BOOT77

Picked up a Jegs ATK remanufactured vortec 350 for my thirdgen TA project and made a video of the uncrating, I plan to make more vids of this engine in the future when i tear it down for some quick mods.


Hope this helps!

BOOT77

Finally got started tearing it down!

BOOT77

Well things aren't looking great!

WildCard600

Based on ATK's reputation I was expecting much worse. Hopefully there aren't any serious issues to be found.

BOOT77

Still gotta check out the rotating and check a few other things, from some of the reply's I got elsewhere it could be interesting! Hopefully not tho but I kinda expect something more at this point!

BOOT77

It gets worse...

WildCard600

Jegs should be ashamed of putting their name on this junk.

How ATK remains in business is a mystery to me.

BOOT77

Yah Think Summit use to sell em to but stopped. Aw well hope this saves someone else the trouble if they wanna try n budget performance.

paulo57509

Here's my experience with ATK:

https://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forum...ty#Post3350729

Drew

iTrader: (58)

The rebuilder industry has always had the reputation for mixing and matching parts to build engines that run, but aren't necessarily correct. Before ATK it was Jasper, before that I'm sure it was some other outfit.

Machine shops lose and mix up parts, and make mistakes too. FWIW

BOOT77

I bought a used farm truck with a jasper that had maybe 30-50k(can't rem exactly) on the engine and put another 70k on it np. It might of been still running today but cash 4 clunkers, so it should of been locked up.

edit: to be clear it was a 350 TBI

dmccain

iTrader: (2)

True! We picked up an old car with a supposed "REMAN" CRATE 350. After it was pulled years later it was running a 58cc head on one side and a 64cc on the other. Crazy thing was the thing always ran strong!

ironwill

Many, many years ago, pulled a rough-running Jasper reman 350 apart to find 7, .030 pistons and one .040 piston. That was a long time ago; I'd hope they no longer pull such antics, but I'd still never buy one of their engines.

Like forgetting to reinstall an internal core plug in the oil gallery that supplies oil to the passenger-side lifters on a 455 Pontiac block. This was from a locally-well-regarded shop too.

BOOT77

Some things do still work but are sketchy and if so they should be cheaper! I'm 4/1 bad/good with machine shops and why I bought a crate shortblock and this crate engine. The shortblock is a Blueprint so I don't expect too many issues but with my luck don't matter how much I spend, swear I'm a bad part magnet! I've gotten so picky& by-the-book with how I do most things just to rule out user error, so it takes forever to do stuff.

Drew

iTrader: (58)

And to think people actually believe they can take some old small block from their buddy's 1977 farm truck, and have their machine shop rebuild it "to 1969 specs" and it'll be a 400hp race engine. I guess there are some people that get lucky and their local machine shop knows what they're doing and has reasonable prices, or they just don't know any better. My local machine shop that did work on my last engine has built several engines "AS SEEN ON TV!" if you have watched any of those street racing shows on Discovery in the last decade or two. Had them do some work on an engine for me a few years ago, it still involved several head aches and I had to do things they were paid to do, and claimed they did, that they clearly forgot to do before returning my parts to me. So yeah, I understand completely buying a crate engine over doing the machine shop hokey pokey.

"my 305 with 76cc race heads and a .75" RV cam is gonna run 9's!"

Orr89RocZ

iTrader: (20)

i guess i am one of those lucky ones. Our shop does all our local engines. 6 sec x275 modular motors, bottom 7 sec lsx motors, and lots of odd ball tractor and diesel pulling truck stuff as well. They have done imports too

that is key to really do your homework on who you use

BOOT77

The LS(and other modern engines) are a lot better quality engine to engine that older V8's in my opinion. If I didn't have so much sbc stuff I'd jump on the LS bandwagon.

The last shop I used, I drove 1.5hr to avoid local bad shops n they were suppose to be a good one. I wasted my money and more importantly my time! They even had me bring the heads in and couldn't find anything I did wrong and still wouldn't fix it! Well one of the machinist knew it was wrong but the other, rookie and owner out voted him. Shops are a too big a gamble for me! Basically they had two older good guys all new machines and let the rookie practice and mess up my junk, then told me I was SOL

Drew

iTrader: (58)

You say that like you have a choice of more than one shop in town. LOL

Some of those celebrity "street racers" come here all the way from Oklahoma to have my local shop build their engines. You can see the shop's decal prominently featured on the back windows of cars racing on Pinks, back when that was a thing. It's an established shop with a good enough reputation, but they still make stupid mistakes that should never have gone out the door. But then I'm not a prominent volume customer, I'm just a walk in customer, they don't know me from anyone else off the street, just like any other average idiot on the forum. Just because a shop can do good work, doesn't mean they won't hand your parts to Jo-Jo the idiot circus boy, that they just hired last week.

The odds are in favor of a local shop screwing up somewhere along the way, is what I'm getting at.

Drew

iTrader: (58)

This. So much this. Talking to a machine shop about rebuilding an engine is something like speed dating. You have a minute of their time to ask all the specific important questions, if you don't ask specifically, they aren't going to tell you. Then when you drop it off there's a 50% chance they'll get the wires crossed and give you wrong answers, incomplete answers, etc. Then after 3-6 months, if/when you get your parts back, you have to look everything over to be sure they didn't lose anything, or forget to give you something back, or that they didn't give you a gasket set for an 86+ engine instead of the 1970s engine they've had for months. They plug it all into the adding machine and give you a total usually in excess of the estimate, unless they completely forgot something that was agreed on, or forgot to put something on the invoice... The machine shop is a wretched hive of potential human error.

Orr89RocZ

iTrader: (20)

there are a few.

and idk if what you said was directed towards me and the shop i use but i dont believe it applies. Theres always potential of a mild screw up or something not to spec, everyone is susceptible to error but i have not heard much in the negative and i know alot of people

88RS

iTrader: (7)

The vortec heads are pretty thin castings and are prone to cracking. The 906 is likely the head that was originally on that block. Light duty vortecs had 2 bolt mains and induction hardened seats. If you need a good shop in Michigan my recommendation is Valley Performance in Ionia. They did the machine work on my Ford 347 and vortec 383, and I'm happy with their work.

Drew

iTrader: (58)

No, I'm just relating my experiences with half a dozen machine shops in different towns. I've talked to a lot of highly recommended, well regarded machine shops. I had one place try to tell me a iron head L98 came with swirl ports. I had another place lose my oil filter adapter, and give me a later gasket set for an early engine. Another place told me my parts were done, and when I went to pick them up, they hadn't even started on them yet. When I went to pick them up the second time a few months later, it was obvious they hadn't done some of the things they were supposed to do, and that I had paid for, but at that time I was so sick of dealing with them, I didn't bother taking it back to them again. When they wrote up the bill, they took the estimate with about a half dozen line items that had been discussed, that weren't needed, and just crossed them off instead of writing out a new invoice. I've got that invoice around here somewhere, it looks like a top secret redacted document. It's beyond being a coherent document that anyone could understand but the guy crossing things out, which is probably why they missed a few things on the to-do list. But like I said, I was just glad to get my parts back at that point and didn't push the issue. Another favorite was a "fresh back from the machine shop" engine that ran like poop, no oil pressure, just generally all wrong. Tore it down, the crank was machined .020" undersize, the bearing shells were .040". Just haven't had universally good experience with machine shops. Sometimes it's ok, but they all seem to make mistakes, and the reputation on the street doesn't mean dick when they screw up your job. Who has the time and know-how to follow along and double check the machine shop did the job right?

Oh I almost forgot about the time I took an intercooler pipe into a local shop to have a bypass valve port welded on. When I talked to the guy, explained what I wanted, literally "weld it here", the guy said it'd be $20 and to pick it up in a few hours. I come back to get it, the guy in the office writes me an invoice for $80 of shop time. Sure it was very nicely tig welded, but let's be realistic, it was steel, to steel, and the guy quoted me $20. This is exactly why I started working on my own junk to begin with.

BOOT77

Yup had one shop tell me $80 for heads resurface then picked up n they wanted $100, even asked if they took more to surface/clean up than expected and they said no just depends who you talk to there smh!

dlinger

iTrader: (4)

My first machine shop bill was a notepad with a non auto related name on top (course this was in 1985).

DynoDave43

iTrader: (11)

Thanks for this thread BOOT77. It's been educational.

I was contemplating finding a local shop to machine a set of heads for guide plates. Now I'm not so sure....

Drew

iTrader: (58)

A single task like that is probably relatively safe. The odds of having a problem would have to go up exponentially as you increase the difficulty of the job.

DynoDave43

iTrader: (11)

If I asked them to paint them while they are there, would that be too much?

88RS

iTrader: (7)

If you know someone who has access to a Bridgeport, they aren't bad to do. I milled the stud bosses of my 906s down something like .300" for guide plates and studs, and drilled and tapped them. It has been a couple years, but the holes may have already been at the correct tap drill size for 7/16".

GeneralDisorder

iTrader: (1)

"GOOD" machine shops are expensive. My Vortec block was about $2000 for proper machine work (just the short block - not the heads, and that's not assembled). That's hot tanked, line honed, decked, rods resized for ARP bolts, cam bearings replaced, crank polished and everything sized (they also ordered the main and rod bearings, etc to match their machine work). All block plugs installed and the block primered. I checked every tolerance during assembly and everything was within a few tenths. But my machinist charges for his skills and he also knows quite well that I will check everything with quality measuring tools and it will come right back if it doesn't meet with my approval.

Sure - as everyone likes to point out - you can buy a crate motor cheaper. But this is what you will get 95 times out of 100.

GD

clubber

iTrader: (1)

Issues like this are why I'm going with a GM crate. In another thread I started a while back, lots of guys said they were overpriced but I figure GM knows how to build their engines. It's much cheaper to buy an expensive properly built motor than dealing with a pile of broken parts. They have a good warranty too. I still have half of a drivetrain I have to finish before the engine though.

BOOT77

Like was mentioned studs are not a big deal and I have no problem getting a shop to do mine if I decide to go that route, still I'll be checking the work over good before I assembled the engine! If the guide measuring tool wasn't so expensive I'd own one.

Yup wish I got a GM crate, not that they don't have issues just think the odds would have been much better! New vortec heads would be the biggest plus! My logic was I'm gonna tear it apart either way and prob abuse it so why not save a buck. sometimes that works and others it don't.