How much to recondition engine

[polhoff]

....how much does it cost to recondition an engine? Answer depends on state of engine and make etc...

So a better question is:

If you had your engine reconditioned, how much did it cost and what is the make (and how many hours were on it) ?

Thanks.

 

[Champagne Murphy]

Bukh DV20, done in the shed with a mate who knew what he was about. New liners, rings, gaskets, engine air blasted clean, crane in and out, sundries, under a grand. No idea how many hours it had done but nearly 500 since and it starts like dream!
PS reconned injectors and high pressure pump too.

 

[Topcat47]

I did a top end overhaul on the 1GM10. It included the pump and injector which was refurbished and set up by Panda in Fareham. Total cost including parts was £400 with me doing most of the spanner work but the injector had to be pressed out by Marine Power and there were several unexpected parts as a result. A full recondition would include bearings, seals and probably a re-bore and a new piston and possible a crank re-grind. OEM part prices are frightening.

 

[Jcorstorphine]

Ford 1.6 D 4 cylinder 1600 cc
Rebore, new pistons, recon head, crankshaft polished, new main and big end bearings, injection pump and injectors rebuilt, crankshaft, flywheel, drive plate and flywheel mass all balanced. All stripdown and rebuild done by myself. Approx £1500

 

[BobnLesley]

How big is your engine and are you able/capable of doing it all yourself?

Several years ago now, when we had a very tired MD6A Volvo engine, I approached a very well recommended (and no doubt already busy) engineer with a view to getting it completely overhauled/refurbished; his response was: "Don't waste your money, just buy a new Beta and I'll help you fit that. To buy all the parts for a full rebuild on the Volvo will be £15-£1800 at least, before we even consider the cost of labour; I know where you can get the 13hp Beta, complete with shaft, propeller and control panels/cables for under £3000."

Of equal interest was his follow-up: "Of course there are lots of guys out there who will quote you £1000-1200 for the job, I can even give you the phone number for a couple. But at best all you're going to get are honed bores, new rings, lapped valves and a paint job to the outside and that's an even bigger waste of money. Small marine diesels are cheaper to replace than properly refurbish and unless you do it yourself, you won't know what's been done."

 

[Heckler]

b

....how much does it cost to recondition an engine? Answer depends on state of engine and make etc...

So a better question is:

If you had your engine reconditioned, how much did it cost and what is the make (and how many hours were on it) ?

Thanks.

VP MD22 www.parts4engines.com do a kit for £400 for all the bits. Throw in the cost of a crank regrind and rebore, another £200? I did one, April and May PBO details it. Grind the valves yourself etc.
Stu

 

[JumbleDuck]

b
VP MD22 www.parts4engines.com do a kit for £400 for all the bits. Throw in the cost of a crank regrind and rebore, another £200?

That kit is good value, but it's only pistons, shells, gaskets and a few other odds and ends. Enough to rebuild the basic mechanics, but to do a proper job on the engine requires a lot more: timing belt, fuel system, cooling system ...

I'd have my doubts, too, about anyone doing a regrind and rebore on a four cylinder engine for £200. I was paying a reputable place (Paynes of Eynsham) that sort of money twenty five years ago.

 

[KellysEye]

We had a MD17C reconditioned because it was burning a lot of oil, I can't remember what it cost but it wasn't cheap. With hindsight we should have put the money towards a new Yanmar with a higher HP.

 

[elenya]

Hi

Five years ago a complete rebuild of an OM636 Mercedes 4 cylinder was $10,000 here in New Zealand. That was a complete refurbishment to including re bore and head rebuild. All work was done by an agricultural engineering company of very good local reputation. It is a lot of work to do a proper re build on an engine. Still the engine had bine about 6000 hours then and has done about 2000 hours since.

Cost of rebuild was similar cost to getting a refurb engine sent out from westfield 4x4 in the uk.

Cheers

 

[lw395]

How big is your engine and are you able/capable of doing it all yourself?

Several years ago now, when we had a very tired MD6A Volvo engine, I approached a very well recommended (and no doubt already busy) engineer with a view to getting it completely overhauled/refurbished; his response was: "Don't waste your money, just buy a new Beta and I'll help you fit that. To buy all the parts for a full rebuild on the Volvo will be £15-£1800 at least, before we even consider the cost of labour; I know where you can get the 13hp Beta, complete with shaft, propeller and control panels/cables for under £3000."

Of equal interest was his follow-up: "Of course there are lots of guys out there who will quote you £1000-1200 for the job, I can even give you the phone number for a couple. But at best all you're going to get are honed bores, new rings, lapped valves and a paint job to the outside and that's an even bigger waste of money. Small marine diesels are cheaper to replace than properly refurbish and unless you do it yourself, you won't know what's been done."

Exactly so.
But there is a whole grey scale between making an engine "as new" and "getting it running OK again".
Most of us only really want to know the engine is good for whatever service we have ahead of it.
I suspect for many private owners, being assured of another 1000 or even 500 hours from an engine with reliable starting, no excessive smoke or oil consumption etc is what is actually needed.
Honing and rings, recon injectors and pump, clean and check everything might well get the ordinary weekend yachtsman another ten years out of his engine.
But on a sea school boat it wouldn't last a season...

When it comes to buying and selling, the phrase 'rebuilt engine' isn't much of a plus point in my view.

 

[Jim@sea]

Its not how much it costs, its the availability of parts. 35 years ago at my garage I would often strip a BMC engine, re-ring it, new bearings, perhaps even send the block off for a bore with oversize pistons and perhaps a crank re-grind. So when I looked at my last boat with a BMC diesel engine I did not hesitate to buy.
Then as it was near winter I thought of having the engine lifted out and re-conditioning it, until I tried to get parts.
Fortunately the compressions were excellent and with parts not being available I ran the boat with the engine as it was.
My next boat (hopefully) will have a Perkins engine and having had a number of Massey Ferguson Tractors I can get parts cheap from a Tractor Dealer. And as I have a 30 year old JCB I can also go to a JCB dealer for parts.
Not sure about Volvo engines as the price of parts seems notoriously high.
You take your choice

 

[PuffTheMagicDragon]

The problem with old engines is the availability of parts, apart from their cost. When I bought a Centaur, around twenty years ago, I knew that I was taking a chance on the engine. It lasted for one season before it expired in a big cloud of black smoke as I was approaching harbour. My engineer friend was asked to fix it but, try as he might, one cylinder refused to fire. He then suggested taking it apart and rebuilding. The cost of the parts was STG 800+ to which one would need to add his labour. Worse than that, we could not find some of the parts, not even from Volspec.
I discussed with my friend and my conclusion was that we would be adding parts at today's price (1996) on a lump of cast iron that was already thirty years old. The final cost would have been half of a new, fresh-water cooled engine.
I ended up installing a new Lombardini myself and that gave me peace of mind and it is now still giving reliable service to the new owner.
Engines are ardent followers of Murphy's law: they do their best to fail when you most need them and they do so in the worst possible scenario. I don't think that you want that to happen.

 

[polhoff]

Thanks.

All very interesting replies. One theme seems to be "it's better to get a new engine". But then I guess that depends on the make of engine ? I was talking to my father this morning, who used to work as a farmer and has seen quite a few diesel power units. I asked him what his favourite diesel was, and he said Gardner without thinking about it, even though as far as I know Gardner didn't put diesels in tractors. I was quite surprised. So are some engines worth saving because of the make? Or not ?

 

[Sandmartin]

Ford 6.2 lite 6 cyliner Ford factory reconditioned unit £3850. (2011 price)
Plus 1000 deposit until return of old unit
plus delivery.

 

[Tranona]

Thanks.

All very interesting replies. One theme seems to be "it's better to get a new engine". But then I guess that depends on the make of engine ? I was talking to my father this morning, who used to work as a farmer and has seen quite a few diesel power units. I asked him what his favourite diesel was, and he said Gardner without thinking about it, even though as far as I know Gardner didn't put diesels in tractors. I was quite surprised. So are some engines worth saving because of the make? Or not ?

Gardners are indeed superb engines and some boats have them fitted. However they are large and heavy for their HP, very expensive (and been out of production for many years).

Engines that can be rebuilt are those like the BMC, Ford and Perkins diesels that were widely used in taxis, commercial vehicles and tractors. This is for two reasons. First they either have replaceable liners or the bores can be enlarged to compensate for wear. Second they were produced in such volumes that there is a ready supply of cheap spares for many models.

Dedicated marine engines such as older Volvos were produced in tiny numbers, generally do not wear out and last 30 or more years in boats, so spares demand is low and parts therefore expensive and increasingly not actually available. newer small engines are mostly based on Japanese industrial engines which cannot be rebored.

This last bit is actually not so important, because boat engines, particularly newer types, rarely actually wear out. The things that condemn old engines are the marinisation parts, particularly those in contact with salt water. Again, these parts are made in small quantities unlike the base engines, so are expensive.

As others have suggested in many cases where a boat engine has done its 30= years service it is uneconomic to recondition it , and even if you do, you end up with a 30+ year old design for which parts will become even more scarce, plus the fact that new engines are vastly more refined and durable.

 

[charles_reed]

Exactly so.
But there is a whole grey scale between making an engine "as new" and "getting it running OK again".
Most of us only really want to know the engine is good for whatever service we have ahead of it.
I suspect for many private owners, being assured of another 1000 or even 500 hours from an engine with reliable starting, no excessive smoke or oil consumption etc is what is actually needed.
Honing and rings, recon injectors and pump, clean and check everything might well get the ordinary weekend yachtsman another ten years out of his engine.
But on a sea school boat it wouldn't last a season...

When it comes to buying and selling, the phrase 'rebuilt engine' isn't much of a plus point in my view.

I'd have to agree - totally rebuilding my 2GM, would have cost about 95% of the price of a new 3YM, and I'd still have had the original (already failed once) gearbox.

Costing included new head parts, cam followers, rebore and pistons, main and big-end bearings, oil-pump, crank oil-seals. No allowance for crank regrind or possible camshaft replacement. But then, the 2GM had done nearly 10K hours and was raw-water cooled, consuming water-pumps every 150 hours. Professional re-assembly, but DIY stripping.
Unless you can do all the work yourself a full rebuild is never economic but a top-end overhaul well-worth it.

 

[JumbleDuck]

First they either have replaceable liners or the bores can be enlarged to compensate for wear. Second they were produced in such volumes that there is a ready supply of cheap spares for many models.

My experience is that the cheapest engines to recondition are always those with liners (or replaceable cylinders), partly because no machining is involved but also because only standard sized parts are needed, and avoiding a range of oversizes keeps the prices down. For example, the last time I checked a set of pistons and liners for my Citroën DS23 cost less than a set of oversized pistons for my Triumph Herald.

 

[SimonA]

Had my BMC engine reconditioned a few years ago, the cost was around £3500 which included a new heat exchanger plus full overhaul of the engine.