Millennium Tech - Motor Rebuild Going on 2 Months

That is way to long. If he is just having a basic rebuild, I bet he is kicking himself for not buying a manual, splitter and a six pack. That makes for a fun afternoon as it is.

Back when I worked for a shop normal turn around for a cylinder was 4-6 weeks at least unless we paid the priority price to have it done faster.

When I was 12 my dad took my 1982 YZ80 engine to a "friend" for new main bearings...it was the longest 2 months of my life. Felt like a lifetime. The solution to that was to learn how to rebuild engines myself the next year..

2 strokes are so simplistic not sure why anyone would send one away to be rebuilt (especially with YouTube and all)...

If I was in your buddies situation I wouldn't even be able to sleep at night! Sucks to be wasting riding time waiting!

Brad460 wrote:

When I was 12 my dad took my 1982 YZ80 engine to a "friend" for new main bearings...it was the longest 2 months of my life. Felt like a lifetime. The solution to that was to learn how to rebuild engines myself the next year..

2 strokes are so simplistic not sure why anyone would send one away to be rebuilt (especially with YouTube and all)...

If I was in your buddies situation I wouldn't even be able to sleep at night! Sucks to be wasting riding time waiting!

Of course I could have rebuilt the motor with my buddy - but I own my own business, have a family and zero free time. My time is valuable and I'll be honest, I didn't want to spend the time to do it and my buddy travels for work a lot.

But my friend was also concerned about the need to balance the new crank, so he chose to send it off and let a dedicated shop that is known for motor work, get it done right.

Simple, yeah, but the bottom ends are still really time consuming and I'm not en expert with anything below the base gasket. This should have been a quick 2-3 week deal.

UNACCEPTABLE

Had the head to my 95 CR125 redone my Millennium....took FOREVER but when I got it back it was absolutely perfect. Wait patiently they do awesome work. Maybe give them a call and ask them on ship date to get it back.

nascarnate326 wrote:

Had the head to my 95 CR125 redone my Millennium....took FOREVER but when I got it back it was absolutely perfect. Wait patiently they do awesome work. Maybe give them a call and ask them on ship date to get it back.

^^^ This^^

A good shop will always be busy and the quality of work worth waiting for. Nothing good comes from rushing. Might suck to wait... but thats why I own 2 bikes! if one is broke I use the other one.

b_kowalsk wrote:

^^^ This^^

A good shop will always be busy and the quality of work worth waiting for. Nothing good comes from rushing. Might suck to wait... but thats why I own 2 bikes! if one is broke I use the other one.

Nice Hatch.

nascarnate326 wrote:

Had the head to my 95 CR125 redone my Millennium....took FOREVER but when I got it back it was absolutely perfect. Wait patiently they do awesome work. Maybe give them a call and ask them on ship date to get it back.

b_kowalsk wrote:

^^^ This^^

A good shop will always be busy and the quality of work worth waiting for. Nothing good comes from rushing. Might suck to wait... but thats why I own 2 bikes! if one is broke I use the other one.

That's not an acceptable defensive statement. Waiting 2 months, when they said 20 days, is not okay. I don't care how impeccable their work is.

Like I said, I own a service business. If we are too busy, I hire more employees to carry the load and keep our productivity in balance. There is no way I could tell a customer "hey we're really busy and overloaded with work, you're going to have to wait two months for us to begin your project."

Quality work doesn't mean you have to wait an unreasonable amount of time.

Maybe this is a fluke, but they are radio-silent unless my friend contacts them, which he has been doing every week.

mattyhamz2 wrote:

Back when I worked for a shop normal turn around for a cylinder was 4-6 weeks at least unless we paid the priority price to have it done faster.

4-6 weeks! That's crazy, anything more than 2 weeks is too long.
From their website:

Q.How long does it take to get my cylinder back?
A. Click to reveal:

Typical turn around times are 5-7 business days for single cylinder and head services, 7-10 business days for mono blocks, inlines, and integral top cases, 14-21 business days on automotive and engine building services.

Take a number, get in line. A "friend" who ran his own shop had one of my engines for 4 months. When he finally got to it, it only took about one full day of actual work.

One of our better local paint guys told me 1-2 weeks turn around on a tank ,fender, and number plates to be painted. That turned into 4 months also.

If big $$$ jobs are rolling in, a small $$ job always gets shoved to the back, it seems.

I had a cylinder and head re-done. Turn around back to my house was about 4 days, three weeks ago.

It sounds like you are posting info from your friend, so, I would be willing to bet there is some honest disconnect somewhere.

Its possible they have made a mistake, but anytime it has happened with them, they own up and correct it.

Who did you talk to? What is the latest diagnosis and ETA?

kzizok wrote:

I had a cylinder and head re-done. Turn around back to my house was about 4 days, three weeks ago.

It sounds like you are posting info from your friend, so, I would be willing to bet there is some honest disconnect somewhere.

Its possible they have made a mistake, but anytime it has happened with them, they own up and correct it.

Who did you talk to? What is the latest diagnosis and ETA?

Disconnect is certainly possible. I do know that they had to order a couple tools needed to get the job done, apparently specific to the Husky. And, they actually thought initially this was a KTM/Husky, which it is not. That should have been really obvious.

I'm assuming they have bigger fish to fry and this isn't a priority.

Last he heard was early last week. They said "we will try to push it through this week."

Obviously we aren't going to solve this problem here. I was just more curious if this experience was a rare occurance or not.

^^^My experience with them has been a $48 head repair was a priority. They are usually very good in all aspects, so, I would consider negative issues as rare occurances. But, things happen sometimes.

Kinda bugs me a bit when I hear this stuff. Seems to happen quite often when the company is business related to sports / hobbies , ect....

I'm in construction and we have schedules we need to try and keep on track. You give the home owners or generals the best time line you can , and just be honest from the very start.

If you say.... " I need two weeks to finish this , plus or minus a day or two "......you better come through. Even if the home owner or general want it done sooner...you stick to your guns.

If I told a customer...." I need 20 days ".....then take 2 months....I would be in court. Being sued and probably not recieve one dime.

There are only so many silver bullets a company can use. As a company , you either need to hire more employees or work double time to get things done. You ....do....not...lie , so you can take on more work then you can handle. Best thing....be honest from the first day...always.

jeffro503 wrote:

Kinda bugs me a bit when I hear this stuff. Seems to happen quite often when the company is business related to sports / hobbies , ect....

I'm in construction and we have schedules we need to try and keep on track. You give the home owners or generals the best time line you can , and just be honest from the very start.

If you say.... " I need two weeks to finish this , plus or minus a day or two "......you better come through. Even if the home owner or general want it done sooner...you stick to your guns.

If I told a customer...." I need 20 days ".....then take 2 months....I would be in court. Being sued and probably not recieve one dime.

There are only so many silver bullets a company can use. As a company , you either need to hire more employees or work double time to get things done. You ....do....not...lie , so you can take on more work then you can handle. Best thing....be honest from the first day...always.

Yarp...

It actually doesn't matter how long it takes, as long as you're upfront about it from the beginning so the customer knows... then they have no reason to be upset, because they will have entered the agreement knowing the timeframe.

They're probably waiting on parts.

TeamGreen wrote:

They're probably waiting on parts.

Like Davi?

God damn Millennium locker gate!

No, 2 months for something that takes a couple of hours to do is not normal. I bet that there is some kind of miscommunication or that they've simply made a mistake. Why would they want to store his engine for 2 months? Call them and explain your situation! I'm sure that they willl understand.

nascarnate326 wrote:

Had the head to my 95 CR125 redone my Millennium....took FOREVER but when I got it back it was absolutely perfect. Wait patiently they do awesome work. Maybe give them a call and ask them on ship date to get it back.

b_kowalsk wrote:

^^^ This^^

A good shop will always be busy and the quality of work worth waiting for. Nothing good comes from rushing. Might suck to wait... but thats why I own 2 bikes! if one is broke I use the other one.

Thats bullshit. They can't be that good if they have bad communication with customers and their turnaround time is already double what they stated takes for a complete rebuild and the OP doesn't even know how far along the build is or if its even started yet.

Good workshops are busy most of the time but good workshops also know when to they can't take on more work because they have too much on already, Sometimes its in-practicable to hire staff for the short term to cater for a busy period especially in a job that requires engine rebuilding skills. Its always better to say "Sorry I can't do it for you any time soon I'm just too busy, but if you really need it done asap such and such may be able to help you" rather than take on the job and have it sit around for 2 months while the customer gets pissed off and tells all his mates to never go see that bastard that told me "20 Days turn around". You may lose one job but at least you didn't lie to a customer and have him leave thinking he will be riding the week after next with a fresh engine...

Chances are there is shop or tech close to you that could have done this....find a good local shop & use them...I only send out stuff like cylinders ect. Keep your money local to you...

Is there money due that hasn't been paid yet?

Since I was a MC mechanic for 20+ years I am not so quick to jump on this rag on bandwagon.

There are a lot of possible variables that can leave a rebuild dead in the water. Are parts on back order? Did the cylinder need replating? Do they press cranks in house?

Ask your friend.

Millennium did a couple cylinders for me before and they did a killer job. Never have sent them a whole engine though. If there were OEM parts that needed to be replaced within that lower end, it could add to the time line. It's not too hard to communicate delays to customers though. Takes 2 min to type an email.

Ive used MT for a few different projects and ive never had to wait for more than a month for any of the jobs to be done. Ive also called them many times to ask tech questions and have always got ahold of someone that was very helpful. Not sure what is going on that they are taking so long on your engine, like someone else said there must have been a screw up in their system somewhere.

I have had Millennium replate and/or repair about 6 different cylinders for me and have never had any problem at all. Some required more work than others and it took a bit longer, but I never felt that it was an unreasonable amount of time based on the job. Hopefully communication improves and you can get a better idea of what is being done and the potential delays.

I've used them once and was very pleased. Communication was good. I just sent in a cylinder to be replated though. I can't speak for how long it took. I really didn't care about time frame because it was this time of year in Texas so I was in no hurry to get it back and rebuild in a garage or go riding in 100 degree heat.

No clue how long it would take for an entire motor.

TeamGreen wrote:

They're probably waiting on parts.

Crush wrote:

Like Davi?

No.

Like German/Italian era Husky that's a real pain in the ass to get parts for.