I'm still waiting on my car to be shipped to me. While I'm waiting I'm trying to decided on the best option for my motor. I called Jim Burek at performance Automotive Engines. He give me a good price to rebuild it, but I have read some bad reviews on here plus he is a couple hours away. I'm thinking about trying to rebuild my engine myself. Do you guys think I should rebuild my current motor, pay someone to rebuild, buy a long block and work on it myself, or buy a long block and pay someone to work on it? I have no tools nor knowledge to do this. This would be my 1st time doing something like this. I have a 71 skylark. My motor is currently running. I will buy any tools that's needed. I originally wanted more HP, but I have been talked out of it. I don't plan on racing so I don't need all that power( yeah my wife talked me out of it). Well maybe a little shhhh don't tell my wife. I have about 3k. I have 6k, but I want to replace the brakes, suspension, headlights, and alarm.
Buying an engine to rebuild while yours is still running is a very good approach. A complete engine will give you all the parts, and spares are good to have. You can put it on a stand and take your time, ask for advice, and stretch out the cost. Learning what to do and not to do is a big part of the process and there's all the help you need right here on this board. Jim
If your engine runs good now then why spend thousands on it if you will end up at the same HP? If it runs well why not leave it alone and later on when you have the $ then built it up the way you really want it and enjoy.
The motor is almost 50 years old. This is going to be a daily driver back and forth to work. I need it to be dependable. It's only been driving a mile or two every now and then.
If your looking for a stock rebuild at about 140-150 hp then buy a rebuilt engine. I'm surprised Jim is working again, could not find him on the web. But a mild buildup from him is pretty good. But at minimum having him do head porting isn't a bad idea. Real world hp is about 150-180 on your engine more than likely with about 8.2 compression. Have the heads ported and/or big valves, and shaved .030 for for about 8.7 or .060 for about 9.45 compression. (Estimated)Replace the front cam bearing with a TA backgrooved front cam bearing and put in the crower level 3 cam like Matt did, degreed 4 advanced would be good with a lower compression.2200 -2500 converter and a 3 series rear gear. Then fine tune. With a x pipe dual exhaust you can easily be up over 250 with plenty of torque. It will look stock. That's if your engine has a solid bottom end. I'm sure you could do most of that your self. I would get carb rebuild by Quadrajet Power thou. I would look at a disc brake upgrade in front for better stopping. Getting a second engine and having that rebuilt is a great idea as mentioned also. Since your not looking for a lots of hp increase a little more compression, decent cam and tuning will leave your options available later for headers, intake , big carb for more power later
He said he could give me a little bit more HP by changing the pistons. He quoted me $1600 for the rebuild plus $400 for the pull and reinstall. His website is http://www.autopaintinginelpasotx.com/
Ta performance suggested I replace the pistons, intake, cam, headers, and lifters. That would give me 350HP.
That's a pretty fair price to swap and to rebuild. Get alittle more compression and the crower cam. If it's already a 4 barrel you can use big valves and good tuning you may get close to 350 without the headers and intake. Steve has dynoed 340 hp with 9.8 I think compression with nice forged Pistons, crower cam retarded 4 degrees with big big valves no porting. Lots of tuning. Spend the header and intake money on something else.
Yes but you may have read why also. I would believe he is past those issues and if fixing his reputation. He has built the over 1000 hp 350 that Sean talks about. And has been in magazines. I would not worry too much just get in writing how long he will take.
He did not build the 1000 hp engine that was Bill Mah and Shaffirov racing engines... Jim B had a good reputation way back when and in his later years there were for sure some major issues. I never personally had any work done by him other than some dyno testing...
That's unfortunate that he was involved in that build because of the supposed sbb 550 N/A build that he was involved in with the correction factors set up as if he was dynoing that engine in the eye of a typhoon to exaggerate the numbers until he got them where he wanted them! Seeing how he "fudged" those numbers it is VERY hard to believe that he in fact did make "over 1,000 HP" on that other build with the proven fake number build was so close in time to the other one. Not sure of the quality of work he does because those 2 builds kind of disappeared off of the face of the planet. But he is probably capable of decent work, just make sure you check the correction factors if you have the engine dynoed. You should just find a machine shop to do the machine work for you and do the assembly work yourself if you have the place to do that? Basic hand tools, a torque wrench, a degree wheel & accesories and some Plasti-gauge should be enough tools to get you through a basic rebuild even if you want to do a stroker. If you want to be more meticulous you can get a set of micrometers up to 5", a set of bore gauges and a stretch gauge for rod bolts for an extreme build. And a few other things I'm not thinking of at this moment. If you want to do a stroker build you will need to at least use the customizable AutoTec pistons with a set of nascar take out rods like these; http://www.ebay.com/itm/181969787105?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT The above rods will need to be narrowed at your machine shop(or send them to me, I'll do that for $50 plus the ride if you can't get that kind of work done locally) to fit the Buick crank, good news is that all of the material(the extra .055") can be taken off of the non-chamfered side. Have the crank offset ground, if its a virgin crank you can get an extra .140" of stroke from 3.850" to 3.990" of stroke so it will fit the 1.850" rods with bearings installed. With the mentioned stroke and a .040" overbore you can get to 370 cubes! That extra 20 cubes WILL make a difference down low in the RPM range by increasing your max torque. The more cubes you have the more you will move the power range lower in the RPM band to make peak power. So that means you can use a larger cam and be able to be more streetable than only having 350 cubes. Back to the pistons, being that the mentioned pistons are customizable means that you can order them with the bore size you want, the wristpin size you need for the rods, the compression distance you need for your block and the dish volume you need for the compression you want to have, among other things. I would be happy to help you figure that out after you have the block measured. Block machining; You can save some $$ using the mentioned pistons on machining costs like skipping having the deck milled would save you around $150, just have them measure it. Leaving the deck alone will allow you to re-use your pushrods and you can use the good but thicker and lessor expensive Fel-pro blue perma-torque head gaskets. Can get away with not milling heads if that isn't needed(not warped) as well using the Fel-pro blue head gaskets. Avoiding milling the deck and heads means your intake should fit without any misalignment issues as well. If you don't mind not having as many cubes you can get away with not boring the block that should save around $100, just have it honed to the next ring size so you get good rings for your AutoTecs. With the lighter than stock rods and the lighter than stock pistons with a few extra cubes a build like this will naturally make more power because of less friction and drag. If you have any questions by all means feel free to ask, no matter how basic they are. Derek
I called a machine shop and the quoted me roughly $1800 to rebuild my engine. I just have to pull it myself or pay someone to pull it.
Be careful because most of the time you get what you pay for. For that price I would say that would be with the cheapest jobber pistons available for the sbb 350 which are rated @ 8:1 compression. If the block has extra deck height and they don't machine that down the engine will be under 8:1 with those pistons! And for that price they'll probably use the Fel-pro blue head gaskets, which are good gaskets BUT, they are thicker than what the factory installed way back when lowering compression even further. Odds are if you go this route your engine will probably run weaker than it does now! At that price is probably with a "stock" replacement cam which is a fairly small cam but with less than 8:1 compression an even smaller cam would do better. I'm sure with a quote like that the parts going into that build only cost that shop at the most $500 for everything, leaving them with $1,300 for machining and their labor, and that's why they can do a build that cheap. Machining would probably only be clean block, magnaflux, new cam bearings and freeze plugs and bore and hone, done.(around $300 of work) If they can they will just polish the crank but if it needs to be re-ground that's a $200 price tag for retail and maybe a bit less for the shop even less if they do that in house. So that leaves around $800 for the assembly work, you can buy a lot of tools for $800 if you assemble the engine yourself with the cheap parts. IIRC I think Northern Auto or some place like that was selling cheap master engine rebuild kits for $350 that is if I recall correctly? It wouldn't be that hard to do an internet search for the cheap parts even if you buy from Summit I think you can get the cheap parts individually there as well if that's what you want. For a couple hundred more you could do the stroker build if you do the work yourself, around $2,500 plus or minus a couple hundred for the short block. I think you would be WAY more happy doing this than wasting your money to make your engine run weaker than it does now. GL Derek
You would have to talk to your builder. The Buick 350 should have the oil passage updated and use a later 5/8 pickup. I'm sure Jim knows this but your other builder may just use the long gear oil pump (hi volume) which just wears cam bearings. If you don't enlarge supply the how can the longer gear push more oil then it receives. Or you can Get the long air craft drill bits and do yourself. A rebuild kit that a lot of shop get will have the cheap v6/350 Pistons with about 7.7 compression of your lucky. Down from the 8.2 that your engine should have. So read up on the needed areas to address on rebuilding your engine and talk to both shops on what you need/want done. Jim already knows about using the 3.0 v6 flattop Pistons in these engines. Apparently he was the first one to use them. . But ask what parts are the putting in your engine. Before ordering anything make your choices to try to get the outcome you want. . Or haul it up to Michigan and Derek can do it. Go an extra block up there he could prep. Lol
Andy even has an extra stroker crank here if he wants to sell that? Andy's other block needs to be line honed as well. When he brought the 2 blocks to Dave's shop, they came with 2 sets of caps and both sets were for different blocks! So there is a bit of work to correct that but doable. My time is very limited right now for the next year so I can't do the work(unless its a small quick job like narrowing a set of nascar take out rods to fit a sbb crank or maybe do the oil mods on the block) but Dave Harmon of Enginecraft might be able to fit that job in?(would need to ask him) Dave is the guy that I work with that does my block machine work and is VERY capable engine builder as well.(that reminds me that I need to call him) He's a Pontiac guy but I'm trying to make him see the light. LOL He certainly knows how to work on Buick engines though. Anyway, you should be able to find a machine shop closer to where you live that you can trust. If you want to play with these old cars its a good idea to learn how to work on them yourself, that's one of the best parts about the hobby IMO. It can get very expensive farming out all the work with these cars, and really its not all that hard to do yourself. Gives you an excuse to spend some guy time in the garage playing with your car all the while the wife thinks you're hard at work. LOL Most wives don't want their husbands to have fun without them and they can't understand that working on a car is fun for some guys so some will leave their guy alone to "work" on their car. Derek
I just got my 1967 400 BB back from the re-builder on Thursday and bottom line on the invoice is $4400. Labor $3250 and parts $1150 not counting the cam,lifters, springs, keepers which was about $250 as I recall. I took it to them and picked it up. I talked with several of the good guys on this site who rebuild engines as part of their businesses and was quoted a range of $5000-6000 to do it right and no doubt they would. On top of those numbers I would have spent $500+ shipping on a pallet each way for another $1000. My fellow is 100 miles from me and uses a major Dallas machine shop for the boring and other shop work. My rebuilder took it apart, checked everything, sent it to the machine shop, went and got it, and put it back together. We have new .30 over quality pistons, all new bearings, crank was good, put in a new cam, lifters, springs and keepers, ground existing valves etc.etc. All in when I get it in the car and running I will probably be at $5000-5500. I have had buick long blocks built here in Fort worth and except for new pistons and bearings, gaskets the rebuild uses original cam, rods, valves etc. and runs $1700-1800 but it is a 50+ year old shop with old equipment and I wanted someone that really knew Buick engines this time. I still have to have the T-400 rebuilt and that will be $650 - 700. Its only money and remember you are bringing a 50 year old Buick back to life.
I'm sitting here thinking. I have had several mechanically incline people look at my engine. That all said I had a good motor. The 1st guy looked at and said all he would recommend is a tune up. I'm thinking maybe I don't have to do a complete rebuild. I can carry it to a shop and let them run a diagnostic test on my motor and go from there.
I just moved to San Antonio less than a year ago. I don't know any place around here I can honestly say I trust. Derek I'm about to ship you my motor right now. Too late to back out it's already in the mail. Lol Where is Dave located?
