The 1947 - Present Chevrolet & GMC Truck Message Board Network - View Single Post

pumpkin · 06-27-2010, 01:18 PM

DON'T BUY A GM CRATE ENGINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am a mechanic and work on lots of hot rods of the $150,000 and up range. They come to the shop I work at when the problems need to be fixed. Of the 7 GM crate engines I have had experiance with in the past year 8 of them had very expensive problems. That alone isn't the biggest concern. When trying to get warranty is when you hit a brick wall. The quickest was 4 months to get resolved. the worst was almost 2 years and about $2000. in unpaid expenses. You can't buy quality anything these days, because the overall demand is for cheap. So far in my search for the least expensive engine, I have found Whiteperformance to be the best. They seem to hand pick and remachine the new parts the sell. I have a theory that the cheapest is not always the leats expensive. I bought a set of Patriot heads from White performance, a buddy of mine could not wait the delivery time, and bought the same thing localy for money. A side by side camparason, the ones my buddy bought where crapp. My son bought 535HP Crate eng. from WP. It is awsome. Borderline streetable for me, but it works for him. Any ways,,,, After a couple of months the head gasket went. Phoned them, and since they don't know who they are dealing with, and everyone is a mechanic, they led me step by step to determine that it was for sure the head gasket. Once determined they shipped out all the parts to repair the problem.

On a side note DON'T GET OR BUILD A NEW ENGINE WITHOUT A ROLLER CAM!!!!!! THE OIL NEEDED TO LUBE THE CAM IS NOT,,,,NOT READILY AVAILABLE. Chevs have always had a problem with eating camshafts, and pumping all that metal throughout the rest of the engine. For the last few years it has gotten a lot harder to find oil with the zinc and phosfates needed to lube a flat tappet cam.

06-27-2010, 01:18 PM	#25
pumpkin Registered User Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: East Sooke B.C. Canada Posts: 543	Re: Yes another 72 build thread DON'T BUY A GM CRATE ENGINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am a mechanic and work on lots of hot rods of the $150,000 and up range. They come to the shop I work at when the problems need to be fixed. Of the 7 GM crate engines I have had experiance with in the past year 8 of them had very expensive problems. That alone isn't the biggest concern. When trying to get warranty is when you hit a brick wall. The quickest was 4 months to get resolved. the worst was almost 2 years and about $2000. in unpaid expenses. You can't buy quality anything these days, because the overall demand is for cheap. So far in my search for the least expensive engine, I have found Whiteperformance to be the best. They seem to hand pick and remachine the new parts the sell. I have a theory that the cheapest is not always the leats expensive. I bought a set of Patriot heads from White performance, a buddy of mine could not wait the delivery time, and bought the same thing localy for money. A side by side camparason, the ones my buddy bought where crapp. My son bought 535HP Crate eng. from WP. It is awsome. Borderline streetable for me, but it works for him. Any ways,,,, After a couple of months the head gasket went. Phoned them, and since they don't know who they are dealing with, and everyone is a mechanic, they led me step by step to determine that it was for sure the head gasket. Once determined they shipped out all the parts to repair the problem. On a side note DON'T GET OR BUILD A NEW ENGINE WITHOUT A ROLLER CAM!!!!!! THE OIL NEEDED TO LUBE THE CAM IS NOT,,,,NOT READILY AVAILABLE. Chevs have always had a problem with eating camshafts, and pumping all that metal throughout the rest of the engine. For the last few years it has gotten a lot harder to find oil with the zinc and phosfates needed to lube a flat tappet cam.