so a few months ago i posted a thread about how i just had crower stg 2 cams installed and patriot springs well one of the patriot valve springs was defective and it snapped melted the titanium retainer burnt a valve hacked off a piece off my head an fried a couple pistons, called patriot pissed as hell first off the vice president who i spoke to was named gunner an he was like well i never heard of that an will only give me a refund on the springs i could an should sue but when i get all done with lawyer fees i just cant do it im only 19, so went my own route an took out a loan now car is in shop getting block fitted with forged pistons rods new gaskets everywhere new CROWER springs with my crower stg 2 cams porting out my heads and getting a dyno tune and 100 shot of nitrous so im excited to get it back its been about 2 months so far its been in the shop just thought i would let you guys know bout my story and how its going so far and to also say those thinking about getting cams or heads etc dont go to patriot performance they dont stand behind their work maybe some of you have had luck with them but i havent thanks for listening

 

You should have known better and not have gotten anything with the name patriot in it. Plus I doubt you win if you sued

 

well sorry to hear this but its a typical Pariot story, poor quality and poor customer service

 

You know whats funny. I got an email from some guy yesterday who is a "family friend" of the owner @ Patriot. He had seen some of my posts about Patriot and was trying to defend them. Saying they are top of the line products. And he goes on to say, "I know that they out perform another top modular head that another TOP performance shop produces." He never mentioned this other TOP performance shop though. Then he goes on saying how (Randy youll love this part) Johnny Lightening is using them and running really low times.

And of course, just like everyone else who supports shitty products, he says I need to use them before I can bash them.

He ends it with "Every one has their opions and I respect that but do not bash Patriot Performance they know what they are doing and done alot of research into there stuff it is a top notch company with a lot of knowlegdable people and skilled people there."

This is by far the funniest email Ive ever gotten.

 

I thought of using their heads and cams when I did my PI Swap. I ended up talking to them about how my compression being high. These knuckle d#$%s suggested I go with a really high lift stage 2 cam in my motor. I am not an expert, but tend to pride myself on getting the best and most information before I make a choice. I asked them about the chance of valve to piston damage from a high lift in a high compression motor. The SOB told me I didn't know what I was asking or talking about, told me I wasn't serious about performance and that Patriot on want's buisness from serious performance enthusiasts. I sat there wondering where he got that idea, I asked a question and got this as a response. I ended up with FRPP heads and cams, I am going to a STAGE 2 "low lift" cam from either DSS, or Sean Hyland Motorsports. I might even go with Crane. Just pricing and reading on the selections now. Patriot sucks!!!

 

It seems that performance parts companies can always hide behind the wall of "hey, we did not do the install". This is why I like the idea of using a shop like Steen. If you have ONE shop who makes the parts and does the install, placing blame is always so much easier.

 

My motor is on the stand right now because of Patriot. But, I can say Gunnar is a stand up guy and took 110% care of me. I now have Fox Lake heads and cams. FWIW, Patriots made good power, as you can see. They are however very unreliable and my valvetrain was super noisey. I supposedly had the "fixed" version of the heads, so did a friend of mine, we both had problems.

 

<removes Patriot Perofrrmance from future consideration>

I've always been one of those guys that gives peeps a chance. Patriot never has anyone bragging about results... just complaining about QC issues. If you can't get your quality under control you don't deserve to have a good rep or to have my business. Patriot can give me a call if they want someone to whip them into shape. First thing first... remove Gunnar from the business. He's in too deep and can't take criticism. If he could he would have addressed their horrendous quality control.

 

lift has nothing to do w/ PTV clearance, it's the valve timing events that do. a valve is @ its full lift when the piston is down the bore. go with VT for the cams, they have a good rep for a reason. some "low lift" cams are regrinds, so be carefull...

 

Dont know many 2v's running DSS cams. They have had some issues in the past making 2v short blocks. SHM is nothing special at all either. I think you need to do a lot more reasearch.

 

DSSdoes have some issues their cams are not very heard of because of their short blocks I have a friend 5,000 miles on a DSS block and the damn thing is eating oil pretty bad thought about taking it off his hands and fixing the problem but I dont want the problem the happen again. Ported PI heads seem like the only way to go besides Steen and Fox Lake.

 

Thanks for the info

 

I can't figure out what there really is to mess up on a short block... but somehow these places do it.

Steen and Fox Lake are ported PI heads. There's also VT (same as Fox Lake), MPH, Renegade and probably a couple others. I think Fox Lake is the best bang for the buck, though... Ron does Ferrea valves and Manley Nextech springs at no extra charge.

 

Fox Lake stage 2's are $1795 WITH head exchange. Steens are only a couple hundred more with the same valves and springs, straight up. VT has a nice sale going on right now though, 5% off. However, add on the Manley springs and that brings it up to $1945.

 

the price on Steen's website does not include cores, at least not when I talked to Jason in the fall... they're very close in price, but I didn't want hand ported heads. I know Steen is one of the, if not THE best porter, but I wanted CNC'd heads.