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Anyone ever buy a rebuilt motor from Autozone or O'Reilys, or any other parts store? Just wondering, because I'm looking for something different, plus I could have it in about 3 days. Let me know your opinions.
O'Reilly's, Autozone, Checker and Napa all use 3rd party vendors to do their rebuilds. You need to know who that vendor is, to determine whether or not to use them.
You don't want to go with the absolute cheapest rebuild possible - the lowest price ones are barely good enough to run 20-30,000 miles (if they run at all). For only a hundred or two more, you get a dramatic increase in quality. I've know a couple of guys that got bit when using the absolute cheapest rebuilds - low oil pressure, leaking seals, low power, etc - and of course, when they contacted the warrantee department, they got nowhere (It runs, doesn't it?).
I have a couple buddies that run their own shops and they don't really have a preference to which store the long blocks come from, they say there's nothing that would put one ahead of the other, just ease of dealing with the store. They all should come with a 3 year/36,000 mile warranty...and I haven't heard of any of theirs needing to capitalize on that warranty, but I dunno if that means the motor blows up at 36,001 miles or what.
Auto zone uses a company named Surefire. They offer a 3 year unlimited mileage warranty. They also hot run each engine for "up to thirty minutes". Oreilys uses an engine rebuilt by a company by the name Power Torque. Can't find too much info on them. Power Torque has a 2 year unlimited mileage warrenty.