Motor rebuild

[Guest jpatino]

Hi everyone. I wanted to ask everyone's opinion. I have two motors for my 29 Commander FD. The first motor is the original motor. It's got a few seized pistons and a few of the cylinder walls are pitted and rusted. It would need a complete rebuild and set of pistons, rings, and maybe valves. The car was hit in the front at some point in it's life and the area that bolts on to the motor mount on one side snapped off the motor( I also worry if the broken piece is welded back on, it may not hold since there would be a lot of stress and vibration on it). The second one came from a 1930 running car. It's fairly complete and would just need to be cleaned up, derust the area inside the engine behind the water jacket, new gaskets, paint, etc .....assuming it's in mechanically good shape. I don't have a lot to spend on the car and I'm trying to keep it fairly original. I'm guessing it will cost me $2500-$3500 to rebuild the original motor versus half or a third of that to refresh the other motor. Would using the non-original motor devalue the car a lot? With the extra $$ I would save by using the other motor, I could put that towards other repairs and such. So would you go with the original motor or the spare?

Thanks,

Jojo

[Guest 32mod55]

My opinion, FWIW, would be to use the 1930 motor and save the original in case you ever sell the car and the buyer wants it. Unless you are restoring it to show condition, I don't believe it would devalue the car to have a different engine. Besides, it could mean the difference between driving the car soon or having it languish due to lack of money to do it "right". I'm not a fan of spending $25,000 to make a $13,000 car (I'm referring to my '32 model 55).

[Mark Huston]

As long as the both engines have an engine number that starts with FD I do not think anyone would know the difference, or care. As 32Mod55 said, do not dispose of the original engine, by all means keep it.

One area of concern, check your title, does it use the engine number as the VIN number? This is the one BIG problem you could encounter with an engine swap. Down the road, if the car changes hands, or there is an issue with the title, having the wrong engine in the car could cause you some big headaches – unless you get a new title with the new engine number as the VIN.

Someone recently posted on the forum here about not being able to ship a car to Norway because the VIN is the engine number, and there had been an engine swap in the past, the title still has the old engine number as the VIN. You might not have any plans to sell the car; however, you never know that the future holds – make sure you’re not setting yourself up for future headaches.

[Guest jpatino]

Thanks guys. I'm going to go ahead and use the 30 motor but I'll check the title before I make a move. I'm getting real excited. After having the car in pieces for 13 years, I'm finally able to seriously work on it.