My Corvette is Teh Broken

Oh, no, I am absolutely farming this out. I consider this money well spent because at the end I'll have a nice, fun, fast(ish) and RUNNING Corvette, rather than a rolling chassis and a bucket full of engine parts. :)

Wow. Does it really cost over $3,500 to have a Chevy 5.7 rebuilt? The guy at the shop was telling me it's AT LEAST $3,500 to have my motor machined/rebuilt, and said I am looking at over eight grand to just have another old-style motor put under my Crossfire intake with no computer work.

So, without having the tools and skillset to do an engine swap or an LS transplant, I think my husk of a Corvette is kind of worthless.

What can I do?

I'd shop CL for running 350 with a carb. Getting the crossfire to play nice lacks the cost/reward for me. You could by a hell of a motor for $3,500 for someone who's hurting for money.

Could be. I'd have no way of transporting a motor or getting it put into my car, though.

Local Vo Tech shop want a project?

Lugnut wrote: What can I do?

Hmm... join the local Corvette club? Beg/plead for help?

There's a lot of labor in R&R'ing an engine, so the price quote doesn't surprise me.

What are your limitations? Do you have a garage? When playing with a SBC, the tool requirements aren't much. Engine hoists can be borrowed or rented. Engine stands are pretty cheap too. A truck can be rented when you need to move the engine to/from the machine shop.

I have a garage. I don't have patience or helpers. In fact, I don't even know how to actually diagnose the awful noises that the engine is currently making. I don't have a hoist or a lift or anything more complicated than a big Craftsman mechanics toolset and a torque wrench and a floor jack.

And right now, I am beating myself up and I am upset and frustrated. I'm not trying to rain on anyone's suggestions, I just don't feel like I am capable of doing this on my own.

Lugnut wrote: It's making some unhealthy noises and was noticeably down on power. I'm still not sure what's wrong. Didn't really have time to go over it this weekend. I may have to have it brought somewhere for diagnosis and/or rebuild. My experience is all stuff on the outside of the motor. I'm like level 2 support :) I have a deeper skillset than the, "I know how to change a flat tire and check my oil," but less than, "Just pull the engine and tear it down, no sweat." Thanks for the suggestions. I'll let you know what I come up with, but so far I am leaning toward rebuilding the motor with an eye toward performance, see how to get 300-350hp out of it. That should get me roughly where I want to be, performance-wise.

How the berkeley do you think many of us learned? We rolled up out sleeves and dove in and either we learned to swim or we drowned and dumped the anchor and went back to the boat.

Either way, we've got your back. Build thread the bitch, take pictures and let us all teach you in the ways of getting in over your head, young grasshopper.

Its a Chevy 350, there's entire books and magazines available on how to rebuild them. You likely have a pushrod or a rocker arm or two that aren't happy with life. Start with a compression check and then pull the valve covers before you decide on rebuilding the entire motor.

If you have rebuild, find a good core block to work from and do your research on what will work with your car, select and order the parts and then get to it. HF engine stands work fine as do engine cranes, you can sometimes borrow them as well.

I have a 4runner and access to a cherry picker. PM me when you feel up to it and we'll set something up.

If you sign up for night classes at a vo tech you can sometimes bring projects in, the instructor helps with the project, you pay for parts.

tuna55 wrote: C4 available engine options - 350 only, http://www.vettehistory.com/c4/ Just to summarize, the big block was not designed to go there and weighs well over 100 lb more.

I'm assuming aluminum heads. Who'd use iron heads on anything in 2013?

And I was also assuming a C3. I forgot that they put Cross-Fire on the C4s.

There's a ton of free info floating around on the internet. Think of it this way: a lot of us here cut our teeth back in the old pre-internet days. We figured it out with the help of relatives or friends who may or may not have known what they were doing. Sometimes it was just ourselves and a crappy Chilton's manual. Nowadays you have the entirety of the online world to help you. Plenty of folks here are happy to give you advice and help.

You say you don't have patience. Would you rather shell out 8 grand than try to develop a little?

Engine hoists can be borrowed or rented. I always just buy the tools for big jobs because it costs a lot less to do so than to pay somebody else to do it and then I have the tool for future use. A $169 Harbor freight engine hoist is way less than $3500 in labor.

I think you can do this. You have a garage. You have tools. Those are two things a lot of folks don't have and they amaze us with what they can do. I can understand your reluctance to start out by building an engine, but a decent 350 long block can be had for a lot less than $3000. Sure, you can spend that and much more on an engine, but do you HAVE to?

I would echo what other folks here have said, step 1 is diagnose what is going on with you current engine before deciding to yank it and rebuild.

Trust me man, if you can operate a torque wrench, read, and maintain a clean work environment, you can completely handle rebuilding an old American V8, probably under $1k in parts and machine work. Nothing daunting about it once you have it apart and layed out on a bench.

My friend has a running, iron vortec headed, completely forged 383 for sale, he would probably take $1500 and can deliver from Wisconsin. Made enough power to push an 81 Camaro into the 12s on street tires.

email me aacthree at gmail if interested.

Lugnut wrote: And right now, I am beating myself up and I am upset and frustrated. I'm not trying to rain on anyone's suggestions, I just don't feel like I am capable of doing this on my own.

Dude, I know how you feel. If you're willing to learn, there are people here who can help you. I'm no good with any of this stuff, but everybody has been helping me to learn how to do stuff.

None of us were born knowing how to build a motor. I didn't think I could do it. A friend of mine asked, "Do you think you're smarter than a mechanic?'

I said, "Smarter than some, I guess."

He said, "Don't you think the mechanics dumber than you are building good engines?"

I said, "Yeah, if they want to stay in business."

He said, "you can borrow my torque wrench as long as you give it back."

That was 17 engines ago. Redo your present engine, take your time, be careful, bag and tag everything, ask your machinist questions, and don't get nuts with the mega-horsepower. When you see the results, build the killer motor at your leisure. Do it.

SilverFleet wrote: I can't stand when people take fuel injected cars and toss a carb on them, even the Catch Fire Injection ones. I know it's easy, but it just seems backward. But then again, I hate carbs. I'd vote for either rebuilding the stock engine and doing an aftermarket MPFI conversion, getting a cheap LT1 )you can convert the Optispark to coil-on-plug if it scares you), or just plop an LS in there.

This guy spoke truth to power about carbs.

Jerry From LA wrote: None of us were born knowing how to build a motor. I didn't think I could do it. A friend of mine asked, "Do you think you're smarter than a mechanic?' I said, "Smarter than some, I guess." He said, "Don't you think the mechanics dumber than you are building good engines?" I said, "Yeah, if they want to stay in business." He said, "you can borrow my torque wrench as long as you give it back." That was 17 engines ago. Redo your present engine, take your time, be careful, bag and tag everything, ask your machinist questions, and don't get nuts with the mega-horsepower. When you see the results, build the killer motor at your leisure. Do it.

I feel the pain of the original poster. Sure, its possible to learn to do all of this but if you just want to get back on the road and you don't have much experience then I can understand where he is coming from. I have less experience then he does and I wouldn't know where to begin. Finding the right mechanic can be pain also, I once paid a guy to rebuild the engine in my suburban and he took forever and the truck ended up not feeling any more powerful than stock.

A stock or near stock rebuild of his present motor would be a great way to learn. According to Mr Nut, he's either balking at the price for a new motor or doesn't have the money for it right now. So the car isn't going anywhere for awhile regardless.

Rebuilding the present motor means he won't have to deal with adapting accessory drives or fabrication and can just concentrate on disassembly, clearances, and reassembly.

There are approximately 30,000,000 books on rebuilding small-block Chevys. The internet is still a place with much unvetted info unless it comes from an unimpeachable source so I'd recommend going the book route for the big picture.

I know Lugnut doesn't think he has the patience to rebuild his own engine. This might be the place to learn that kind of patience. Keeping the goals modest will help too.

My first motor was a FIAT twincam. I was scared E36 M3less I would screw it up so I measured everything about 300 times and asked my machinist (who was slightly older than Gandolf with grayer skin) so many questions, I thought he'd give me the boot. In the end, he showed me how to rebush my own rods and shared a lot of reassembly tips. It was scary, fun, exhilerating, and a complete pain in the ass. Then it barked into life the first time and I ran around screaming "IT'S ALIVE!!" like Boris berkeleying Karloff.

Sure, it could fail. It could also be great. Nothing good happens without taking a chance.

it cost me about $800 for machine work including bore/hone, resize rods, new rod bolts, turn crank, freeze plugs, and also included was new pistons, rings, and all new bearings. nothing to do with the heads, that was all shortblock. pretty standard rebuild, flat top cast pistons and whatnot. i assembled it myself. with vortec 350 heads and a gm performance parts very mild hydraulic roller cam(.431/.451). i tried to mimic the H.O. 330hp vortec crate motor. I have no idea what my 54 belair weighs but it moves nice enough to get into the 13's in the quarter mile on 17" low profile street tires and a 2.73 open rear axle.

I had decided to cut my losses and sell it as-is. I've seen a couple of motors for under a grand - a couple, anyway. So let's say an extra few hundred for incidentals and gaskets and whatever supplies one needs to install an engine. Or rebuilding it for $800 in machine work plus all of the extra parts. Putting in an extra thousand plus dollars means I'll be over $4,250 in this car.

An '84 Corvette automatic in silver with 100k on a non-original, non-numbers-matching engine, in driver kind of condition, is not going to get that kind of money when I sell it. And the truth is, I don't keep any car for long enough to justify putting that kind of money into it. I can take a smaller loss without all of the effort and frustration instead of a loss after a giant project.

The truth is, this is why I stay with three-figure cars - so the loss if something goes wrong is minimal. My three-wrenches-or-less mechanical skill really just serves to put me into more interesting cars, since interesting cars get to that price point because they need work. It isn't even that I LIKE mechanical work on them. I don't hate it. But driving is why I get them, not wrenching. For the MAYBE five months I might have this car, it is just not worth the frustration it's already caused me, much less that much effort to do a project like this.

So I am going to ditch it and go back to my sub-thousand dollar sports and luxury cars. I appreciate the encouragement, and it's already been a learning experience (although not a mechanical one).

moparman76_69 wrote: Pick up your phone, LS Juan and Manuel Transmission are calling.

Lol! Took me a sec...

Sounds like you're making the right choice. Some of us don't want or need a project. By cutting your losses, you're already ahead.

I am looking for a c4 vette where are you located?

Chicago.