DMF – Power to the people?

before starting my thread I would like just to point out that my aim is not to cause damage to anyone but I would like to pass on some information that might help some people avoid what just happened to me in last couple of months. I also want to add that I am posting my post here not in the faults section as I believe it is more appropriate.

In January 2008 I had bought a complete forged engine from DMF performance which I was planning to fit a Rotrex supercharger on after some time. However after I had bought the engine I decided to go for a turbo instead so this engine remained NA and I started building another engine. I would also like to add that after the engine was fitted I gave the engine a running in of 1000 miles to be extra safe as 700 or 800 should have been enough. After the running in the engine ran very smoothly and was very powerful. it produced 226BHP on the dyno with Kpro. between january and novemebr i covered 2000 miles apart from the 1000 miles running in since I live in Malta which is a very small island. In november whilst driving around town the engine exploded. purely exploded. it made a hole in the sump, a piece of rod came out of the hole and all the oil came out. I thought I was in a nightmare. So as to be precise when the engine exploded I had just pressed the accellerator so it was under full trottle and as soon as the revs reached around 5000 rpm BANG! It might have been 4500 or 6000rpm but certainly away from the rev limiter. during this period only i had driven the car and I am 100% sure that that engine was never over reved. It migh have reached the rev limter but never over reved. amother important point is that the engine was tuned by one of the best tuners in Europe in my opinion and there was no sign of detonation .
The damage in the engine was a crank,rod, 2 bent valves, piston and scratches in the bore, the block will not be able to be fixed.there was an arp bolt that holds the rod with the crank snapped in two and every one hear in malta is telling that it is where the damage started from. the rod got loose and piston touched the valve. the reason why it snapped is eighter because it was too loose or too tight as otherwise it could take a great deal of stress. Dan told me this is impossible and he never had any engine failures . he stated that the engine was over reved beacuse there where another two valves that made contact with another piston. if this is true or not I dont even care any more the fact remains that the engine was not over reved so any problems it incurred where the fault of whoever built it.

When I told this to dan he told me that he showed all the pictures to different tuners/engineers around britain and all told him the engine was over reved. If this is the case I am sorry to say that the level of tuners you have in britain is very disappointing to say the least as the engine has never been past the rev limiter which is set at 8400 rpm. with the valves, springs and retainers I had dan told me it should be able to rev up to 9000 rpm easily. when I spoke to one of the engineers which supposedly said that my engine was over reved he told me that dan had just showed him a couple of pictures which he decided to show and that he needed more information before reaching a conclusion. Thats Right POWER TO THE PEOPLE .

And there is still to come....... I had already bought the second cylinder head from Dan to use for the Turbo engine before the engine exploded and decided to send it over to the guy who was sleeving my Block which is also situated in England and is a great engineer in my opinion. I asked him to double check the head and found a disaster. The guides had too much play, the collets where not all of the same make and the seating of the valves was also wrong. he told me that there was a very good chance of me blowing the engine if I had used the head as it was. This engineer spoke to dan and told him about the problems but dan says he was there when the assembly of the head was done and that there is no way that it could have left his garage in the state........ POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Dan told me That there is nothing he can do as the engine has warrant for 1 month . Thats fair enough but if any of you out there want their 4200 pound engine to last for more that 2000 miles, this simply means dont buy from DMF. Altough the engine was reasonably priced at 4200 pounds for a complete forged engine it was not worth the while. I learned that you cant take short cuts the hard way. Wish I had taken the advice from Guy at CPL.

I dont care about the money any more but it is important that you buyers out there dont make the mistake I did and go waste your money like I did as most of you make sacrafices to get the money together to spend on your car.The only reason why I am writing this tread is for people who love their car so much like myself to not be in the situation I was in since i ended up with the car in the garage for three months and it feels like a year. I wish I had this kind of information before I spent my money on a very expensive bomb!