Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2015 18:35:06 -0400
Reply-To: Marc Perdue <mcperdue@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Marc Perdue <mcperdue@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Weird engine noise update (LONG)
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Not much to say; apparently my Vanagon guys were waiting for me to
give the go-ahead before tearing into the engine. Communication is
important.
In any event, there is an unusual noise in cylinder 1 of unknown
origin. They talked about an engine rebuild. Not prepared to make that
kind of commitment without knowing the cause of the noise and what it
would take to fix it.
Being as the engine rebuild option was being put out there, I decided
to look into some engine replacement/rebuild options. Being as we
haven't had a good tire thread in at least a day, I thought I'd start
an engine options thread.
My Vanagon guy, Keith McDonald, says he can do a balanced and
blueprinted engine rebuild for me for something along the lines of
$4-5K. I assume he would keep my engine for a core, but don't know. I
assume this cost is installed, but don't know. What I do know is that
they did a video of one of his rebuilt engines running on a pallet,
unrestrained, and not moving around on the pallet. They said they sent
the video to Shaun (sp?) at Bus Depot and that he was impressed.
I personally have no solid idea of what "balanced and blueprinted"
means. I'd love to be enlightened on this. I do know that my engine
definitely would go running off of a pallet if unrestrained.
Bus Depot has a rebuilt engine for under $2K, plus a core charge, shipping, etc.
GoWesty has a number of different options, price not including core,
shipping, etc.:
1) 2.2L for about $4.3K
2) 2.3L for about $5K
3) 2.45L for about $5.7K
I could sign on to Bostig's RG6 build for Winter 2015 with a deposit
of about $1.7K, total non-installed price circa $6K, not including
engine.
Subaru conversion for who-knows-how-much.
So, I have no idea how much an install of any of these would cost if I
was having somebody else do it and I don't have the proper facilities
and/or time to do it myself. On the surface of it, the Bus Depot
rebuild looks good just looking at cost. But is it balanced and
blueprinted? Should I care about that?
I was hoping that the time to install a new engine was a long way off,
and it may still be. It is kind of frustrating that I'm having this
kind of issue at 170K miles on the 3rd engine. Now, the quality of the
2nd engine rebuild was definitely questionable, but this one is a
Boston Bob engine with maybe 50-65K miles on it, and I've tried to
baby it.
Sigh...
Marc Perdue