Reply To: Engine life

[Gregory Long]

I’m with Jim on this.

While if an engine is in terrible shape, it needs to be bored, crank ground, etc etc.

BUT if an engine is running, doesn’t have horrendous taper in the cylinder bores, does not have rough, scored or gouged crankshaft journals, and does not have cracks in the block, then it can be greatly improved and given a new lease-on-life with a careful ‘in-chassis’ overhaul.

I see no reason to rebuild an engine as if it is a workhorse engine and expected and needed to work hard for 100’s of thousands of miles. The Pierce engines will run a very, very long time with not-so-perfect rings/bores/loose pistons. And the size and area of the main and rod bearings, along with the low rpm engine design, allows a person to polish the rod journals, and have the connecting rods rebabbited, And hand-fit and scrape the babbitt to fit the journals. This is much faster than removing and replacing the entire engine from the car.

i have been amazed at just how BAD an engine can be, and not make noises, not smoke terribly, and not use horrendous amounts of oil.. And, as Jim mentioned above, oil is a consumed item in old engines.. They were designed that way. In some engines, the only oil that gets to the exhaust valve stems to lubricate them comes from the unburnt oil from the combustion chamber.

As Jim mentioned, a good air cleaner, and oil filter goes a very long way to extending the life of our engines.

Greg Long