Oh man, don't get me started.
I want to make one thing clear, I'm not trying to bash Tom or convince anyone not to do business with him. That being said I've purchased several of Tom's products and services in the last year and there has not been one single component that didn't need to be finished by me, some of the things were costly to fix. If I wasn't an experienced mechanic who's been doing this for-ever and didn't know where to go and who to see I would have been lost.
Four barrel intake: The EGR passages that run under the center leaked into the plenum, big vacuum leaks, splits that had been welded were ground too far down and had to be welded up again. The carb mounting pad isn't centered, stock two-barrel linkage is too short, four-barrel linkage is too long, made my own bracket. The carb mounting holes shoud be 5/16" like every freakin carb you can imagine putting onto this engine but were 3/8" instead. Had to drill the carb, now it fits this engine well only.
SC heads prepped for four barrel carb usage (ordered with the intake): Center divit inbetween the ports is a big mismatch to the four-barrel intake. Effectively the crank case, EGR passage (which leaks into the plenum) and plenum were all connected. I had to have the heads welded up.
Cam and double roller chain: Cam sproket wouldn't fit onto cam until cam flange was reduced so sproket would slide over flange. Bolt holes in sprocket weren't even close to matching the cam, I called Tom and was told they were supposed to be slotted, I could send it back (4 week minimum TX-CAN-TX) or do it myself. I did it using the old gear as a template by bolting them together.
Tom is a good machinest and a decent guy who's doing his best, he's not trying to screw anyone but I now refer to him respectfuly as the absent minded professor. Like he told me "Everybody wants their parts right away but there are no parts, I have to make everything by myself for these engines. Ford changes things more often than I change my underwear and I can't keep up with it all at times. Things get overlooked. I'm sorry for that." He has always offered to make things right for free but I just do it myself because I can and needed the car running ASAP. He's got a lot of unique parts for the Ford V6's and his prices are reasonable but he's not an exact science he's just a guy like the rest of us. Don't confuse engine building with Wal-Mart shopping there is no guaranteed satisfaction desk to go bitch at in race car building, expect problems. Every machine shop is run my humans and I've seen some do much worse than Tom over the years. None of them care as much about the 3.8 though. Also I think Tom has more of a handle on the later model stuff as that's the majority of his business, but the unfinished threads surprise me like, not at all.
So you should never take for granted that just because it came from Tom (or anyone else) it will be perfect, even Ford sends stuff out that isn't right all the time. When building custom motors never take anything for granted and always inspect everything, that's what the pros do so why should you expect to be different. It would be nice though. I've spent many a day chewing Toms a$$ when trying to put the damn things together but at least there's a guy who got me to the point of putting it together. It's a good thing nobody asked me when I was in the middle of the project, I was really pissed. I might not have been so nice, but reason returns when I fire it up and can't wipe the grin off my face.
Vernon