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[Buick] Engine Reco- Whats invovled?

MG's VH Wag

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Hi guys, I am wondering what is involved in reconditioning an engine? My current motor has just over 280,000 km's and i was thinking about getting it reco'd. Or another option is to buy a motor with lower km's, pull it apart, rebuild it and hot it up a bit then drop it in. Anyway i was wondering what is involved in reconditioning a motor and can it be done at home?

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Pub247

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assembly can be done at home with the right tools some knowledge and a bit of patience machine work and some other things will need to be done at the shop and depending on what you want done can cost up to 1500.
If your going to rebuild a motorbest to use another engineif you still want to drive the caramount of kays doesnt really factor into if you plan a full rebuild though you may get away without needing some things done like crank grinding if motor has low klm
 

MG's VH Wag

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Yeah i am gonna try and get a low km motor if i can and rebuild that. So when you rebuild do you just clean, replace seals, gaskets, bearings, piston rings etc? Thats if you don't need to machine the motor. Also if i get the motor bored at a shop can i just get bigger rings? If so how much can it be bored before you need bigger pistons?

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MG's VH Wag

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Do VN-VP motors fit in the VR's? I am pretty sure they do but i just wanna be a 100% before i go and buy one.

I know this is a bit of a stupid question but if i got a different motor and fully reco'd it, port and polish, put in a bigger cam, bigger injectors, bigger TB, high ratio rockers, bellmouth off, CAI, chip/tune, exhaust system what sort of power would i get? An estimate would be fine, i just don't want to go and spend all this money on my car and still not have as much power as say a VX when i could just go buy a VX with that money lol.

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Post Vintage

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Really you are going to get the most bang for your buck with a turbo/supercharger conversion. However, rebuilding your engine I have seen the Buick 3.8's doing about ~140rwkw with good NA mods like that.... with boost on a stock motor you should be able to smack on 200rwkw stock internals.

I bought my VN just to do this. Manual 160,000km's... just make sure AFR's are right and no detonation, high octane fuel and treated right I would expect it to last me 6-12 months on 10psi once I boost it and I drive pretty hard.
 
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