Reply to "Engine change"

If it were my money (I'm pretty good at spending other people's money :-) ) I'd wait until I had a reason to rebuild the motor before rebuilding it.

Since you are questioning buying new vs. rebuilding, perhaps my case could be helpful. I broke a valve spring with only 35,000 miles on the engine, so I replaced the spring. I broke another one 6 months later so I replaced the heads, going with Aussie closed chamber heads. While I was at it, I rebuilt the upper end. The heads weren't assembled correctly, and I bent pushrods and destroyed roller rockers every 500 miles. As a result, I had to go through a COMPLETE rebuild again. I think I have my problems solved now, but I would have been big time $$$ ahead to have bought a brand new crate motor instead of piecemealing my engine.

If you replace or upgrade just one part, the rest of the engine still has wear and miles. Therefore if you are going to rebuild, spend the extra $$ to replace everything worn, do it once, and do it right.

------------------
Charlie McCall
1985 DeTomaso Pantera GT5-S #9375
"Raising Pantera Awareness across Europe"
http://briefcase.yahoo.com/gt5s_1985