"New" engine or rebuild

[nosferatudracon]

My engine and transmission have 190k. I bought lower mile head to replace my busted one...but I'm starting to think it's not worth having a short block and transmission with such high miles...given that I want to do a lot of restoration on the car. Ideally I'd like to pull the engine and repaint the interior and replace all the parts with the engine out of the car to make it a lot easier and cheaper labor wise. Do it once, and do it right kind of thought.

I hear so many bad things about JDM engines now a days it seems like they're not worth the trouble of buying for their "low miles" not to mention I'm having trouble finding one at what I think is a reasonable price.

Which comes to the second option doing a full rebuild, pull the motor strip it down and replace all the important parts with new parts. I think parts wise this will cost the same and I'll have a better idea of the quality of the labor and overall total condition of the motor.

I guess I'm either asking for a good place to buy a long block w/ 5spd with low miles (60k or less would be ideal) for a decent price OR what parts should I replace when doing the rebuild?

Thanks for the insight!

James

[Jeremy C]

Unless there is physical damage to the block, there's no real reason why you should go with a JDM engine over your current motor. To be honest I will always go the rebuild route until my cylinders are bored too far out to be safe anymore. I know what has been in my motor and what kind of life it has had. That makes it a bit safer of a bet compared to an engine that I have no idea of where it came from and how it was treated.

Besides - doing it yourself gives you a bit more pride in the motor. Also, one of the MI3Si guys has somewhere north of 230k on his stock motor with a rebuild he did himself around 200K IIRC. Still running fine today and pulling low 12's on the weekends.

[blindmist]

Well here are the things that you need to keep in mind. A set of forged pistons are fairly cheap. $700 from 3SX. You can also get forged custom rods for the same price, although, the stock rods are already forged. If you have a 2-bolt main block, 91-mid 93, you will have a cast crank, I would suggest spending the 250 on ebay for a used forged from a 4-bolt main. Mits actually made some pretty damn good heads for the TT's, so there is nothing you really need to change there except to go to the big bore lifters to get rid of the lifter tick. For under $2400, you have a short block that can handle up to about 700 AWHP, and you should never have to worry about it coming apart if it was machined and assembled correctly and run correctly. Just keep that in mind.