ATK High Performance Engines - Grand Prairie, Texas

Joe Pautz

I installed an HP89C in my corvette. At the first oil change, 500 miles, I went to go adjust the rockers and retorque the heads per manufacturer instructions to find several of the polylocks failed, stripped and snapped studs bent two pushrods, and collapsed 4 lifters. Disaster, until I called ATK and spoke to Eric. He immediately overnighted me new rockers, studs, pushrods, lifters, intake gaskets, and valve cover gaskets. I do all my own labor and was able to have the car back up and running in about 2 weeks working on it after work and during the weekend.
Our working theory is that the polylocks were probably overtorqued during assembly which caused this issue. Hopefully that gets sorted out but I cannot give enough praise to Eric and his support to make sure that my engine got back up in running condition. I read the other reviews and was nervous about how my warranty claim would go and am incredibly pleased and satisfied with the resolution provided. Eric made the entire process simple and as painless as possible.
Even with the hiccup I experienced I am still thrilled with the performance of the engine and will buy additional engines from them in the future to install in my other vehicles. Every machine has the potential for problems, what matters to me is that the company stands behind their product, and Eric has proven he stands behind these engines.

Jonathan „OfficialGains” Quintana

update After the warranty engine has been sent this engine that is currently in the truck has been running good, just maybe my luck on a bad engine**

Stay away! Purchase engine directly from summit. Had the engine professionally installed and less than 200 miles the truck developed a misfire. Towed the truck to a reputable Performace shop they take a look and ends up being a bent rod and bent valves. I have been dealing with Erick the person in charge of the warranty claims and said he’s “it” as far as no one else Is higher up than him and he has no clue what is being done at the location since he works from home but I called the other day and a customer rep said he’s somewhere in the warehouse and he said he hasn’t been in the office since November. It’s been 14 days since I started the claim and he said I’m not being patient.

Mike S

192 miles after installing a 5.3L the #1 piston broke off the rod and destroyed oil pan, windage tray, and sucked metal into the intake manifold. ATK refuses to replace customer parts from their defective engine. Junk out of the box. Do not buy from this company or use LKQ as they provide engines for them as well.

Robert Bryant

Update - April 2024: still no issues whatsoever with the short block. It's still doing SBC stuff reliably with many miles, road trips and hauling trailer loads of furniture on NC and VA highways.

Bought their SP04 short block in April 2018. Machining was well done, measured everything before proceeding with building it up. The decks were cleaned and squared and all pistons were consistent to within .002" of each other (.014" - .016"). Chose a .026" gasket for a good quench of .041". There was one guy who reviewed after he put together a 6.0l and bolted on his heads without checking PTV clearance or deck height. Bent valves and scarred pistons isn't ATK's fault. And the guy who chewed up 3 distributors in a Mopar engine- sounds like incompatible materials between cam gear and distributor gear. Keep feeding your mains metal chunks of your distributors and guess what'll happen? Right.

Folks, building engines from a short block or doing proper prep work before you install a long block and romp on the happy pedal requires more than tools and the willingness to take on the work yourself. Same goes for any shop doing it on behalf of a customer. Any shop that doesn't take the time to measure, record and proceed properly with a build or install is no more than a parts changer. The world has enough of those.

With the volume that any company like ATK or BluePrint does, there will be a small percentage of products that get missed or done with some margin of error. You do your job properly before you rush through to get it on the road or out the door and you'll usually catch these issues. Then you can deal with the company about an unused, undamaged product and your position is stronger. Then they have the opportunity to 1) apologize, 2) pay the freight to send back the problem item, 3) expedite shipping of a replacement, 4) run the problem product back through processing and QA and return to stock if possible.

I built my SP04 SBC short block with another company's budget 185cc aluminum heads (you have to go through those, too), GM roller lifters, Comp roller cam, Scorpion rockers, ARP fasteners everywhere, Holley intake, bored and machined TBI unit, 80# injectors and a modified ECM to tune it (myself). Distributor is same that GM uses on their RamJet engines, dist. gears are compatible, chose a Melling Select std volume/ hi pressure oil pump. Had no issues reusing the stock accessory brackets. Result is a 10.2:1 408 SAE gross HP engine that's been trouble free from day 1. The block is bored .040" over so it's a 357 with stock 3.48" stroke. 45-48psi oil pressure at hot idle. SP04 includes moly rings, so get them seated properly and you'll have no issues.

B M

Just installed an ATK HP36 383 stroker engine into a 64 El Camino. 7/23
Was in stock at Summit Racing, had it installed in a week.
The engine is well built and runs perfect, very smooth and powerful.
no issues at all.

Jeff Willens

The first long block was knocking and smoking on the left bank. This added 2 months to the project.
Second motor has an over heating issue. Both were professionally installed.

The warranty is a joke, they paid less than half of the cost to replace the motor and I have another bad motor.

These guys are no good.

Steve West

The oil pan leaked when the shop installed the motor. I had to pay them over $1300 to pull everything out and fix ATKs mistake. I have been waiting going on 6 weeks for my reimbursement Now they say oops wrong address ten days to cut a check then who knows how long. They should have paid the shop instead of my money tied up for months!!!!

John Hampton

This company does not honor their warranty, this engine was installed by a professional. Not overheated, temperature tabs were still intact, block deck was clearly not flat. 2.7litre Toyota. After they inspected the engine, they claimed this was caused by a spark or fueling problem. 6k miles on the engine. After new engine there has been no spark or fuel issues. Do Not Purchase anything from this company.