Real Mechanic Needed

Finding a real mechanic amongst the crowd of parts changers can be hard.

My 80 year old dad has a 1998 Ford V6 p/u with about 60k original miles. Called and said he thinks the motor spun a rod bearing. Since I do not have time to work on it I told him to get a quote and I would pay to have it repaired.

Has called 6 places. 3 said they do not do major jobs and the other 3 will only replace the entire motor but will not fix our motor. In fact they will not even replace the short block; has to be entire motor. I guess their parts changers do not know how to rebuild motors.
Quoted 2k to put a junk yard motor in with a 1 year warranty and 3k to put a rebuilt motor in with a 3 year warranty.

So am I wrong for looking for a place that will rebuild our motor. It only has 60k miles; does not use oil; and ran well up until the spun bearing.
I am figuring; grind or replace my crank depending on condition; put in a complete set of rod and main bearings; and maybe replace 1 rod if needed. Leave the heads; pistons; rings; alone.

A rebuilt motor just does not set well with me. It will most likely have shaved heads; oversized pistons; and who knows what else done to it so it will run. Now if our motor had 100k plus miles on it I could see replacing the entire motor but it does not.

Your thoughts...............

My question would be is why at that low a mileage did it spin a rod bear unless something is bad wrong with it in the first place or it was run real low on oil. If it was an oil problem then the engine is junk any how. So I would be looking at what caused the problem and if a defect I would not want to keep that engine

I agree with you on your reasoning, depending on how long your dad ran it, after it started knocking. As long as he didn't shake the rod loose from the crank. I do all of my own engines, and have also bought low miles junkyard engines, which due to an abundance of caution, after a leak down test, I will pull the pan, and change the oil pump, main bearings, and rod bearings. I have trash canned quite a few good bearings, and oil pumps, but have had 0 failed engines.

Find out the build date on the truck / engine. The 1997 and early 98s (prior to 1-??-98) had issues with hydro lock due to a failure in the intake gasket. Would bend a rod and knock just like a bad bearing as the piston slaps the counter weight on the crank. (least amount of damage) Some blow holes in the heads, some trash pistons, some actually twist the crank. 60,000 miles is about the average milage to failure.

Not that everthing you said is not correct, But in the case of the Ford 97/98 4.2 V6 I wouldn't blame any shop rufusing to do a partial rebuild.

If you want to hear the horrior stories on that engine just google ford 4.2 hydro lock.

4.0 SOHC?

Greg

Not many shops mess with rebuilding anymore. Has nothing to do with "Real mechanics " or not . More to do with "smart business " . I"d much rather install a reman engine from a company that specializes in rebuilding them every day, installs the latest updates and has access to updated parts and bulletins about problems to watch out for . I used to do all my engine rebuilding. Now ,it takes too much time , ties up room . It makes more sense to install a quality reman ,faster and cheaper,better value for the customer.

I been a mechanic for 50 years. I have rebuilt any part of any car. But you are asking for a half-job, and nobody wants that liability. ps My 99 ford 4.2 is perfect at 260,000.

Find a salvage yard that has a motor and have them put it in, that way if it goes bad they are on the hook for the labor too. I have had good luck doing this.

Changing the whole engine will go much faster for the shop than having the truck sit around for a month waiting for the machine shop to get to your stuff unless you are a preferred customer or they are not busy. You also have the prospect of too many folks involved pointing fingers if your quicky rebuild goes badly in a few miles. Some folks get lucky without tearing the engine all the way down to clean out the metal from the bearing, but who is going to warranty that??? Labor costs of teardown and rebuild are going to be huge at shop rates.

Is it possible to put the straight 6 in there without a lot of changing? Seems like you could get a lot better motor in the deal.

I agree that a rebuild at shop rates would eat you up and can't blame a shop for doing less than 100% when they have to stand 100% behind it.

Dave

try a high school or tech school shop. Usually the instructor is very good & makes sure his students do a good job at minimal prices. This has worked for me several times.

I'm with OLD--Why did it spin a bearing? If that's the problem. Next question--Does your Dad have anything else to drive?
Do you have a place to do this?
If the answer to these 2 questions is YES. Then do it your self cause you can take the time to do it.
You just may have to do more then you think.

Its more a matte of a liability issue plus warranty issues.. I would quote a ford are jasper reman and move on... #1 I can not match the warranty #2 if I had a warranty issue its not totally mine.

Its going to B expensive, I would want the best warranty from someone who will back it up. First the problem needs to be confirmed. Don't forget mother nature never sleeps so the mileage really does not play into the condition of the engine are its support parts.

Loose/broken harmonic balances hubs come to mind,,, mite check that out.

Not only that,but at todays labor rates, it seems that it is much more cost effective to replace with reman and have a better warranty to boot.

I know the earlier 4.2s also had a huge problem with blown head gaskets. Same engine as the 3.8 that went in the Taurus and the Thunderbird - it had lots of head gasket problems too.

Thanks Errin;
Called my dad this morning to find out a little more about the problem.
He still says he did not loose any coolant; but getting a more detailed time line of the problem now makes me think the motor hydro locked on him and most likely has a bent rod.

I still have problems turning this block and heads in for a core but I can understand the mechanic shop wants to pass the warrenty issue over to a rebuild shop.

(quoted from post at 15:29:13 01/12/11) Thanks Errin;
Called my dad this morning to find out a little more about the problem.
He still says he did not loose any coolant; but getting a more detailed time line of the problem now makes me think the motor hydro locked on him and most likely has a bent rod.

I still have problems turning this block and heads in for a core but I can understand the mechanic shop wants to pass the warrenty issue over to a rebuild shop.

Click to expand...

Jasper will pick up your engine rebuild it and return it...

I agree that 4.2 had intake leak issues, but if the motor has hydro locked on you you would have to pull the plugs and spin it over to get it freed up. if the truck still runs and has a knocking issue then it may be possible the bearings just went out. reman engine are not all there cracked up to be, I understand that for a consumer that the warranty is good. as for beeing a tech, working on them under warranty pay is not that great. I have had reman engines with broken tap, oil leaks, and evenwrong pistons intalled in them. Some times I think working with what you got is better.