Thread: good news-lots of vortec engines, Bad news...

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The bad new is that most of these engines are refuse from the "cash for klunker program"
I have been kicking around wrecking yards for years. In that time I have scored a plethera of fine parts including one 428 cobra jet FE eng, many 440's , 454's, and two 455 HO pontiacs. You can say that it is a bit of a hobby of mine. Lately I have been trying for months to score a 350 vortec. Incredibly, I have been unsucessful here in the west palm area. I hear that there are many out there but I have had bad luck. I did buy a vortec block on craig's list for $75 here but no luck on heads here in the wrecking yard.
That is until today: I just happened to go to the wrecking yard today- without tools and found 4 vortec 350's, all in suv's and pickups. The catch you ask... they all had orange paint on them which to my dismay, indicates that no part of the engine will be sold. Period!!
Through some personal research, I found that these particular engines were fed a volitile dose of the killer kool aid... LIQUID FREEZE!!!!! Aparently when a customer utilized the pathetic government plan " cash for Klunkers" the dealers instructions were to document a procedure whereby they would give the engine a fair amount of Liquid freeze, causing the engine to fail.
I am not familiar with liquid freeze but from my research it sounds as it causes catastrophic damage to the cylinders.
I associate it to adding a can of ether to a diesel engine.
Anyways, I just thought that I would comment on this as this is the direction that car crafting is going. Instead, the govt is going to melt these engines down ( causing emission) then ship the metal to china and Japan ( more emission) whereby the developing countries will produce more engines (hybrid and more emission). Duh

Yeah, but it will make some people feel better about themselves.

there still alot of engines out there and you can still buy dart .world . etc new and used as well as stockers and if you want one you can just about fix any thing sleeve all 8 holes weld pan rails weld decks put lifter bores back on and pin blocks .they can not stop me

Hey flanker, I'm not trying to spend your money and I love L31 Vortecs, but you should consider the following.
I Told You So Don made us aware of a new offering from Edelbrock, a cylinder head that is brand new, cast in aluminum, treated to T6, about the same published flow numbers as the L31, good springs, guide plates, screw-in studs installed on heli-coils and hardened spring cups between the spring/casting, stainless/one-piece/hard-tip valves and a fire sale price of $950 retail for the pair, assembled, ready to bolt on.
http://www.edelbrock.com/automotive_...e-street.shtml

Compared to that, consider the initial cost of L31's, magnaflux to find out if they're cracked or not. If they are, then a hassle with the boneyard. If they aren't, then further money to cut the decks for flat, machine the valve guides and/or seats for decent springs, cost of the springs/retainers/locks, a new valve job, remove pressed-in studs. Machine stud pads. Drill and tap for screw-in studs, cost of the studs, all the labor involved, yada, yada, yada. And you end up with a ton of money in cast iron production heads that may still be crack-prone once you get 'em bolted on.

Like I said, it's easy to spend your money, but as for me, I likely won't be scrounging for L31's any more. Not after I put a price on searching for/going to see/cost of my time and my vehicle costs running around, cleaning/machining, etc, etc. One phone call and the Edelbrocks are delivered to my front door.

i just did a 350 1990 was a flat lifter cam went to a small roller was a roller custom grind by Erson cam .use the pbm/dart heads that are like the vtech heads ss valve s springs screw in studs loaded $700

The Vortec heads are still available in the marine industry. Tons of them were used on Volvo, Mercruiser, etc engines. Problem is, like most stuff that has boat written on it the price is 3-4 times what you pay for the exact same part used in a car.

My 23 has a 350 with 305 Vortec heads. We paid (the marina where I worked, not me) $ 1000.00 for one head, and $ 1400.00 for the other. I forget the exact details, but for some reason we were able buy one through our normal channels but had to go outside for the second one. Ended up the complete engine was toast so we wound up with two brand new heads after we installed a new engine in the boat, that I paid significantly less for.

Richard is right, with the current offerings out there in both aluminum and cast it makes better sense to just buy those. They are brand new, come with options like guide plates and screw in studs standard, and flow better than most of the stuff coming out of Detroit. And, they are very pretty. Chevy stuff always goes for a great deal anyway, it seems.

If you weigh the cost of having stock heads redone and modified you are right up around the cost of these offerings. But you are right, these things are starting to dry up in the normal places, and it looks like the tree huggers have found another way to make our stuff obsolete.


Don

Good thoughts from all of you and in today's day in age, it doesn't make sense to purchase from a junkyard. This may sound irrational but I like to give a friend of mine the business. He owns a small machine shop and does excellent work. I have built many pontiacs and some chevy mills with his service and all clearances and head work have been nothing short of stellar. I hope I don't sound like I have a money tree in my backyard but I do like to keep guys like him working.
With the advent of aftermarket perfomance parts, this must have at some point, kicked the machinist to the side of the road. Granted, the 406 that I am building now have Dart Pro 1 platinum 215 cc heads that were almost $1600. But this was the decision that I had to make due in part that you simply cannot make a set of 461's perform like these darts no matter how hard you try.
I look at a machine work as a talent, one for which I will pay a bit more for if it means keeping my buddy working. Of course there are those instances where after market parts are the obvious choice, even if they are manufactured in China.

kick the machinist to the side ? i am fully set up for putting in seats .cutting seats with stones and 3d cutters etc. but i will talk a customer in to a better set of new heads or if the old heads just need more work then there worth .there still alot of work for me to do on a rebuild Hot tank .rods. pin fitting .hang pistons.deck. bore.polish crank .set up heads. so i am happy with that. still some new parts need a tune up . so the machinist will never be left out. some parts of the job may slow down or go away .like crank grinding were you can buy a new crank cheaper then fixing a old crank thrust weld and grind or any more then a grind less it a $600and up crank .the price of the crank grinder and upkeep is not worth having one if your only doing two cranks a week many shop s have seen crank grinding go down in stock mild hp auto cranks were you can buy new for not much more then a grind

Even the new pieces need a trip to a reputable machinist for a bit of touch up, mild mods, or some other bit of fine tuning..... But the performance potential of the aftermarket stuff for the most part far exceeds what you could get out of factory pieces..... I just don't use a lot of stuff "out of the box"---it all needs a bit of tweaking...... Then of course when the off season gets here, it's time to upgrade and freshen, so back to the machine shop.....

I know a guy who has owned his machine shop for a long time. He says when it comes to engines, they pretty well just get business for the hot rod or racecar guys, but back in the day, they did those guys and everyone else too. People would get their stock engine rebuilt. And now people don't replace drivetrains, they just get new vehicles. Thats why they had to expand into other areas like roller coaster parts and stuff of that nature.