V6 rebuild kit

Hi,
I was wondering about the quality of the Autozone rebuild kits. They seem too cheap to be any good. Ive read the other posts on this and am wondering now that some of them have been installed for a while if they are holding up OK. Also, if anyone knows about these kits, Are they name brand parts( gaskets, bearings etc)? And, were the pistons accurate in size/ good fitting. Has anyone had any problems with the kits?

Thanks,
Josh

 

I've had very good luck with the kits. IIRC it was a mix of several brands. Victor Reinz were the gaskets. Lemme go back out and check the other brands...
"Hi-tech" pistons, rings, bearings, etc. Dana camshaft. On the pistons, they did ask bore size when placing the order. Fit like a glove.

Finished mine in October, '02 and holding up very well.

 

Did you go oversize on anything like the pistons? And they all fit OK including bearings etc?

Josh

 

I don't believe I went oversize. Yep it all went in just fine, IIRC.

For fun I was perusing Hi-Tech's website... http://www.autoecat.com/cgi-bin/cat...TECH&PIN=~&CVI=HITECHHITECH~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

They are all name brand parts. I have about 850 miles on mine and everything is OK. My motor was bored .030, you're suppose to have the piston in hand when you have a motor bored and the shop bores the motor to fit the piston. Are you having the motor bored are just trying to put stock size pistons and rings in it and calling it rebuilt.
My crank was in good shape so as for bearings mine clearanced fine and all of them were stock size. Rings were good quality as was all parts. You have to realize all Autozone does is buy the parts in bulk and box the kits themselves thats what saves you money.

If you layed Napa parts beside the Autozone parts you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

 

OK that is what I wanted to know. The kits are good parts then. Yes it looks like I'm going to need to bore it but I have a lot of questions about that. Hopefully a machinist will be able to guide me.
I measured all cyl bores. All the bottoms of the cyl were in spec. Most of the middles were in spec. But the top measurements were all like .0055, .006, or .0065. The piston to bore clearane in the man. is .001 with a service limit of .0015. One of my questions is: If the bore is .006 over at the top, can it be bored 20 over or is that too small a difference? Will it have to be honed or ground to that spec. or can it be cut? Or, could the bores be used the way they are with new pistons and oversized rings? Or, something I don't know about?

Josh

 

Since I had the local Carquest do the machining I got the engine kit from them. I think it was pretty close price wise and good parts also.

 

Tapered wear is normal. The top of the cylinder wears the most because that's where the sideways forces on the piston are the greatest.

There are no oversized rings - they are matched to the piston diameter.

What kind of mileage you want out of your rebuild? With only about 5 or 6 thou taper, you could hone the cylinders and use the old pistons. However, tapered cylinders will make the rings fatigue more quickly than they would if the cylinders were bored. This means you'll get, say, 50k miles from the rebuild rather than 100k. I'd call this an engine overhaul rather than a rebuild.

Depends on what you want to use the engine for - if it's going to have trail use only, and only a few thousand miles per year, you might reuse your pistons. It's risky though - you need to check the taper at several places in the bore, since the wear will be uneven. You need to check the fit of your replacement rings in the piston grooves to check for wear. Probably other things that I'm not thinking of.

Likely your shop will want to rebore, since this will put your engine in "like new" condition. A rebuilt engine won't actually last as long a new engine, but it'll last a lot longer than than an "overhaulled" engine.

hth!

 

Thanks for the help all.
Josh