The Renaissance of Engine Rebuilding

Vehicle manufacturers are cranking out engines that have much tighter tolerances than they did 20 years ago. With engines being built so much better today and designed to last much longer, one might think such news is not very good for engine rebuilders. In fact, it is actually good news for engine remanufacturers, because it means there’s still plenty of rebuilding work to be done.

“The vehicles themselves have really improved quite a bit,” says John Goodman, president of the Automotive Engine Rebuilders Association (AERA) in Buffalo Grove, Ill. “What has not changed are the people who drive these cars. If it’s abused, it’ll eventually break.”

With engines often rated to last for 160,000 kilometres, “what we’re finding is that this can cause problems in other areas, especially sludge,” says Goodman. And that usually leads to a rebuild.

Louis Mangov, who operates Crosstown Engine Remanufacturers in Toronto’s east end, agrees that longer engine life is good for business.

“In Toronto, you’re getting more and more people who commute,” Mangov says. “People aren’t driving five or 10 minutes anymore; they’re driving 40 minutes. They’re living further from the center core. So they’re putting a lot more kilometres in their engines.”

And, adds Mangov, with engines being so complicated today, many shops find it easier to farm out engine work to a rebuilder.

“A lot of these vehicles are very complicated and a lot of the guys don’t want to get involved in that, so they farm the whole vehicle to us,” Mangov says.

Surviving and Thriving in Rebuilding

Not to say that engine remanufacturers haven’t had to diversify.

Crosstown, has been in business since 1965 and does performance engines, marine engines and industrial engines as well. But the bulk of the shop’s business is still rebuilding stock, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) engines.

SEM Powertrain in Pickering, Ont., started in 1978 as Scarborough Engine and Machine Ltd. in a small shop in Scarborough, Ont. It grew to the point where owner John Solecki moved to a new 16,000-square-foot facility in Pickering in the spring of 2006. In addition to rebuilding OEM engines to specification, SEM Powertrain also rebuilds competition and high-performance engines; does diagnosis and fault analysis; and rebuilds transmissions.

Solecki agrees there are fewer engine remanufactures than there used to be.

“There’s actually been a lot of attrition in the business,” he says. But he believes that’s because a lot of rebuilding shops didn’t market themselves right. “It seemed to me that the bulk of the people were more interested in being the cheapest guy around. They didn’t understand marketing. I didn’t buy that. I was interested in doing things correctly; bringing things back to original specifications.”

He’s grown his business by concentrating on doing quality work for discerning customers.

Primarily, the AERA represents custom engine rebuilders, notes Goodman, and it’s these shops that have felt “competitive pressures” the most. Many have had to find new opportunities and focus on areas such as restoration, late model and antique vehicle and “car-geek modifying” work to survive in the United States.

“The business of engine building and rebuilding is alive and well,” says Goodman. “It’s just a lot different than it was a decade ago. We all have to be better businessmen, not just better machinists, today.”

Opportunities Based on Mutual Trust – And Skills

Mangov says there are a lot of opportunities for independent general repair shops and engine rebuilders to grow their businesses together by partnering, because customers win in the end. That’s because remanufacturers, for example, replace OEM plastic components such as gaskets, with upgraded metal ones.

“Anything that’s upgraded, we put into the engine,” says Mangov, who’s rebuilt 9,000 engines himself since he was eleven.

It’s a matter of building relationships with each other that are based on trust — that both are ultimately wanting to do the best possible job for the customer. One thing that’s critical, agree both Mangov and Solecki, is repair shops must have technicians who are highly skilled in engine installation. This is because an engine can be precision-remanufactured to original tolerances, but the whole job can go awry in the service bay if the engine’s not re-installed properly.

“The installing technician is super, super critical,” says Solecki.

Adds Mangov, “They may come back and say the engine’s defective but actually it’s an installation problem, so everybody down the chain loses.”

He explains, for example, that a technician could re-install an engine and forget to add coolant, or the oil pump shaft, and “the car goes down the road and the engine blows up.” To make sure everybody wins it’s critical for both shop technicians and engine rebuilders to keep up with training from all available sources, says Solecki.

“We can’t put these parts together like we did 20 years ago,” adds Goodman of the AERA. “Proper information is vital.”

Solecki believes the industry’s caught in a dichotomy. “The old guys don’t embrace the new technology, and the new guys don’t have the manual skills the old guys have,” he says.

Selling a Rebuild

Both Solecki and Mangov know and agree that when a rebuilt engine’s put in a vehicle today, the driver’s going to get many more thousands of kilometres out of his vehicle. Shops and engine rebuilders need to do a good job selling this to their customers.

“If you’re driving a car and you’ve got a problem,” says Solecki, “you’re looking for the cheapest solution. It’s different when you’ve got a fleet of 200 vehicles.”

A driver facing a large repair bill may be weighing that against just paying $399 a month for a new vehicle, he says. “A lot of people become very fond of their vehicles, and you have to play on that,” he says. “Point out what that $399 a month is going to cost them in the long term.”

“It depends on the car, and depends on the finances,” says Mangov. “Some people don’t want to drive a five-year-old car, especially if they’re driving across the country, for example.”

He relates the example of a 2.7 L, 2000 Chrysler needing an engine rebuild at 100,000 kilometres because of oil, sludge and timing chain problems. “Now you could trade the vehicle in, but that car’s worth nothing without the engine. They’ll spend $3,000 to $5,000 depending on the car. Put an engine in it, and you don’t have higher insurance; you don’t have other repairs or other problems; you can try to recoup that money driving it down the road.”

Don’t pitch a used engine over a remanufactured one, advises Mangov because that’s asking for problems for your customer, and yourself. Used engines will eventually have problems with things like gaskets and oil consumption as original components wear out, he says.

Mangov adds, “Used engines aren’t cheap anymore, they’re no longer $200. They’ve climbed to $1,500 or $2,000, sometimes even more expensive than rebuilts.” He points out that he recently sold a rebuilt engine for a 1997 Ford F150 for $1,850, when the same engine used was going for $2,200.

A lot of times it depends on the kind of customer you’re catering too, and the kind of vehicle. Solecki points out that if it’s a make of vehicle that can be difficult to get parts for and the job’s going to end up costing twice what the vehicle was worth, then it doesn’t make sense to spend all that money for a remanufactured engine job.

Maybe you’re not a big fan of rebuilt engines for cars coming into your shop. Louis Mangov wonders why you wouldn’t be, when remanufacturers are working to extremely tight tolerances and bringing things back to original specifications. “One hundred per cent, you’re getting a better engine. Better than the original,” he says.