3500 LX9 build with Milzy Motorsports parts
 

Putting together a MMS Stage 2 LX9 along with some additional parts.
-MMS fully optioned headers
-MMS stage 2 kit
-New 36lb/hr injectors
-Custom MMS pushrods
-New lifters with LS internals
-Internal crank trigger
-Double roller timing chain
-MMS milled timing cover for DRTC + powdercoat + clearance for head stud option
-MMS cold air intake
-MMS N-body swap kit
-MMS modified heater tube
-MMS EGR delete kit
-MMS billet trans mount
-MMS engine mount
-MMS Powdercoating and stainless bolt options
-MSD 8mm wires
-Spark plugs that are 2 heat ranges colder
-68mm MMS throttle body

Found a low mileage 3500 from a wrecked G6. Had the crankshaft sent out to have the snout machined for the DRTC gear. Crank appears to be one of the 7484 steel ones? Installed the 7X reluctor wheel at home. Instructions say that you have several seconds to line up your marks once the wheel is heated and is in position but our experience was roughly 2 seconds to work with. Next on the agenda is to clearance the block for the DRTC and verify proper preload once the lifters arrive.

What power numbers are you looking to get

MMS claims around 300 at the flywheel. Trying to get the car to run 14 seconds or so in the quarter mile.

Do you have all the parts from him yet? There's some people waiting years for parts...

No, I do not have all of the parts yet. It is going on 3 years now.....

✓ Early 2000s website
✓ No inventory or "in stock" indication on any product
✓ Needs a page like this: https://www.milzymotorsports.com/com...ion-guidelines
✓ Lawsuit http://www.grandamgt.com/forum/showthread.php?t=91237

Tells me everything I need to know.

Clearanced for the double roller timing chain by removing some metal from the block near the main journal and screwing in the upper oil galley plugs a 1/4 turn or so and then lightly grinding the tops of the plugs as well. Thinking of not running the stock chain guide with this set-up as the double roller overhangs the guide quite a bit and the chain is surprisingly tight without it. Someone let me know if I missed clearancing anything or if I should run the stock guide.
Cleaned up the gasket surfaces, blew out all of the oil passages, and ran a tap through all of the threaded holes then drenched the block in oil and covered it back up. Will send the block out for hot tanking and cam bearings when the rest of the MMS parts arrive. Unable to find quality aftermarket pistons for the LX9 so I am planning on reusing the old ones with new rings and deglazing the cylinders. Would like to install new pistons but all that I can find are the cheap DNJ ones or the forged ones that may take years to make.

If MMS was upfront and honest about their lead times during the ordering process I would not have a single complaint. To this day, I have no idea when the rest of the parts will arrive.
Communicated briefly with wottech a few months ago. They have a pretty interesting budget high compression build using our 3400 engine with pistons from the 3.4 DOHC and some other cool stuff. Probably could pull it off for 3k or so. Would be interesting to see if wottechs cheapo build would outrun an 8k MMS engine. They have all the stuff on the shelf too.....

To get the .055" clearance required for the chain it was necessary to clearance the block saddle roughly even with the bearing insert. Could not find any pics of this chain installed on a 3500. Pics of the 3400 installs looks like the block was not clearanced in this area at all...
Surprisingly, the MMS custom pushrods are quite a bit heavier than the stock ones. MMS pushrods weigh in at 44 grams for the long ones and 42 grams for the short ones. The stock pushrods are 39 grams for the long ones and 36 grams for the short ones. This is contrary to the MMS website's claim that they are lighter than stock and will help prevent float at high rpms. Understandably the custom pushrods are slightly longer in order to compensate for the changes made by the custom camshaft so that is going to add some weight however I would expect that the custom pushrods would still be lighter overall than stock to compensate for the extra length required not only because that is what is claimed but especially since this engine will see close to 7000 rpm. Still waiting for the upgraded MMS lifters to verify preload and correct pushrod length

I don't think I'd fret about the pushrod weight.
At high rpm, valvetrain stability is just as (if not more) important than a reduction in weight. Besides, if you're going for lightweight, conventional wisdom says it's better to concentrate on the valve side of the rocker arm, not the pushrod side.
We do have a benefit of relatively short pushrods anyway, but I don't think 4 or 5 grams is going to make a difference. If I'm going for strength vs. weight in a pushrod, strength wins.

A decent read here - https://www.enginebuildermag.com/201...with-pushrods/

To Homegrown, This is from the MMS website advertisement for their custom pushrods... "The weight savings these provide will decrease valvetrain weight and therefore decreasing valvetrain float and allow the engine to develop higher rpm's."
MMS is concerned about weight in this area and the custom pushrods that I received are in fact heavier than the stock ones. Thankful to have received the parts that I did so far. Still waiting for the other parts that I purchased about 3 years ago to arrive.

That is a good link with a lot of information and what I learned from that link is this... The long end of the rocker arm is on the valve stem side of the fulcrum. This gives the valve spring added leverage to push the combined mass of the rocker/pushrod/lifter back down during valve closing so extra weight on that side of things may not be too big of a deal.

Picked this car up to pass the time with some local motorsports fun until the rest of the parts arrive. Maybe we will try some autocrossing.

@homegrown, Thanks for putting my mind at ease about the pushrod weight. Any and all help will be appreciated from the forum if/when the rest of the parts arrive.

Looking back, I should have had a contract written up before those parts were ordered.
Still no word of a completion date........

You’ll be waiting a little while unfortunately. Think he just takes on more work then he can handle.

I had him do a 6 speed manual swap to my alero years ago. Loved every second of it.

Your mileage may vary, but my car with approximately this same setup and a manual transmission makes around about 275 hp at the flywheel.

Congrats homegrown! This is what mine currently makes.....lol

You'll get there.
It's a marathon, not a sprint.

Is anyone running cylinder heads that have the valve guides ported flush to the runner roofs? Should I have new full-length guides installed or leave it alone?

I’d be inclined to leave it.

Thanks to homegrown, sleepyalero, and all of the others on the forums for the support with the years of (still) waiting and the information regarding the few parts that I did receive from MMS. For the uninitiated (Like myself) that are new to the n-body community, the whole process of trying to get the parts has been frustrating, unusual, and a bit bizarre so it is good to hear some words of encouragement from the people that have been through this process before.

Part of the reason that I decided to start this thread is that I am basically "Throwing in the towel" so to speak. If I get the parts...great. If I get refunded...okay. If it takes years longer to get the parts or I never receive the parts ....not so great. It is mainly on this last statement that I would like to keep all of you informed. Make no mistake, I have only myself to blame for throwing thousands of dollars at a 500 dollar car in the manner that I did so I do not have any ill will towards MMS in that regard at all. I guess I will deem my experience so far with this as the "Mystique" of dealing with said company and I will continue to report the facts of my current transaction, whether good or bad, as they unfold (If anyone cares to read them that is). Hopefully it will be helpful to the forum in some way.

Wow thats really upsetting. If i was the owner of MMS i would rather go bankrupt than have people waiting 3 years for an damn engine to be built and installed. The parts that you ordered arent space aged rocket science.. other than the DRTC, its all pretty routine stuff. Rediculous.

I got my parts from WOT-Tech and Ben was good with getting my parts to me in Canada with no issues. He didnt do my build of course, but how long does it actually take to build and install an engine? 6 months would have been taking too long Jesus.

@Shinwath, Yeah this coming October will mark the 4th year of waiting but like I said before I have only myself to blame for the situation. Looking back on some old posts in another forum I was even warned about this possibility but still went through with it so yeah, my bad. Just trying to warn others and maybe post some good news in the end. Going to try and build and install this at home so I hope I don't screw that up if the parts do arrive.

At the time my parts were ordered, Wottech seemed to be doing a lot with BMWs so that was a big reason that I did not go with them in thinking that they would be going away from the 60 degree stuff in the future. Guess I made a bad decision about that too.

Good luck with your build! Give another update as to where you are at with it when you get a minute.

A few more of the MMS parts have arrived. Not too happy with the powder coated parts as the bottom (Internal engine side) of the lower intake was completely painted/coated and most of the gasket surfaces, threaded holes, and front crank seal bore are very rough/damaged from maybe not being protected during sand blasting I assume. Also, the MMS heater pipe came without a tang to secure it to the throttle body stud.

Still do not have enough parts to complete the engine build as the headers (Ordered Jan 5th 2018) and throttle body and swap kit (Ordered Dec 12th 2017) have not arrived along with some other parts that have not shown up as well.

In all fairness, if I already had the upgraded TB, headers, and ported intakes like most people do that have been involved in upgrading these vehicles for the last few decades then I would have had the Stage 2 engine completed a few years ago as the Stage 2 heads, cam, and related bits arrived Feb of 2019.

Sorry to hear how your transaction has gone with this build. But if you where only looking to run low 14's you could most likely get there wit a cammed 3500, headers, injectors, tune and a 5spd swap.

HeC ran 14.4 iirc @101 with a stock 3500, headers, TB, injectors, tune, and 5spd swap. The mph indicates that he is making around 250+ crank hp.

What is done to your car now? Stock 3400?

I would be happy with those numbers and it's nice to know that kind of performance is possible with those parts.

This Stage 2 3500 was originally intended for a Grand Am that my daughter and I kind of "fixed up" because she wanted to learn to drive. Since she was not of legal driving age, we would take the Grand Am to an abandoned parking lot and set up different courses so she could practice. This turned into lots of fun for us especially when we started timing how long it took for her to get thru the "course" and parallel park and whatnot, so the idea of taking the car to the track when she got older came from this. Our local track has a lot of people with older Mustang GTs and z28s so we were trying to get the Grand Am to have somewhat similar performance to those cars. So, yeah it would be good to run a low 14-something so it doesn't appear extremely slow and it would be even better if it would do so consistently as they have a fun bracket race competition there on Saturdays.


Yes, it is stock 3400

**UPDATE 01/31/2022** MMS sent out a "bulk" email to all customers mostly informing them of the fact that they need to continue to wait......time period not specified. @ 3500alero I am still waiting for the headers, tune, and TB among other items (a little over 3k worth of remaining stuff and about 4 years of waiting). If I had the items you mention I would be all for putting it together as is and seeing what it is capable of for sure.
My Grand Am buddy/driver (mentioned above) is now 18 and graduating HS this year and obviously now has very little interest in old cars/hanging around with dad (and I don't blame her lol!) but I think she will humor me and go to the track in the future and hopefully have some fun together like we used to.

you know the address to his shop, just road trip on over there

lol! Address; Say one thing do another, USA
Doesn't work in mapquest unfortunately

Hopefully this gets resolved somehow. Could be worse. There are MMS customers that are in for way more than I am and have not gotten their items. Can't say I wasn't properly warned before my decision to purchase from MMS either. The folks over at Grandamowners tried their best to warn me years ago....

This situation is mostly my fault. I'll leave it at that.

I'm sorry to hear that this has happened and you've had to wait so long to get your parts. Unfortunately like you've said this isn't the first time people have had issues with Milzy in regards to getting the parts they ordered. I think it's more of he just takes on too much work. More than he can handle and instead of turning down work to finish the stuff he has already committed to, he just keeps adding more to it and the wait times just keep getting longer and longer. I mean it's his choice to do things that way, but it's not the best way to do business imo. You just keep peeving people off and it's not the way to get return customers either.

I sincerely hope that you get your parts sooner rather than later and I can only hope that one day Milzy will either change his tune or have enough people to be able to churn out what he has already committed to. I get that the pandemic has made things hard, but people shouldn't have to wait years to receive the parts they ordered or paid for with no end timeline in sight and a spotty line of communication at best. Sorry again man.

@ that01olds thanks for the kind words and support...

I was okay with the waiting years over the promised lead time at first because the MMS sales pitch preaches perfection and high quality parts. Sure, take a few extra years to get the best stuff and take your time making it. Not going to complain about that (Nor would anyone for that matter.) However, the MMS parts delivered in August (4 years later BTW) were of poor quality / amateurish at best. Honestly, my daughter and I and the local machine shop could have done a better job with the powdercoat, milling, and cleaning (and actually finishing the parts)......and had fun in the process as well.

This was supposed to be a matched / bolt together / plug and play/ go racing Stage 2 "kit" that we could put together rather quickly in our backyard, as we did not have a shop at that time, and go have some fun at the track.

MMS originally stated 2 months lead time for the headers and 6 months for the rest before purchase.......

Of course! You're not the first one I've heard of having issues with them so it's disheartening to see that nothing has changed and another person has fallen victim as a result. Yeah the fact that you waited 4 years for parts that you were originally told 2-6 months is just not cool at all. Especially when they're showing up with quality that is subpar from what you were promised or told that you would receive. It also sucks that you've lost quality time with the person that was going to be doing this build with you and that it seems like they've lost interest at least partially as a result.

I hate to say it, but it doesn't seem like you're getting much of anywhere with them. Maybe it's time to see what avenues of approach you can take to get some of your money back for the parts that haven't been delivered yet or file a claim with the BBB or something along those lines. To me these are just unacceptable terms to ask customers to abide by. Especially when you're paying for the product beforehand. That's why I am always a little skeptical when I have to pay before the product is finished because then the person has my money, but no longer has any incentive to finish the work I ordered or in the timeline I ordered it. It's just a very shitty situation and again I'm sorry you're having to go through this. I hope something good eventually comes of it and please keep us posted.

@that01olds that pretty much sums up the situation at this point for myself and other "customers" of MMS.

Because of my stupidity (AKA trusting in what MMS promises/length of time/etc...) the BBB and other avenues like that probably will not help protect me from myself....and that is the beauty of the MMS "business model".....for MMS....not the customers.

Moving forward, I am going to complete this project with or without MMS.
Spoke with Ben of WOTECH a while back. They have some of the parts I need and would be willing to do a contract/part payment or whatever it takes to make their customer feel comfortable with purchasing custom parts.
Been dealing with Hawks Motorsports for our Firebird project parts. (AWESOME PLACE BTW!!!) Spoke with them about this FWD project and they have the capability to dyno tune it.
Might goof around with the G6 exhaust and see if I can make it work as I have an extra subframe to hack up.

Ultimately, would like to dyno test the setup withhout the MMS headers / TB / Tune and then assuming the MMS stuff arrives, bolt that on and go back to the dyno and see if it is worth $7600 and 4-5-6-7? years of waiting. Judging by what others have experienced, I suspect that the MMS stage 2 will run like sh!t out of the box (or not at all) and is not plug and play in any way unless you have a dyno and tuning software in your garage lol. Hopefully I get proved wrong.

Here is a good read for anyone still thinking about dealing with MMS. This link is sort of hidden in the "policies page" and is a relatively new addition to the MMS website. https://www.milzymotorsports.com/lea...s-and-updates/
April 26, 2021 to be exact.

Yeah, it's just not cool and I read the link you posted and he's way past the lead times that he had pointed out. Custom order or not and did you happen to pay with either PayPal or a credit card? The majority of purchases using either of those these days is usually covered. Especially if you have waited years for products you have never received and also hardly gotten any updates on where they currently stand on being finished and sent out.

Nice and yeah Ben at WOT-Tech will take care of you if you end up using him. I've heard good things. He may have branched out to other cars now too, but he's still a good one to use when it comes to builds for this platform and the fact that he's willing to work with you on the payment thing especially given what you have just gone through with Milzy speaks bounds to me about who is he and how he chooses to run his business. Heck yeah that's awesome!!! Having a place to be able to dyno is always a cool thing too!

Makes sense and yeah that's a lot of money to drop on something and wait that long for it. Smh and his latest policy is basically just a way to cover his own ass and not have to deal with things or customers if he doesn't want to is what it sounds like to me. Not a very good approach imo, but again its his business soooo. I hope you get proved wrong too when/if all the stuff you ordered shows up. Like I said hopefully you hear/get something sooner than later. I'd be blowing up his phone/email everyday at this point if it were me or even better I'd just drive up to his shop. It's just not right to do business this way.

@ that01olds thanks for your concern and advice.

Well, I paid with credit card and paypal. I would have to talk with them both and see what they say about this. I had to personally contact paypal at one point years ago in order to get them to release funds to MMS. I still have the message from MMS on 4/20/18. MMS wrote "Thanks for taking care of that with paypal" That I had to do that with paypal should have been a big warning sign....not sure what rights I gave up in doing that. MMS assured me that "I will get my parts" lol

One way or another this will work out.....

Double post

www.milzymotorsports.com/lead-times-and-updates/

Reading back over this link from MMS.....a few thoughts come to mind

Does MMS realize how fortunate they are to have literally thousands of customers and potential customers (10/21/20 MMS was "3000" emails behind) with so much interest in their products especially in this economy and especially with such a small niche? That business should be a gold mine..... I work for one of the largest automotive suppliers in the world and I can tell you that we were and still are going thru some bad times.

This really is not about the money for me right now although that may change in the future. Hopefully, I can post back some good news and progress soon and hopefully, being able to show my mistakes on this forum helps someone to better protect themselves in situations like this. Thanks for the support

Progress!!!! First of the Wottech parts arrived! 65mm TB adapter
Ordered 3/4/2022-----Arrived 3/10/2022
Picked up an LX5 throttle body and bracket from local LKQ last Friday.

Milzy 68mm TB Ordered 12/12/2017----Has not arrived/no updates. You have to send in a 3400 TB for MMS to switch over the throttle/cruise cam to the new part. Picked one up from the junkyard and sent it some years ago lol.

Milzy 68mm TB total incl. core $299.50 and over 4yrs later has still not arrived

Wottech 65mm TB adapter total including LKQ TB $95.00 arrived in 1 week

So is a 3mm increase in TB bore diameter worth an extra $200 and 4-5-6-7? years of waiting? Until I get the MMS part and dyno it I can't be sure but I'm betting the answer is no.

Very sorry for not listening to you all years ago. Should have went with Wottech in the beginning....just another mistake in a long list of them

Glad to see your project is back on track.
Looking forward to updates.

Thanks! Can't wait to start putting it back together!