andrewmp6

any engine can break it just depends on alot of things im cheap i rather buy a machine shop to do all the milling and ill put it together

Soaring

Let me get this straight. You guys are saying that an engine that has been overhauled using the same pistons, rods and crank is not an engine you would run in your car. That the only part of the engine you would keep would be the bare block. Is that what I am reading? I guess maybe if you are building a racing engine, I could understand that, but if you are rebuilding a stock engine, there is absolutely nothing, Nada, wrong with using the same pistons, crank and rods. It's a total waste of money to replace those parts, and you are fooling yourself if you do otherwise.

gothand

^^^ I think they are going one step further in saying that they don't trust professionals who build engines for a living unless it is from a big name shop.

my77stang

only thing i saw with the first motor i didnt like was king bearings. nothing wrong with speedpro / sealed power stuff at all. i would think if asked they would provide cam specs and compression ratio. also, nothing wrong with using seasoned cores - most of us have reconditioned parts in our motors.

stuff doesnt have to come from summit or be made by crane or comp cams to be good parts.

just my .02

THUMPIN455

I have bought one crate engine in the 20+ years workin on cars. The rest of them were rebuilt, two werent bored but the rest of them were. So two used the same pistons, all others have been forged except the 455 in the GTO, it has cast slugs I got from working at Dana Corp they were $80 and they have been great. You cant get them for that unless you work there. The two Clevelands in the shop right now have stock rods, forged slugs, stock cranks, stock bored blocks, everything balanced, and stock rebuilt heads with new guides and valves. I am not about to spend money on a new crank when I have so many cores that I can use just layin around. BTW I only got a crate engine because I was in Kuwait when I ordered it and I wanted it to be there when I got home, otherwise I would have had one of my blocks machined and built that instead.

if you are on a budget, you dont mind waiting a month or two for the machine work to be done, and you can assemble an engine yourself, then you can pick the parts you want in it, and you know everything about your engine from cam specs to knowing that all the rods and mains have been torqued correctly. If any of those three arent you, then a crate is the way to go. For $3000 I can build a hell of a powerful engine. For $2700 including porting on a stock set of heads, one of the 455s made 540hp@5800 and 580ftlbs@4000 and it lasted for 6 years of bracket racing on the weekends and street racing when I wasnt at the track. it also was cruised often and driven on relatively long road trips and they were expensive on the race gas I was using.. I wont get the Clevelands dynoed unless its a chassis dyno sometime in the future, but rest assured, they will make some power.

its all about picking the right parts and getting a good machinist, because not all of us can do the machine work, and those of us who can cant always afford the machines to do it if we arent working at a shop that has them.

mustanglover66

Just a little story about King bearing
About 6 months ago we had an engine come back with a bearing problem I pulled it apart for some reason or another it had clevite bearing on 2 of the rod and all the rest were kings. both of the clevite spon and all of the kings looked new. The motor was rebuilt again with all king bearing and returned to the customer I haven't heard or seen anything else about it.

my77stang

i could be standing corrected then. i know we never used them though. we did use ACL bearings once in a while and they worked fine. i used the fed mog hi-po bearings in my302 - the ones that look burnt right outta the box.