Don't worry, not that kind of happy ending.

Octoberish last year I decided to finally put the 71 up as the 302 was showing it's wear. It had little oil pressure, tons of valvetrain noise, and was burning coolant. I decided on rebuilding the engine in the spring. Well, I weighed my options for rebuilders in my area, and settled on a friend who was starting a speed shop as he estimated about the same time that all the other shops did, and I wanted to help out his growing business. I knew he was plenty skilled to rebuild a stock 302. My chief complaints were a noisy rod, low oil pressure, and blown headgaskset.

Anyways, after countless delays, ignored phone calls, voicemails, and texts, he finally gets the engine finished after 20 weeks. This is what I got back:




He claimed this engine was hot tanked, but all this dirt on the back seems to say otherwise. We noticed the old, rusty flexplate bolts didn't have any tool marks on them, so I don't believe he even touched the rotating assembly.



My main complaint was low oil pressure. He told me he removed all the bearings and they looked perfect. #4 and #8 rods had a lot of side to side play. This was the journal after removing one of the caps. He had told me the crank was polished.



This is the bearing from that same rod.



I know for a fact he replaced the oil pump and pan gaskets, so he had to have seen this.



Again, he had the pan off but chose to leave all this junk in there.



He also told me the bores looked perfect, but when breaking in we had huge amounts of blow by. The bores were all completely wiped out.

For the record, he didn't charge me anything as a favor for it taking so long. I realize now it was actually because he didn't actually do anything really.

So where's the happy ending? Well, time was against me now, so I decided to just buy a crate engine. I found a rebuilt long block on, of all places, Amazon with Prime shipping. $1500 of my dollars and 6 days later, it was on my doorstop.



Here is the engine as it came from Amazon. It came by scheduled freight service. It also came with some basic instructions, a Melling oil pump, and Victor Reinz gasket set. The engine looked very professionally rebuilt by my calibrated eyeball.



Here is the engine all dressed up and cam broken in. I swapped everything over from the old engine that was painted blue. Didn't really have time to paint them again. I don't mind it, means I can drive it before winter.

So far, I have been very impressed by the crate engine. It fired up on the first try. It doesn't leak a drop and runs very good. It pulls 20" of vacuum and has 40 psi of oil pressure at idle.

 

I don't believe your friend is actually a friend. Good to hear the crate engine is doing well.

 

So who remanned the engine?

 

The crate engine came from Proformance (LKQ).

 

I'm happy to hear you like to promote small business' as I do. But it looks like your "acquaintance" gave you back a different JY engine. Either there was something special about your old engine that he wanted or he screwed something up rebuilding it. And didn't have the funds to recover. Glad to hear the crate engine worked out.