JDMEnginesCorp.com...avoid like the plague

[readymix]

Here is a cliffs notes of what happened with this business.

JDMEnginesCorp sells JDM motors on eBay and from their online store. Their ebay name is JDMEnginesCorp, add a dot com to the end and you have their site.

I ordered an SR20DET redtop from them recently. I was told that this motor was in good running order.

Upon receipt of this motor, we started removing the turbo and some of the piping. Upon removal of the turbo, a thick oily sludge slid out of the hot side AND the coldside of the turbo. Seeing this, myself and my mechanic (ASE Certified...you'll need to know this later) decided it was a good idea to pull the intake manifold, to see what sort of sludge had blown in there.
Upon removing the intake manifold, we found a 2" chunk of cast aluminum, we imagine it came from the endtank of an intercooler core and was sucked in after the driver hit a tree or lightpost. In all likelyhood, it would have probably stayed lodged in the intake port on cylinder 4 for some time. But it would have caused irregular intake flow during operation.
So, we delved further. We removed the valve cover and it was full of sludge in there. There wasn't a drop of free flowing oil in this entire engine, but we wouldn't figure that out until fully disassembling it.

After documenting all the damage in pictures, I sent JDMEnginesCorp the pics in an email, with a detailed writeup by my mechanic.

After 2 days, and no response, I contacted them and their response to me was "You weren't supposed to open it up or remove parts, you were supposed to fire it up and see that it ran and if you had any problems, you were to contact us about it."

Apparently, we were supposed to just bolt it in there without doing a tech inspection. Here's another juicy tidbit:

Me: "So, you mean to tell me that an ASE Certified mechanic cannot open an engine without voiding the warranty?"
JDMEC: "Yes, he cannot open it without voiding the warranty"
Me: "I'm standing here with 3 ASE Certified techs and they are shaking their heads no at your response, and one just said that he can open any engine he wants here and it wont void the warranty."
JDMEC: "He is your friend, of course he is going to side with you"

Note, you cannot have ASE Certified mechanics work on your engine without voiding it. IF an ASE Certified mechanic takes any parts off your motor to inspect it, it voids the warranty....in fantasy land.

SO, with my now voided warranty, I went ahead and ordered all the rebuild parts. This included all new engine gasket set, new piston rings, and new bearings. If anyone here is looking to build an SR20 and thinks they got the raw deal on one, you can easily get the parts from WestCovinaNissan for around 350 bucks for all of it shipped to your door.

Anyway. The other real kicker here, and what makes this a total scam, is that they wanted a 30% restocking fee and I had to pay for the shipping.
Some quick math:

SR20DET = 2300 with free shipping
30% of that = 760 dollars or so
Shipping to Texas for a motor and tranny = 200 bucks
So, I lose 960 bucks...

And that is just for them to look at it and decide whether or not to warranty it.

With that said, I made the intelligent choice and cleaned the block of all oil, re-honed the bores, and bought new bearings, rings and gaskets.

Buyer beware, you may get ripped off by JDMEnginesCorp.

[alp]

you need to post links to this on their present auctions to bidders so they can see what they are like. Get creative on trying to screw their business up.