Have you purchased a vehicle fitted with a RAT Engine?
First, you need to ensure the engine truly is a RAT engine, and isn’t pretending to be one. Each RAT engine has a unique serial number stamped under the alternator stand, or on top of the crankcase, over cylinder #3, or at the case parting line at the bell housing. If the engine does not have this RAT serial number- we DID NOT create it.
Lots of people falsely advertise their cars, or they slightly misrepresent them by stating we built the engine. For a period of 10 years we owned The Type 4 Store, and one of the offerings that we had was a DIY engine kit that was loosely based from our engines. Often times these engines are referred to as “RAT Engines” or a “Raby Engine” when they are not. Understand this before you buy the car!
Over the years we’ve created over 1,200 engines. These have been delivered to owners all over the planet, and many of these vehicles have been sold at some point. The new owner will often look to us for documentation, specs, or support. These things are not offered free of charge.
This said, we only provide technical support for the engines that are still retained by our purchaser; the original owner of our engine.
Each of our engines is accompanied by a full set of documents, and specifications for tuning, and servicing. If you have purchased a vehicle with our engine, ensure that you have received these specifications, and documents. These are not possible to reproduce, and telephone/ support ticket information is not available.
Often times new owners will offer to pay us for copies of the records. Please understand that this is not possible, as the documents are protected by privacy agreements that we entered into with our original purchaser of the engine.
Has your RAT Engine been stored for a long period of time?
Sometimes life gets in the way, or projects go unfinished. In these cases, some of our engines can be found still in their original crate, having never been fired after our dyno testing.
Please note that these engines also are not something we are able to support with technical advice, or specifications.
If you have purchased a RAT engine that has been stored for years, count on the engine needing work done to bring it back to the same level of perfection that it left our facility with. It is common for cylinders to rust (if the engine used our iron cylinders, and not Nickies), valve springs to lose tension, and fuel systems to need complete overhaul, just from the engine sitting for years. Don’t assume that the engine can be bolted in, fired up, and driven away like it could have been upon our completion of the engine.
I do offer this “refresh service” for our engines, but since the work is done between my scheduled jobs, it is not cheap, nor is it fast. Often we find that the engine needs to come apart before going into service after it has sat for several years. Time is not a friend to mechanical things, and sitting static is one of the worst ways that an engine can be neglected.
Put simply, if you find one of my engines still in the crate, and it is being sold for a cheap price, you need to understand that it likely really isn’t a good deal, and will need specialized work to provide the years of reliable performance that we intended.
Jake Raby