Hi everyone,
Two things need to be noted from the photos. One is that the heat tabs are melted on one of the pictures, so we see that the engine got excessively hot. Hot enough to melt the heat tab, as seen in the photo that we're showing below.
Secondly, in this screenshot I'm posting, you, yourself, Mr. Austin, admitted that the engine ran hot, as seen in the screenshot of the text message you sent us.
But obviously, when a cylinder head gets excessively hot and melts the heat tab, it's going to cause distortion, or warpage, which will cause a head gasket to fail.
That's the reason why the warranty was denied. It was never said that a 40-horsepower tune would cause that. We did, however, mention that there was concern for injection timing. You can clearly see that the heat tab is melted, and per our warranty, and ANY other manufacturer, by the way, will tell you the exact same thing.
If the heat tabs are melted, then the engine has been run excessively hot. I know you initially said you did not see any high temps when you were driving the truck. Well, if there's no coolant in the cylinder head, or if there's no coolant around the temperature sensor because it's pushed that coolant out, you won't see the truck run hot because there's no way no conduit for it to convey the temperature back to the ECM.
As for your cylinder heads, we EXTENSIVELY examined/inspected your heads, checking the spots marked as potential cracks and checking anything else that could have been wrong with them. We vacuum tested them. We pressure tested them. They passed both the vacuum test and the pressure test. Neither of the heads were cracked. (Which I think is evident since you have since sold the truck to someone else and it's running strong.) We had our engineers run a straight edge across the heads in both directions, and they were not warped at all. We even had our team members take pictures and videos every step of the way so you could see exactly what they were seeing. They uploaded them all to a Google Drive folder (which I am happy to provide the link for here if requested), which was shared with you. Including videos of the vacuum test and pressure test, as well as close-up pictures of the spots that were marked as potential cracks. And we still agreed to go ahead and upgrade your heads for you. We cleaned them up and o-ringed them to give you added reliability/durability going forward.
I know you commented about us not o-ringing your heads in the first place, which was because you purchased our Daily Driver engine, not the Workhorse that includes o-ringed cylinder heads. Had you purchased a Workhorse, then it would have absolutely had o-ringed heads right out of the gate.
I'm not sure why you feel like you never were able to reach anybody, because we were in constant communication with you via email/phone calls the entire time your helpdesk ticket was open. You spoke on the phone to a team member and even to the owner, Cass Choate, multiple times, on several occasions. He even provided you with his personal cell phone number so you could always get in touch with him in case you needed anything. I hate that you feel like you had a negative experience with Choate Engineering Performance, but I'm not sure what more we could have done to please you, Mr. Austin. We hope this helps clear things up for anybody who had any concerns regarding this situation, and we wish you nothing but the best.
