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Dan is full of sh*t and full of himself to say the least! He is very clueless about working on cars other than copying the way us real engine builders do things. He should not be working on these cars period! Sure he can doctor things up to look pretty, but that is just about the extent of what he should ever do to a Z!
There are many, many videos of him running the engine for upwards of 12 minutes without coolant of any kind. There is NO justification for doing this......EVER! The melting point of aluminum is 1221°F. At only half of that the aluminum can warp and be weakened. Combustion temps can easily exceed these limits, Without coolant, this happens very fast! The heads are pretty thin between the coolant passages and the exhaust ports on purpose. Coolant is relied upon to provide an insulative barrier and remove the heat before damage can occur.
Why would any competent mechanic or engine builder need to run an engine without coolant? I have never had to do this in my 25 years of building Vg's, EVER! If you are good at what you do, you put the car together and you do a proper start up and heat cycle on the engine. I rarely ever have a failure to start/run or leaks happen to need to worry about a test start up without fluids. The potential for damaging and compromising structural integrity of the metals is huge when doing this. While some guys can start an engine up for 30 seconds or so without issues, it is usually due to the heads still having residual coolant in them, such as after replacing the 120k etc. But a brand new build is 100% void of all cooling liquids and thus should never be started without coolant. Any shop that has a policy which allows this to happen, should not be in business!
Just for reference, in the racing world where copper head gaskets are used with o rings and receiver grooved heads, it is common to use an rtv sealant on the copper gaskets around the coolant and oil passages to help seal things up. Many builders will start the engine up without any coolant, just long enough to feel heat on your bare hands on the exhaust side of the head, then the engine is cut back off. This takes less than 15 seconds to happen. This adds enough heat to dry the rtv thoroughly between the heads and the block. It also allows enough heat to allow head studs to be retorqued as well. So if this is enough for all that, how is 6,8,10, or even 12 minutes remotely accepted as being ok? I cringe every time I see this happen. A good understanding of applied physics is key here. Dan has zero of this. SMHAs for Thomas Burns Z, the guy who passed away while dan had possession of his car, I can offer you ALL the FACTS involved with this situation as I have all the emails between dan and Thomas from start to finish, as well as lots of photo proof for what I am about to share on here. I also have over an hour of video proof from my visit to Florida to retrieve Thomas's Z from dans shop! So let me assure anyone who doubts what I say here, it is 100% based on facts and not hearsay!
I am sure that dan was hoping he got away with what he did with the time that has passed. I had hoped when he moved back to the Carolina's from FL, that he would move on to other things and leave this community all together. I was sad that he opened another shop and feel sorry for any and all customers that take their Z's to him for work. Godspeed to them all! :-( This is the short version of everything I have (slowly) been putting together in a write up and video as to what all transpired between dan, Tom and our shop, in regards to Tom's car. Think of this as the cliff notes. Tom sent his car to dan to finish a 120k, upgrade turbos, piping, IC's, harness, injectors, fuel rail, exhaust and tuning to name a few. dan was in serious financial ruins to which Tom would pay his electric bill for him. He did this so dan could continue the work on his car. He rationed that without power, no work would get done. dan finished the 120k and found zero compression on the passenger side cylinders and tells Tom the engine is bad and needs replaced. Somehow ash powers gets involved and tells dan to check the cam gear alignment to the cam. dan finds that Tom had installed a cam gear wrong. He fixes the gear issue and the car ran fine. Dan had videos to prove all of this.
dan takes Tom's car to lunch and over boosts the engine on a chip tune at 22.7psi and even states that "the highest it would go is 22.7"
A couple days later dan calls Tom to say the engine is blown again and smoking real bad.
The next day dan calls and says the engine may not be blown and that the new turbos from Z1 are bad. He claims they had blown the seals in BOTH turbos! Brand new gtx 2863 billet turbos! When dan sent pictures of the turbos, Tom questions all the chips and damage on the compressor inducer wheels. dan said they were like that when he got them from Z1 but he never noticed them because he was "so excited to see and hold the new gtx turbos, but decided to look back through his pictures and saw the pre existing damage" Well dan posted the pictures from his unboxing of the turbos on the internet showing the wheels were perfect! So dan either lied or is delusional. Garrett would later deny warranty repair on the turbos as it was determined that "Foreign object damage had occurred" Meaning that something dan did during install had damaged the wheels. My guess is he likely dropped some nuts or bolts down the inlet pipes. SMH
Tom pays to buy new CHRA's for turbos that he never got to use.
dan pulls the engine and installs the new turbo CHRA's and starts the car back up, it is still smoking bad. Tom has dan do another compression test. This time the drivers side has low compression at 60,70, and 110psi. The engine is smoking due to blow by, obviously caused by dan running 22.7 psi on pump gas, untuned with only a chip tune. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that. At this point Tom has paid dan $5300 for his original bill of $3000 not including $486 for new an fittings and a BDE fuel rail because dan broke the rail and 3 an fuel fittings. Plus the $1700 for new turbo CHRA's!
The following is a direct quote from Tom Burns; "So this is where I stand. Dan states this is my fault because I sent him a car that did not run and I put the PS cam on wrong. His text message that I posted “ These turbos hit 36-40 psi. Stock motor with your mods should handle 20psi no problem….. This sucks…. Motor has to come back out….. Tyler’s Z hits 22 psi every single time on his stock motor but he has small turbos than me. I’m going to take motor back out and break it down without any labor charge at all to you. If you want to build it up now all you have to do is buy the parts and pay for machine cost. I feel bad man. I’ll rebuild it at cost. Means you’ll get a built motor for the cost of parts brotha. Again this is the only thing I can provide for you because I feel bad about this whole situation." I should also mention that dan sold Tom's used stock turbos for $300 and his Selin brackets for $100 without permission or giving any of that money to Tom. Let's not forget the electric bill Tom paid either. Tom had reached out to us and was seeking advice on this matter. He felt dan was incompetent, irresponsible, unprofessional and untrustworthy to say the least. Tom just wanted his car done and back so he could enjoy it.
Sadly, during all of this, Tom passed away from an undiagnosed heart problem. In light of this, Jason Davis, Rick Norman and Myself put a plan together to remove the car from dan's shop and complete it for Tom's family. The plan was originally to gather the new parts needed to fix the car, build an engine, then go to Florida with Tom's Brother Tim and the local sheriff to remove the car and all the parts from Premier Z. Many people from this very forum and community made plans to move the car from Premier Z to Andrew Ortiz's sho. Rick and I would bring a fully built engine and build the car there with the help of other members of this community. Dan was supposed to send us the blown engine and all parts he had for us to use for the rebuild. Harry Sandhu had pledged to supply a set of heads while many others donated parts such as rods, gasket kits and other parts that are too numerous to list here. We would supply everything and anything else needed to complete the car.
Instead of sending us the parts, dan called to say his girlfriend/baby mama had left him and that we needed to come get Tom's car ASAP. If we didn't, he would sell the car to a scrap yard. So dan the man, who blew up an engine and took so long with everything that the owner passed away before ever getting to fulfill his dream of owning and driving an awesome Z, was willing to scrap the car of a deceased customer, rather than A) giving it back to the family or B) finishing what he started, or take responsibility for what he caused!
This speaks volumes to his morals and character to many people! Meanwhile, Rick and I, with the help of a fellow friend and Z owner, Brandon Brouillette, made the trip from Houston to Florida to pick up the car before he could scrap it. When we got there, dan was nowhere to be found. A day later we found him at a phsyc hospital on a 48 hour hold for attempted suicide. He had attempted to jump off the Tampa bridge. My partner Rick had to personally take responsibility for dan in order to get him out of the physc hospital, so we could get into his shop and retrieve Tom's parts. What was supposed to be a trip straight there and back, ended up costing us 3 days of our shop being closed! When we finally got Tom's car it was in bad shape compared to how it arrived there. dan left it sitting out in the Florida sun to rot. The car's paint was damaged amongst other things. We found that dan was missing the majority of Tom's engine parts. He gave us some BS story about a machine shop going out of business and taking off with the engine and all parts. We suspect that in light of everything that was going on with dan's finances at the time, he likely sold many of these parts for the money or used them to complete other cars he had at his shop. The missing parts include the engine block, heads, all engine internals, clutch and flywheel, to name a few. This theory only makes sense since he so easily sold Tom's other parts and kept the money for himself. Once a thief, always a thief as the saying goes. ;-) As many of you know, the car was finished and presented back to the family. Unfortunately some of the other individuals backed out of supplying the parts that they had pledged, so we finished the build supplying most of the parts needed to do so. We built the engine with a forged bottom end, installed Nistune FP and dyno tuned the car to 750hp. We presented the car back to Tom's brother Tim, who was very grateful to have the car back! We were very happy to see this situation have a good outcome to a family that deserved it!
For those that would like to see the finished product, Gears and Gasoline did a video of the build with the car running and driving.
Here is the link to it for those interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY2nOiAYiYU In case the link does not work, search you tube for Finishing what he started by Gears and Gasoline. To the OP David, I am glad you found work within the Z community, however, my advise to you would be to seek work elsewhere. Your employer is a douche to say the least and the longer you stick around, the more your reputation will become tarnished. Many people will question your judgement and morals if you remain affiliated with this guy. This is the most honest advice I can offer you.
If you are handy with these cars and are willing to relocate to Houston, we are looking for some good Z guys to train and teach the ways of the Z32. Just reach out to us if your interested. I would hate to see anyone learn anything about building engines from dan, the guy who used to install heads and tightened head bolts from front to back without following proper head bolt torque sequences.
:-) I am sorry to have to drudge this all up again, but as I sit here and read this post on the birthday of Tomas Burns, I can't just sit by and allow dan, or anyone affiliated with him to promote him or his shop, especially on this day! dan should be ashamed of himself for what he did to this Z brother. THE COMMUNITY WILL NEVER FORGET!
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12:37:32 09/16/21
