AAA Engine California, AAA American Automotive Defective products, deceptive business practice, poor customer service Redlands California

   A VQ35 engine from AAA Engine on 08-24-2013 on Ebay by the Automotive repair shop that I represent. 

       This engine was bought to repair a customer's car.  The engine to be replaced ran low on oil.   The customer opted for a rebuilt/new engine after it was determined one of the rod bearings suffered an accellerated amount of wear.

    Half the core refund on the old engine was not refunded.  AAA Engine penalized the core refund and claimed the old engine needed 'cylinder head welding'.  The engine did not need this repair, as it was condemned for other reasons.  The repair the engine needed was routine and should not have affected the core refund.

    The engine recieved from AAA Engine arrived in timely fashion and was well painted.  Unfortunately this was including the mating surface for the intake manifolds, that had to be cleaned.  Once the engine was installed and primed, an oil a leak was noticed at the rear main seal.  This is an involved repair to make once the engine is installed in the car,  the job is nearly as involved as the removal and installation of the engine itself.

   The leak was corrected, the engine was again primed with all fluids and run.  The first time the engine was run, it started overheating.  Everything was double and triplechecked at AAA Engine's request.  AAA Engine requsted that the engine be sent back.  Upon recieving the engine back, AAA Engine said one of the cylinder head gaskets was rupture.

   Jason at AAA Engine told us that they would repair the ruptured headgasket and send us the engine-  He would have to charge us for the freight since AAA Engine believed they were not at fault for the problem, and wouldn't charge us for the repair since the shop I represent was 'were such good guys'.

    The engine we recieved was installed, primed and run.  It immediately started to overheat and spew burnt coolant into exhaust, this a much more immediate and catastrophic failure than the previous engine.

This issue is still unresolved and ongoing.  AAA Engine is very unresponsive to phonecalls, they person in charge of this situation is 'always on vacation'.