maya quickrig and bone length mismatch = exploded character

I used maya quickrig on this model

and once animation is playing (mecanim) I get earthworm jim like so:


why is this? getting errors on import
animation is toggled off in the animation import tab

 

the earthworm jim deformation is weird because mecanim only maps scalar for bones, zero translation, zero scaling

 

and the fix? redo the auto skeleton step by step, then switch to generic then back to humanoid, off course