engine repair costs

[branhamautomotive]

Mass produced reman engines with a few year warranty are always attractive. I though prefer to have a good reputation machine shop build. It's nice to know and actually talk to the ppl doing the work. Plus they are again not u singing the lowest cost parts they can get ahold of. Not saying all are that way but to many a penny saved us a penny earned. But that being said spending a few extra bucks on good bolts and better pistons goes a long way in the way a motor last too. You can run the correct way, do all the proper maintenence but if built with substandard cheap parts from over seas benders problem will most likely be close behind.

If rebuilding, good arp bolts, not bottom dollar piston, quality oil pumps and bearingand rings and even switching to roller cam lifters adds some money to build, but if only doing once as compared to twice starta to figure in the extra 750 or so bucks is alot cheaper than another build a few years later.

Good quality machine work is just as important too. There is a big differance in a motor balanced to 2 to 3 grams as compared to 20 to 25 like some of these mass producers do

[wakina]

All very good points!

Had one rebuilt several years ago and after tearing down and the baking(cleaning) the shop found a crack in the block in a bad area, I ended up with the cost of the original tear down and the cleaning and still had the cost of another block on top of that plus magnifluxing the second block and the actual cost of parts and labor to assemble.

On the last engine I replaced it was hard to not to look at the cost of a brand new GM engine(long block) with roller cam and lifters manufactured by the GM Marine engine division which cost $2699.00 3 years ago, I also drove to the business and picked up myself so no shipping costs were incurred! I did the switching of the parts from my old engine to the new engine myself so there were no costs involved there except for new bolts for intake and flywheel.

That engine is still running strong! Then again I did not have the option to rebuild as a head and the block were both destroyed between the #3 and #5 cylinders. It had burnt (melted) a channel in both the head and the block.

[ebijack]

Some charter boats would have their eng's rebuild/gone thru around the 2500hr mark. Having multi charter boats, this helps spread out maintance/replacement instead of having more than one boat/yr down and costs involved. This also helped reduce chances of an engine failure while on a charter and having pissed off customers and having to be towed in. Just as insurance so to speak. Also this was on carburetor engines. Carb engines run ALOT richer than injected ( at some load points more than triple of an injected engine), the excess fuel gets past the rings, washing down the cyl block walls, dilutes the oil, which increases internal bearing, cam wear dramatically. Just compare average engine life on older carbureted engines vs todays tightly fuel controlled injected engines. Your spark plugs, dist. cap/rotor, appearance of the oil on your dipstick can tell quite a story. Along with oil pressure readings, vacuum gauge, engine performance etc.

[pimplepounder]

Ditto's on everything ebijack said. When sequential fuel injection came about, the efficiency on engines went way up as did wera and tear. We have to reply a lot more on software and electronics, but this is how just about everything works today. I never thought about having more than one boat. That would be a problem for business if you had down time and had a lot of clients booked.