| Re: has anyone ever heard of ATK engines
Anyone can mess up, but this was enough to get me to avoid ATK like the plague.
We bought an ATK rebuild for the company beater...VW Rabbit diesel. Leaked oil from day one. When I called ATK (Hayward, CA IIRC), they told us to have a VW dealership perform a dye leak to determine where the oil was coming from and we'll go from there.
The first red flag was when I drove the car to the VW dealership for the dye test and told them what was going on. Their first statement to me was, "If that's an ATK rebuild, go someplace else." (I never mentioned ATK at that point). The service manager then told me how they've got caught in the middle of warranty hassles between their customers and ATK. "Never again."
Had another local VW dealer in San Jose drop dye into the crankcase and they determined that the oil was coming from the rear main, oil pan and balance shaft seal.
I reported this back to ATK and they told us to go ahead and get the leaks repaired, pay the shop that does the repairs, save the oily parts with the dye on them and return the parts with the repair order. ATK would then reimberse us the repair costs.
After the repairs were perfomed and before I shipped off the seals, gaskets and clutch disk to ATK, I brought them over to my father's shop and put them under his UV lamp and confirmed there was dye on the parts.
After a few weeks with no word from ATK, I called them and was told our claim was denied. They told me there was no trace of dye on any of the parts. Their attitude was pretty shitty too.
A couple of weeks later, the engine developed what appeared to be a blown head gasket (hot water pouring into the overflow tank immediately after start up). We took the car to a shop a few doors down to get the head looked at. After they tore down the engine to do the head gasket, they found a casting defect in one of the cylinders that was exposed when the block was bored. Sonic inspection my arse. | 
