)

6) A LOT of the bolts that are used to mount the coil packs/ cam belt cover/ etc. are simply missing.

If anybody is interested - I can supply you with photographic evidence. The best bit is that my car's previous owner is supposedly friends with the owner of shitty conversions....who needs enemies....

The total bill for the rebuild came to just over R16000, and this is what you get. So what is actually new and what is old - I don't know.

I don't think I'll be able to get anything from a legal battle so I plan on letting everybody know about this. (Next step is newspapers and CAR/SnS etc.)

If you know the guy from Snail conversions feel free to let him know. If he has worked on your SX, make sure your wheels don't fall off.

Bottom line: learn from my mistake - don't ever go to Snail Conversions for anything....

Wow Dude....

Please can you send me the pic's, I will Pm you the E-mail address. I cant beleave a stock rebuild cost R 16000

Also I am really sorry to hear about your ride man

Wow, I am really shocked.

I cannot believe that something like this happens, do people not take pride in their work? In my profession I treat my department like its my own little company even if I do only earn a set salary with no overtime or commission! And I work 80 hours a week on average!

How do people want to make a living from rendering a service and work like these people have?

What rights as a customer do we have against work like this?

I will take pictures of the motor either today or tomorrow. But I WILL forward the pictures to anybody interested...will try to have the pics no later than friday.

Snail did most of the work on my S14 and I was always happy with their work even though it might be on the pricey side and they do take their time. They guaranteed their work and I even went back for extra work to be done.

Have you chatted to anyone at Snail about this, can they confirm any of the problems? I also know how Riaan operates, he will quote / tell you that needs to be done to fix the car 100%, but its up to you to decide what they do, the previous owner could quite as easily said "here, I have these pistons, use them". R800 for pistons seems cheap, might only be for rings? Riaan will also tell you, you need new studs and he supplies them at R3 each, makes no sense that he would glue the manifold on?

Also keep in mind that odometers can be turned back and engines can be fiddled with any time, in any case 7k kms is a long time for stuff to go wrong and be bandaid fixed.

Post the pictures please.

I've had similar experiences with reputable tuners from the likes of Dana Jordaan Racing right down to ..... & ..... & .....

Bottom line is try to do as much as possible yourself.

Was Dana not the dude that fitted someone's pistons the wrong way around and the slapped off all the oil squirters... I remember a story like that on that doopedshit forum

anyway yeah, guess the engine was not under warranty no more... hey how much was the warranty for

Vlade wrote:Was Dana not the dude that fitted someone's pistons the wrong way around and the slapped off all the oil squirters... I remember a story like that on that doopedshit forum

Oi vlade that brings back bad memories! R11k labour for nothing!! ffs! This after I supplied all the parts and told him my budget for labout was about R4500 max. He reckons no prob. Get ther to pic up the car. Gives me a bill of nearly R12k and complains that he did me a favour and he can't survive if he does that amount of work for R12k.

Not even 1000km later motor ran bearings due to the squirter issue you mentioned.

Funny thing is, that's not the worst a tuner has done me for!!! I wont' mention names but you don't have probably read the name a few times by now if you're reading this.

sad...

this is the reason i do every little thing on my cars myself..

horror stories abound.. when i first bought my sx , number 4 bigend bearing wiped out when i had the car only about 3000KM .. so off it went under garuantee to nissan dealer in voortrekker street in pretoria..
they cut the crank undersize, then proceeded to put STANDARD bearings back on.. can you spell deafening noise? sounded like it was falling apart when started.. even after a independant workshop stripped it down again,and verified the error, they refused to know about it.. and this was agents..

put the effort in , and do it yourself, i say..

Hi! hi South Africa, I also heard your post office is blacklisted . Amazone .com(am I correct?) refuse to do business with SA post office.
Freaking nice!
Chem

ChemCool wrote:Hi! hi South Africa, I also heard your post office is blacklisted . Amazone .com(am I correct?) refuse to do business with SA post office.
Freaking nice!
Chem

uhm - that is so far off topic that i am actually worried about you chem!!!

I'm sure Chem's reffering to the $hitty service that us South Africans have to put up with on a daily basis, and how a select few (Govt included), just make it even more difficult for the rest of us, when they deliver bad service or say stupid things like:"... Crisis? What crisis?"

It's amazing how in the motor industry how things work. If a car is well setup and well prepared, then there is bound to be some oke that says he had something to with it. He could've been the driver for the workshop that serviced the car, yet somehow he was the guy that did the mods and workmanship on it...

On the other hand businesses here follow the lead of our very own Government... The refuse to take any form of responsibilty for anything, they rob people of their hard earned cash and they fail to see that they are actually at fault.

The sad part is that like with Govt... there are some cases we cannot do anything or it's just not worth fighting for. It's like the whole scenario with Dickhead Bobby Mc Bride... He's at fault, everyone knows he's at fault, yet he gets away with "Paid Leave" costing tax payers $hitloads in revenue.

I say we get those $hitty workshops to do all Govt contracts and let those okes deal with bad service and unreliable cars!!!

and then you get good buds who CAN actually build a motor without it fuckn out on you. hey HS???

see http://200sx.za.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=39401#39401