jmacman12
Active member
So first off, I'd like to mention that this is NOT my story.
I came across this on reddit in /r/cars.
I asked the OP if I could post his story to our forums and he said he had no problem.
Additionally I don't mean to cause any complications with MR if Sunrise is still a sponsor, they show up on search as having a vendor sub forum but not physically when you navigate there. Not sure if because the sponsorship was dropped or for other reasons I don't know of being a relatively new member.
Anyways this is the story.
This guy has a first gen subaru forester, which has a HG leak.
He decides that rather than fixing it he will grab a JDM WRX drivetrain, which he orders off of eBay from Sunrise JDM motors.
Transaction goes fine, it gets shipped, looks good.
So then when time permits he drops the car off to have the engine installed by a local shop
Once installed, the engine has no compression and will not start.
So they start taking shit apart when the mechanic decides he wants to use a borescope to see inside the cylinder heads and this is what they see:
Yep, that's rust.
Engine comes out and this is what they discover:
Seeing as though there is rust INSIDE the cylinder head and block, this can only mean one thing: the engine was flooded.
The owner things it's from a tsunami victim but he can't tell for sure because he has no radiation sensing equipment nor does he want to pay to find out.
The story does end well because the owner ends up sourcing a v7 wrx short block and SOMEHOW gets the JDM heads rebuilt. However it costs him an arm and a leg and not to mention a lot of time.
He did not, however open a paypal dispute with eBay because the warranty had expired and he knew that it would take a long time and a lot of energy, something that wasn't worth his time.
Additionally he did try to get back in contact with Sunrise but he could barely even communicate with them because he could not understand what they were saying (middle eastern accent) nothing came from this either.
Should he have taken additional precautions and did he make mistakes/make a few bad decisions?
Yeah for sure.
At the same time, Sunrise SHOULD NOT be allowed to sell him anything remotely close to what they did.
A quote from their website:
Anyways moral of the story: ALWAYS INSPECT used engines/parts from JDM dealers because you never know.
Additionally I'd like to know of others who have had issues with Sunrise or other JDM shops around the city so people don't get screwed over like this guy did.
I know SRB had a bunch of issues with a JDM shop at the time of his WRX and it sounded all too familiar to this one: middle eastern guys trying to sell him broken parts, who were also too lazy to disassemble it for him.
I came across this on reddit in /r/cars.
I asked the OP if I could post his story to our forums and he said he had no problem.
Additionally I don't mean to cause any complications with MR if Sunrise is still a sponsor, they show up on search as having a vendor sub forum but not physically when you navigate there. Not sure if because the sponsorship was dropped or for other reasons I don't know of being a relatively new member.
Anyways this is the story.
This guy has a first gen subaru forester, which has a HG leak.
He decides that rather than fixing it he will grab a JDM WRX drivetrain, which he orders off of eBay from Sunrise JDM motors.
Transaction goes fine, it gets shipped, looks good.
So then when time permits he drops the car off to have the engine installed by a local shop
Once installed, the engine has no compression and will not start.
So they start taking shit apart when the mechanic decides he wants to use a borescope to see inside the cylinder heads and this is what they see:
Yep, that's rust.
Engine comes out and this is what they discover:
Seeing as though there is rust INSIDE the cylinder head and block, this can only mean one thing: the engine was flooded.
The owner things it's from a tsunami victim but he can't tell for sure because he has no radiation sensing equipment nor does he want to pay to find out.
The story does end well because the owner ends up sourcing a v7 wrx short block and SOMEHOW gets the JDM heads rebuilt. However it costs him an arm and a leg and not to mention a lot of time.
He did not, however open a paypal dispute with eBay because the warranty had expired and he knew that it would take a long time and a lot of energy, something that wasn't worth his time.
Additionally he did try to get back in contact with Sunrise but he could barely even communicate with them because he could not understand what they were saying (middle eastern accent) nothing came from this either.
Should he have taken additional precautions and did he make mistakes/make a few bad decisions?
Yeah for sure.
At the same time, Sunrise SHOULD NOT be allowed to sell him anything remotely close to what they did.
A quote from their website:
Sunrise JDM Motors said:
Anyways moral of the story: ALWAYS INSPECT used engines/parts from JDM dealers because you never know.
Additionally I'd like to know of others who have had issues with Sunrise or other JDM shops around the city so people don't get screwed over like this guy did.
I know SRB had a bunch of issues with a JDM shop at the time of his WRX and it sounded all too familiar to this one: middle eastern guys trying to sell him broken parts, who were also too lazy to disassemble it for him.
