Thread: Rebuild or crate?

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Well this is a tough call because if you want "lope" and economy that probably means a change to an OD trans or 4-speed manual with an OD 4th gear. As stated you are used to a mildly rodded engine and probably would want to change a crate engine so you need to realize the warranty of a crate engine will be void if you change the cam. So you could get a crate engine and forget the warranty when you change the cam but still know the internals are new. Maybe that is the easiest thing to do. One thing not mentioned above is that you may not know how deep the cylinder scratch is until you pull out the piston. I have an old flathead block which has a pin-score which may be 1/8" deep so you would need to take the engine apart and evaluate the damage. Then maybe you could SLEEVE that cylinder bore and reassemble the engine, maybe with just new rings and a cleanup of the valves. Depending on who does the labor on the engine this might be cheaper than a crate engine. Check around with some other machine shops for a quote on sleeving one cylinder; if the heads have been rebuilt recently maybe you could sleeve the block and reassemble the engine for less than a crate engine but this is a case where you have to really be shrewd with the machine shop. Of course it would be relatively easy to replace the rod and main bearings as well as the timing chain at the same time and maybe you can do all that under $1000 dpending on the shop. I was able to find a reasonable machinist at Joe's Machine in Ashland Va and Joe was one of the more reasonable people I have run into in the auto business, but I went for a low cost rebuild of a '76 Corvette 350 and it turned out about the same cost as a crate motor except that I was able to choose the cam I wanted.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder