Economy rebuilds...the story behind the idea.

I am here to serve the segment of the engine market between the $500 used junkyard/jspec engine that may last a few weeks or months and the $2000+ stock/race rebuilt engine sold by most higher end shops.

Back several years ago when I first got into owning and modifying 7's, as a part of club meetings and online forums and lists, it became apparent to me that there was a large following for these cars by enthusiasts. I started buying junk and abandoned 7's locally and repairing them, then reselling them locally or on the internet. The only real problem was finding useable engines, since most of the time you either had one blow up or you bought the car already blown and wanted to fix it. I had plenty of experience with used engines, and they could last anywhere from 1 week to 1 month to a year or so. I even had some that were bad before they went in. Not only that, but they were sometimes hard to find, and you had to pay real money for them since the redneck at the junkyard thought it was a rocketship motor or something. I got real tired of doing engine swaps with junk engines.

After checking and asking around, the cheapest rebuilt 13B engines were going for just under $2k. I had a real problem with this. It didn’t make sense to me that you had to spend that much money for a simple small rebuilt block. In fact, the cost of the engine block itself, excluding labor and necessary accessories for the swap (belts, hoses, fluids, etc.) usually outweighed the book/market value of the whole car! I decided to find out what went wrong when an engine blows up, what wears out most of the time, and why they were so expensive to repair.

After taking apart a lot of my cores, it became evident what were the main wear parts of the engine. Apex seals. Sometimes they were worn down to half their original height. It also became evident why they blow all at once...the seal gets thin, shatters, and takes out the other seals, the rotor, and rotor housing with it. I also noted that oil o-rings were usually worn flat, and coolant seals were obviously toast after having disassembled the engine. Meanwhile, the rest of the seals and springs appeared to have little or no wear on them. Later I ordered all new seals and springs and compared many of the used parts I had removed with these new ones.

Measurements of corner seals, side seals, and oil oring carriers showed less than 5% wear in many cases. 95% of the time, these parts were well within spec for reuse unless they were damaged during removal. I began to wonder, why a person MUST replace these parts that are usually perfectly reusable and are under little stress in a well-maintained street engine. A quick check of parts cost revealed that about 40% of the cost of seals and springs could be saved by reusing these in-spec parts.

After a few cores were disassembled, it was easy to spot the wear on rotor housings and irons present from high mileage. Given the high cost of replacement hard parts, I began to wonder why a person HAD to replace or resurface these parts. Sure, it's good to completely rework an engine during rebuild. But, look at the other side...that engine ran great until it blew seals. So what if you only replaced the wear points in that engine, cleaned and inspected everything for major flaws, and reassembled it to spec? Well, that's just what I started doing.

After a couple of engines for myself turned out pretty well, I started offering them to the public. Other than a longer break-in, harder initial startup, and somewhat less smooth running during break-in, these economy rebuilds performed very well at half the cost of the closest competition. During the time I have been selling engines I have continued to improve my process and do more research into making a better engine for the money.