heres where I'm at:
-I will be keeping the truck for the next ten years. I'm too far in to jump ship now and it just plain works
-The engine/trans/transfer case are at 230k
-The engine has a problem in the head where one of the cam journals is destroyed. Its a outer one and not that important but this will not be the engine that goes 400k miles without issue.
-I'm pretty sure engine power is down from 6 years ago. Could be as easy as a o2 or it could be as crazy as valve clearances.
-I priced a complete install of engine and trans at 3k awhile ago part and labor. Thats not bad depending on how refreshed the engine is.
-also no interest in swap to manual at this time so that works in my favor
I have a chance at work where dropping the truck off for a few weeks wont be to hard so I've been contemplating getting this taken care of. I have been driving the truck for two years knowing the head is not perfect. I assume the engine will give notice before its going to have a real problem, but the cam issue is kinda a wild card since I have never heard of that before.
I have a couple questions for the group:
-Whos got the best rep for engine changes in socal? California mini-truck quoted 3k, but if yotamasters does a better job for 3.5k...then I'd be very interested in that. A big job like this is likely to have issues and I would not be interested in tracking down small gremlins for months to follow.
- should I be sourcing my engine on my own? I assume a installer would go the same avenues as me, but if they simply dont have the same time as me to find the "perfect" motor...then Ive got plenty of time to source my own. Granted I have zero knowledge on what to look for other then low mileage. With the 3.4l I would figure raw low mileage is not the first factor to look at.
-And out of left field...Anyone heard of shops putting in alternative engines? I've found places that will sway diesel engines but 15k later you have a under powered engine with uncommon parts. I'd love a nice bulletproof v8 like JD, but I cant do the time myself for a install. Also with the 3.4l being so plentiful and cheap, even with the addition of a supercharger I'd still likely be cheaper then a custom v8 install...so theres not much room for a shop to make money on the swap.