I have no ill feelings toward anyone involved and as of Saturday morning, I do believe the intention was to send the engine back to me for a freshen-up, so I don't believe there were any ill feelings toward me either. I simply told Fred that I didn't think I could get it back to him in time for next year's season. To be straight up, I think I'd rather tell someone that, than be late getting an engine out the door and knock them out of half a season. As a matter of fact, Fred is pretty handy, so I even pitched the idea of Fred disassembling the engine and then reassembling it with me throwing him refresh parts and walking him through different aspects of the build over the phone. The talk of a local shop came up just when we were brainstorming about the possibility of a cracked/bent crankshaft and I thought that a local shop could spin it up and check it out.
To answer TJ, I have no clue why the bolt broke and if there was an insinuation by anyone that it was my fault, I can simply say that both bolt shanks were still in the rod and screwed out freely, with the rod cap and bolt heads in the pan, with my white paint daubs on them, signifying that they had been torqued. In addition to that, my build notes show the amount of stretch on every rod bolt, along with the torque/angle spec to get to that particular stretch number. If I did something wrong, I'll throw my hands up in the air and just say I have no idea what it is. The additional kick in the pants was that they were all BRAND NEW rod bolts from ARP, as I replace them every season, whether they need it or not. With all of that being said, as soon as it happened, I called Fred and told him. I certainly didn't get any satisfaction from doing that, but I wanted to be transparent. In the end, Fred wasn't out a penny, but I took about a $3000 hit in fixing it all.
