MRLperformance

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Been a bad deal in this country, along with healthcare in general, WAY before any recent presidents... :)

Hope things go well for Mike and his family.
---My wife does taxes for H-r block, u should hear some of the stories that have happened to people under obummer care . They cant claim it either, even after their costs went up by huge amounts. Its going to be hard for Trump to get anything done about it, w/ all the $ that the ins. companies are making. My doctor has to do the paper work (computor) between each patient to keep up w/ it. It has slowed things considerably, he hates it !! I do too.
 
Give the guy a minute to digest having to give up his dream/business, and I bet he will. I know I would be crushed, and it sounds like he has other things going on, so try not to be too quick to judge. He always seemed to me to be a stand up guy. No offense, just saying...
I'm not judging, but if I JUST sold a engine to a guy, I'd be willing to give him the answers he needed to get it into his car.....takes like 5 minutes. No offense, just sayin.
 
I'm not judging, but if I JUST sold a engine to a guy, I'd be willing to give him the answers he needed to get it into his car.....takes like 5 minutes. No offense, just sayin.
You know before he made a 4K purchase he probably should have already asked a list of question's and wrote them down. I'm sure Mike has much on his mind with getting his Family and Finances in order.
 
You know before he made a 4K purchase he probably should have already asked a list of question's and wrote them down. I'm sure Mike has much on his mind with getting his Family and Finances in order.
I see what your saying, but obviously the buyer is somewhat of a newbie...he went to MRL because everyone on here told him what a stand up guy Mike is...now he has his engine, and left hanging. Good thing is, he has this forum, with lots of help, and I will PERSONALLY lend any advice I can to the buyer, and I didn't make a dime on the sale. Best of luck to Mike and his family tho, hopefully it works out for them.
 
a stand up guy and one you would have expected to offer some parting comments.
I hope his situation is not overwhelming...
 
I've worked with Mike several times and will also attest he is a stand up guy. I am a huge believer in karma and try to live my life as such. I do the most honorable things I can all the time for whoever I can. That being said, I can say if anyone in my family came down with an urgent medical need or if I had to figure out quickly how to make sure my family is taken care of that these forums, my friends, and everything become secondary until they are taken care of. His past reputation deserves more respect than I think he is being given here. Life happens (and not always in a manner we want it to) so let's give him the opportunity to deal with it as he needs to and spare the "this is what I would do" stuff. We are not him and have no idea what he is going through.

Good luck Mike. I hope the powers that be are taking care of you and yours.
 
Sure, I might as well beat this horse a little more.
I honestly don't think anybody here is disrespecting the guy or his reputation. I do think some people are reading too far into that aspect.
Of course his family and their health should come first. But I think some feel a little responsibility for steering someone in that direction and are just hoping for a good outcome there as well.
I know what he's going through, I had to quit and go to work for a large corporation for exactly those reasons, except it was my own health, and I needed the perks.
For years, I gave, and I gave, and I gave some more, but it seems like everybody expected it, and when I had to charged for my time, it was like pulling teeth. Or they would purchase something somewhere else and expect me to make it work flawlessly.
 
If the newbie has questions, maybe start a thread? Complete carb to pan? I wouldnt think any of.the questions wouldn't be above FABO's paygrade?
Lotsa people here to help.
All the best Mike.
 
If the newbie has questions, maybe start a thread? Complete carb to pan? I wouldnt think any of.the questions wouldn't be above FABO's paygrade?
Lotsa people here to help.
All the best Mike.

I did start a thread "318 MRL Stroker"

Before I bought the motor, Mike answered a few questions I had and the most important question .... "what do I need for a 4 speed set up" ?

The most important answer I got was a "external balanced" flywheel.

Everything else I need answered is minor to me and the good people of this forum I'm sure will be glad to answer the questions.

The paperwork I got was minimal I was hoping for a parts build sheet Mike said would be sent .. I also tried to call and message him while my motor was in transit. Go no answers but figured he was busy now I know why...

No big deal we can work around it. And as a couple members said they know the 318 Stroker motor well.

I as well as a lot of people had no idea that Mike closed his doors, I Consider myself lucky to get on of his motors many people say great things about.

I'm in a learning process here and I don't mind one bit, how am I suppose to learn if I don't ask questions ... as simple as they may seem and probably asked a million and one times.

MRL Mike thank you for your time and patiance with me and I look forward to the install of the MRL motor into my 1972 Dart !!!

Wish Mike and his family the best.
 
Wow. That's the same reason I don't own a shop today. Sometimes the solid choices are the hardest.

Insurance was a top 3 as to why I had to go back working for the man. I won't even go into a deep dark hole in reference to my opinion about ACA but I am not alone in my thoughts.....

JW
 
Insurance was a top 3 as to why I had to go back working for the man. I won't even go into a deep dark hole in reference to my opinion about ACA but I am not alone in my thoughts.....

JW


Nope, you are not even close to being alone in your thoughts. More of us think the way youndomthan you think.
 
Nope, you are not even close to being alone in your thoughts. More of us think the way youndomthan you think.

The problem is we the people let it happen and we the people continue to let it occur.....

On the topic of MRL, it's a hard way to make a living. You enjoy what you do and are good at it but there just isn't enough need for it. The one thing I learned about running my business is money never flowed good unless alot of hands were working on projects. I really wish him all the luck and his knowledge and life skills gained from all this will put him in a better spot to support the family....

JW
 
Best of luck in new job Mike. Hope all goes well. I enjoyed reading about your engine builds.
 
The problem is we the people let it happen and we the people continue to let it occur.....

On the topic of MRL, it's a hard way to make a living. You enjoy what you do and are good at it but there just isn't enough need for it. The one thing I learned about running my business is money never flowed good unless alot of hands were working on projects. I really wish him all the luck and his knowledge and life skills gained from all this will put him in a better spot to support the family....

JW


I agree on both of your points.
We let it happen.
And building engines is a damn hard way to make a buck.
Any business is hard to run and make money.
 
Tough Tough way to make a living in a SPECIALTY shop ( MOPAR only ).....How can you compete with these mass production companies building engines .. You can't PERIOD ....
You are also putting a product out there that is on the least important list of a consumer ..
MOPARs are very expensive to build .... where i work i can count on 1 hand the amount of people are into Mopars ...
Chevy and then Ford most builds ... Mopar always last ... again ...
 
Bless you Mike. As a builder myself, the "Goodbye" and no further communication I can completely understand. I hope you never even see this message because you turned your back so far on this business.

The amount of yourself you put into and engine is hard to understand unless you have experienced it. And the more you learn the more you realize how far you have to go to get really good at what you are doing. So you try to get better with every engine and most (not all) of the public wants it to be less and less expensive.

It's like giving birth to a child and someone saying, "Damn! That kid is ugly!"

I do have some really nice builds to do and I'm greatful.

But my son keeps telling me, "Dad, taking it in the shorts like that on some of these engines is painful. We're going to need another tube of 'Analeze'!"

We fought and fought to do something special with a 5.9 Cummins and probably lost $3,000 on that build. Saw the Cummins owner at the funeral yesterday for the T/A owner. He really likes his 5.9 but we didn't see another $3,000 from him. Need to keep a 'tube' in the glovebox for emergency.

So I no longer even try to compete on price. This is how much it costs. Take it or leave it. I want to have fun doing this and it's no fun for me to buy an engine build so I have something to do.

My son is ready to do other things and the only reasons we can keep the door open is I have Social Security, his wife has good insurance for the family and we have no shop overhead other than electricity and insurance.

I really hope Cody's art show in July gets him some financial recognition.
 
Bless you Mike. As a builder myself, the "Goodbye" and no further communication I can completely understand. I hope you never even see this message because you turned your back so far on this business.

The amount of yourself you put into and engine is hard to understand unless you have experienced it. And the more you learn the more you realize how far you have to go to get really good at what you are doing. So you try to get better with every engine and most (not all) of the public wants it to be less and less expensive.

It's like giving birth to a child and someone saying, "Damn! That kid is ugly!"

I do have some really nice builds to do and I'm greatful.

But my son keeps telling me, "Dad, taking it in the shorts like that on some of these engines is painful. We're going to need another tube of 'Analeze'!"

We fought and fought to do something special with a 5.9 Cummins and probably lost $3,000 on that build. Saw the Cummins owner at the funeral yesterday for the T/A owner. He really likes his 5.9 but we didn't see another $3,000 from him. Need to keep a 'tube' in the glovebox for emergency.



So I no longer even try to compete on price. This is how much it costs. Take it or leave it. I want to have fun doing this and it's no fun for me to buy an engine build so I have something to do.

My son is ready to do other things and the only reasons we can keep the door open is I have Social Security, his wife has good insurance for the family and we have no shop overhead other than electricity and insurance.

I really hope Cody's art show in July gets him some financial recognition.

This is so true. The thing that pissed me off is I didn't do this for a hobby. It's how I paid for my house. And food. And paid taxes. It was all I had.

A surprising number of customers think we do this as a hobby. That well wit so much we'd do it for free. And they EXPECT for not even making hourly wages, or worse yet sponsor them.

But when you hit them with the real costs and Bill they whine and cry.,then they go down the street and gladly pay more. The last time that happened to me, I shut down for two days, cleaned the shop and raised every price by an average of 25%. Some a bit more, some a bit less.

Over night, it changed the type of customer brought in. It weeded out the tire kickers and coupon clippers. Before the price hike, we were so busy it was hard to keep up. After the price hike, we had less work, but went from 14-15 hour days to days when a long day was 10 hours. And at the end of the year, the company made more money and we, as a company worked less hours and made more per hour.
 
Engine business can be very frustrating. I always said you can build the best engine in the work but some idiot puts his junk carb and distributor on it with some "spin to win timing" and you'll shortly have a pile of scrap. I got out of it over 10 years ago now at the advice of a 70 year old guy I was working with. Wouldn't mind adding some equipment to my garage just to do some hobby/side work. I don't regret switching careers. I do miss it at times though, when I gotta pay for some machine work that I could have done better myself.
 
Engine business can be very frustrating. I always said you can build the best engine in the work but some idiot puts his junk carb and distributor on it with some "spin to win timing" and you'll shortly have a pile of scrap. I got out of it over 10 years ago now at the advice of a 70 year old guy I was working with. Wouldn't mind adding some equipment to my garage just to do some hobby/side work. I don't regret switching careers. I do miss it at times though, when I gotta pay for some machine work that I could have done better myself.

Just curious, what do you do now?
 
I Work in a refinery. Started out as an operator, now in supervision. the job switch offered me a lot better opertunities/benefits.
 
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the job switch offered me a lot better opertunities/benefits.

Exactly why I threw in the towel on car wrenching. Full medical, an OK dentist deal, low cost, huge win! It was like getting a fat raise on top of a 1/3 less hours, less grease, grief and a lack of haggling & dead beats.

I may not love what I'm doing. But it's a solid deal.
 
Kudos to u Mike for taking care of ur family as we know family is 1st no matter what. I have the greatest respect for u. Will miss ur posts. Kim
 
Exactly why I threw in the towel on car wrenching. Full medical, an OK dentist deal, low cost, huge win! It was like getting a fat raise on top of a 1/3 less hours, less grease, grief and a lack of haggling & dead beats.

I may not love what I'm doing. But it's a solid deal.

Glad to hear it!
Some guys have a decent job and are still paying through the nose for Healthcare.
I hope Mike is as fortunate as Rumblefish360.
My wife had good healthcare, but the stress of the job was getting to be too much, so she gave her 30 day notice. Two weeks later she's having triple by pass surgery. Fortunately, to the day, it all worked out and she was covered.
But now she has a heart condition and diabetic with no insurance. Preconditions like that, Insurers don't take on. So what do you do?
We tried One of the Healthcare sharing ministries.
Best thing that has ever happened. It's not true insurance but it does the same thing, so who cares, not us.
You have to do a little of the paper work, some ministries cover pharmacy some don't, ours doesn't.
$300.00 a month for two and $500 deductible each.
It takes a little longer, doctor bills are out of pocket, but since it's out of pocket, they lower the bill if you ask, but the full amount comes off the deductible.
Just gets better and better for us, but some people want nothing to do with it. To each his own!
Hope this helps!
 
Bless you Mike. As a builder myself, the "Goodbye" and no further communication I can completely understand. I hope you never even see this message because you turned your back so far on this business.

The amount of yourself you put into and engine is hard to understand unless you have experienced it. And the more you learn the more you realize how far you have to go to get really good at what you are doing. So you try to get better with every engine and most (not all) of the public wants it to be less and less expensive.

It's like giving birth to a child and someone saying, "Damn! That kid is ugly!"

I do have some really nice builds to do and I'm greatful.

But my son keeps telling me, "Dad, taking it in the shorts like that on some of these engines is painful. We're going to need another tube of 'Analeze'!"

We fought and fought to do something special with a 5.9 Cummins and probably lost $3,000 on that build. Saw the Cummins owner at the funeral yesterday for the T/A owner. He really likes his 5.9 but we didn't see another $3,000 from him. Need to keep a 'tube' in the glovebox for emergency.

So I no longer even try to compete on price. This is how much it costs. Take it or leave it. I want to have fun doing this and it's no fun for me to buy an engine build so I have something to do.

My son is ready to do other things and the only reasons we can keep the door open is I have Social Security, his wife has good insurance for the family and we have no shop overhead other than electricity and insurance.

I really hope Cody's art show in July gets him some financial recognition.

Must be something in the air! I see light at the end of the tunnel on a career change here as well. Can't wait to leave this incredibly thankless profession behind. As IQ52 said--you pour yourself into every build only to hear the crying about the expense, or complaints in general. I was talking with a buddy of mine about this last week, we agreed that this is a great hobby but a terrible job. I hope to bring some or all of my equipment home and become uber selective about what I take on in the future , engine building will remain a love and a hobby to be enjoyed when I choose. It also doesn't hurt to move to a career that is a jump in pay with incredible benefits/pension package and also know that I can retire when the time comes. Kudos to you Mike! Probably kick myself for not doing this 10+ years ago. J.Rob
 
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