Your engine arrives on a pallet, shrink-wrapped. Before it goes anywhere near the car, spend twenty minutes on it. Problems are far cheaper to find now than after installation.
Inspect it on delivery
Photograph the crate before you cut the wrap, and again once the engine is exposed. If there is freight damage, those photos are the difference between a claim and an argument.
Check the block and head for cracks, and look at the machined mating surfaces for scoring. Turn the crankshaft by hand with a socket on the pulley bolt. It should turn smoothly through a full revolution with no grinding and no hard stop.
What to look at closely
- Oil filler and dipstick. Milky residue means coolant in the oil. Heavy sludge means the engine was run long past its service interval.
- Spark plug holes. Pull a plug. Oil-fouled or wet plugs are worth asking about.
- Exhaust and intake ports. Heavy carbon is normal. Coolant staining is not.
- Accessories. Check what actually came attached. The purchase price covers the long block, so anything else is a bonus, not a guarantee.
Replace these before it goes in
Timing belt, water pump, seals and gaskets. All of them, every time. They are wear items, they cost little next to the engine, and the labour to do them later means pulling the engine back out.
A failed timing belt is also excluded from warranty, so skipping it puts the whole cost on you.
If something is wrong
Call 1-877-536-4848 before you install it. Once an engine has been fitted and run, establishing what went wrong becomes much harder for everyone.
