Technical The next cheapest engine

LMFAO Now I got to paint "Giant Killer" on my rocker covers. Or maybe "Thar she blows"

 

I get this conversation,
cost has to be a consideration in planning your build but,
to me the engine is a major part of the soul of the build,
If it brings me no joy it is a negative.
I'd find a good used engine I really like and run it before settling for something new because it was cheap.

 

Jim.....Do you know of any good, (and cheap), 57 Chevy 4 door bodies? LOL Course, it'd probably cost quite a bit to ship one to Illinois.

As far as the next cheapest engine???? Like 2935ford mentioned...265 / 283 Chevy V8. They are excellent engines and are "Traditional", as well.

 

Loaded question as the price of bringing a decent runner home is usually close to the same for most American V8 engines that are pre 1990. Bang for the buck I'd have to go with big block Mopar as I have seen what can be done with one with very simple and inexpensive mods on friends cars. Trouble is that a lot of the prime donor rigs that we used to get dirt cheap, drive home, sort out the engine and then pull it and haul the hulk for scrap are now "collector" rigs that are showing up at cruise night and parking two cars down from your car.

 

Very well said sir. Compromise today, and spend the next decade thinking "if only I'd..."
To me, the engine IS the soul of the build, and dictates the feel and attitude for the rest of the car. Its the only part of a vehicle that "lives and breathes".
I am always just completely baffled by the famous HAMB advice "just get it running..." those guys are in a completely different hobby than I am. Are you building a hot rod, or a winter beater?

 

yup...and you might discover that there are a lot of different ways to find a good engine for your ride, the engine you really want. It usually takes time, and it usually involves asking lots of people for leads.

 

302-351 Ford. The aftermarket is huge for them. Plus the distributor is where it should be.

 

Then there is the B/RB or B/B question. Other then early tall deck motors B/RBs are easier to find but I am still enamored with the 383 for some reason and they are about as plentiful (at least around here) as hens teeth.

I built a healthy B/RB in '98 for about a grand not counting the cost of the core and that was about what it cost to build an SBC at the time. You have to shop parts though. You can't just throw your credit card on any old counter.

 

yeah...right in the way of the blower snout! and the oil pump is right in the way of the crossmember.

 

It always kills me when I see some car proudly parked at a car show when I have pulled an engine from one and scrapped it a few years earlier, and without so much as a moments regret. I always find myself thinking "Really?? Are you serious?".

 

Phttttt cross members? We don't need no stinking cross members.

Same problem with the big MOPAR. Well at least the distributer is angled to one side.

 

I think the crushers got the big block Mopars by the dozen back in earlier gas crunches around here. In the 60's and early 70's Bob Norwood later of the Ferrari tune up emporium with his name in Dallas was the go to guy in Washington State when he was the tune up man at Anderson Motors in Grandview, Wa. He tweaked the State Patrol's big block Mopar patrol cars on a regular basis and it was the norm to see a patrol car from far corners of the state in the shop getting his touch for an extra 20mph on top end speed.

A few years back you found big block Mopars in just about anything that might be running at Woodburn drag strip in Oregon. Snag a 440, stick a cam in it and throw a set of headers and intake on it and go racing and be fast.
There is a great local story about a buddy of mine who towed a friends "race car" to the Bremerton drag strip for the Mopar drags and then went out and ran in the 11's with his full size Mopar ragtop. That was before he triggered the bottle on a later pass and I've seen the time slips from that jaunt. Not a high zoot race engine but one that had the right pieces and the right tune.

 

There is a knack to tuning. Anyone can screw one together, its just nuts and bolts. Not just anyone can tune one.

We used to call the L-79 motor a 375 horse 327 because you could take the factory screwed together engine and squeeze 375 out of it by just tuning it properly.

I laugh about the B/RB and the brand specific crowd. I helped a guy stuff a tunnel rammed 440 in an OT Camaro back in the '90s. He drove it to and from work and to and from the track. He never uncorked it and ran low 11s on street tires. basically stock 440 with a tunnel ram and a MOPAR purple cam, I say basically stock he pulled it out of a sedan (wrecked @ 85K) and we stuffed it in the samaroo.

easy cheap HP/torque.

Now no one races here, rich folks bought up the property around the track and got it closed down.

 

Lots of cheap engines available as long as you don't want to add speed parts. If you do, the big block chevy would be the next cheapest, and then the small block ford.

 

I wanted a Desoto hemi for my T coupester, I saw it as central to how I envisioned the car. Took me two years to get one, but I got it.
When I bought my '39, an olds was "it" for that car. It was the "right" engine, and I wasn't going to settle for anything else. Took a while, but I bought a 324 core off Paul. I am spending some $$ on it mainly because I also see solid lifters and four 3 bolt carbs as essential to how I envision the finished product. I bought the core for $500 with a 4bbl intake, and the engine is so cherry inside, if I was willing to go single 4 and a hyd cam, I could use pretty much everything in it, and probably have it running for around 2K.

 

Another vote for the LS motor. Cheap, plentiful (especially 4.8). You can carb them or leave them fuel injected. Very responsive to cam changes, etc.

 

I really like the idea of a carbed gen II as well, and they can make REALLY SICK power with relative ease once you get rid of the EFI so they will run ok with a serious cam.
And yes, I know if you are a street rod type, you aren't gonna understand why anyone would want to run a cam that is not EFI compatible, so please spare me the usual HAMB anti-go fast rant...

 

I never consider using a late model engine,
But when I do I don't talk about it here.

 

and I have no problem with the "not traditional" complaint, because its valid, and that's what we are supposed to be all about here.
Its the "you cant run that cam/rear gear, ect" bs, and its not enough that they don't want to run that sort of stuff, that's fine, I get that, its a matter of choice. What blows my mind is that they seem to feel that NO ONE ELSE should be running that kind of stuff.
It always strikes me funny that pretty well everyone on here pays lip service to "real hot rods" but as soon as you start talking about any cam/gear combination that's anywhere near strong enough to stand a chance of puckering your sphincter at WOT, theres always some guy seems to crap in his pink panties...
But now I am ranting...

 

in his pink panties...
But now I am ranting...

 

Hahaha,
when someone asks what cam is in that old motor? I just say its a full race Wolverine

 

Thanks for the reminder 31Vicky... you have been saving that and waiting since my last rant, haven't you? You KNEW it was just a matter of time...

 

So what does cheap mean any way?

Is that most Power for less dollar ?
Is that any form of motivation for easy money?
Is it low maintain cost over 200k mikes.
Is it just dirt cheap iron?
huge fuel consumption.
Hard to find parts
Or is it being able to recoup when your done playing?

----

It's hard to beat a LS truck engine swap. But if you want to run a carb a distributor and valve covers adapters you're way over budget.

North Star is another one. These are cheap and most need head stud repair. With some money they dress up really well too.

 

And you can buy a few parts for a good engine, with the money you got from scrapping it.

 

Well, DUH!!

 

Here, let me get that for you...

 

I think what separates a hot rodder from a really died in the wool traditional hot rodder is lack of knowledge. When I first came on the HAMB there were two schools those who thought that you couldn't build and drive a hot rod engine and those who knew that you could.

The deal of the day was that if you wanted to build and drive a car more then around the block it had to be a stock wheezer engine out of a '70s smogger ( preferably a GM product) and they just could not grasp that an engine could be built from pieces that would perform and still take you from coast to coast and back again. There is a fella whom I will not name that is like Mr Flathead who owns an engine that he calls "The Toaster". he got it cheap in a junk store and we got it running the first year I was on here, he is still using that same engine and has used it consistently since day one in more then one car. And not just on weekends. Coast to coast easily would have made it and probably still would.

Any engine can be built to perform and perform well (*given my def. of perform well) and do it every day, day in and day out. Some of them will rev until they come apart and others won't but they are no where near what the engineers envisioned when they left the drawing board.

*perform past stock capabilities, not all will break a dyno but all will do way better then they are supposed to.

@falcongeorge

 

Should have saw that coming.
How about we unpack that statement of mine just a bit.

Yeah, so what's the target Power range and the dollar per power you want to spend.

$10- per HP ?
< $ 2- per HP ?

There's a tipping point where each more Hp costs more and more than the last one. Some times with a few mods the first 100 extra is easy and the next 25 hp costs 4x as much as the first 100 extra.

These threads are loaded questions, but its good for discussion.

 

pm sent

 

I want to reexpress my vote for the 300 Ford straight six. For a thousand bucks total, you can have an engine with 4" bores, 7 main bearings, 50 cubes per cylinder that will flow 210 to 230 cfm while taking up to a .700 lift cam.