What would you do?
Without reading a single reply, I’d start with why he wasn’t happy? What was wrong with the engine? What did he expect from it.
For the sake of a happy customer and longevity for the engine, I’d spend the time and his money if he is willing to square deck and align hire the crank etc... so it would s perfect and just keep on going from there. Just go nuts making it super speedway endurance LeMans race worthy without racing parts.
Why?
It seems that it may be possible that this guy is just a nit picking ***** and whiner that will complain about what might not just be so.
When the super quality level of work is done and it runs smoother than a babies *** and hums along flawlessly, this guy is going to get you a lot of biz due to his happiness!
He just has to be told and have it explained to him like he is a wide eyed kid in need of a step by step with reason explaining of it all.
And have him understand that this is going to cost him.
If my old ‘79, 318 can log over 500,000 miles on a crap quality factory build with such whacked out perameters and off balance rotating assembly, that should go a million!
He's particular, but not unduly so. He expects quality work for the money he pays. So do I, and I'm dealing with some of the same nonsense after having a frame straightened. If it's straight, the parts should fit, but they don't, after being on the rack twice. Might be a different story if someone beats you with an empty wallet, but that didn't happen, at least not in my case. And, the customer, while concerned about cost, is not asking me to do it cheap and sacrifice quality.
Assumptions will come back to bite you, and it's obvious there were plenty of assumptions here. I've had it happen to me with a block that was cracked. It had no issues with leaks prior to taking it apart, and since I was busy, I neglected to mag it right away and started doing some work. But, I caught it before it got out the door and so, I got to eat that labor because of my haste. Lesson learned.
You might want to review the replies, because I stated that I had already done the plate hone and balance. The purpose of the thread was to stress the importance of doing those operations, even on a mild build, if you want to ensure good results. Granted, if you are building the engine yourself, and you know that it had no balance related issues, you might be fine with replacing parts with stock weights and not balancing the assembly, but I don't know that and neither did the other builders.
