Q: What Advantages Are There of Rebuilding an Engine Rather Than Replacing It?

When you are looking at the question of whether you should rebuild or replace a motor, you will first have to assume the original motor is rebuildable. If you do not know if your engine is rebuildable then the engine would need to be taken apart and inspected piece-by-piece to determine the parts that can be reused and parts that have to be replaced. To determine what advantages you will have by rebuilding your own motor or replacing your motor, you need to make a list of what you want to do. For instance, you can have your engine block cylinders enlarged and larger pistons put in so you can increase the engine’s cubic inches size. This will increase the horsepower. You can also replace the camshafts, cylinder heads, and intake manifold with high performance parts. This can have a drastic change to your engine power output. When you decide to increase the engine performance by using performance parts in the engine you will need to keep in mind that the fuel injectors, fuel system, cooling system, or other systems may need modifications to work with the performance improvements of the engine. Before you decide to rebuild your engine, you need to look at total cost versus benefit of the rebuild. You should know what you are putting in the engine and control every part and process to rebuild it.

A replacement engine you get will be most likely a remanufactured engine. Different rebuilders do different rebuilds and you only have control over who you purchase the engine from and not how they rebuild it or what parts are used. Some rebuilders may offer performance packages of different ranges. You may have some rebuilders that offer custom rebuilds that you can purchase or they may need your motor to do a rebuild for you if there are no engines in stock.

The bottom line is you can buy a crate motor with no control of what went into the rebuild, or rebuild your motor and control what goes into the motor. The quality of the parts and performance improvement parts can be controlled in your own rebuild.