call RRE and tell them what they said, they'll laugh their ass off. they are full of it. the balance shafts dont eliminate the engine vibrations, they just keep the motor from moving so much, the vibrations are still there. the 95 pistons and big rod combo is a proven thing. ive been using that set-up for awhile, with no balance shafts. no problems. that what the shop i mainly go to (RRE) will recommend. i think RRE is a more reputable DSM shop than jacksonautomachine. so id take their word over just about any shop out there

 

Simply.....go somewhere else.

Your plan is perfectly sound and has been done many many times with success.

 

Thank you! i knew it was BS. They were not trying to push me into getting anything else and said they have done it many times but just couldn't recommend doing it.

I'll take your guys word over theirs any day of the week. I may still have them do the machining as they look like good people but now i feel alittle iffy.

 

If not them, WHERE can i take my block to. I'm in the washington DC area. i'l drive where ever it takes to get the work done right.

 

call and get extreme to do it if you wanna spend big bucks. next in line pricewise would be altered atmosphere. they have the worlds fastest 3000gt/stealth. when i was considering a rebuild, they quoted me 600 for labor, but i'd give altered atmosphere a shot first. if they're still too high, maybe try EIP tuning in westminster MD. or if you want a small shop to do it, theres a place in baltimore county, called JB's auto machine. they know there shit with domestics, but they do imports too

 

Take your motor elsewhere. They are wrong.

BTW- it sounds like they are just trying to sell you thier internals.

 

again thanks im going to look into other shops. Extreme quoted me $1600 WTF! This is way out of my budget. all i need is the rotating assemably assumbled with new bearings, im doing all the other labor to the block. WHAT IS A REASONABLE PRICE?

 

If you trust their machine work you could still take it there. Just make sure they do what you want and only what you want.

 

dont know how much this helps but the guy i take all my stuff to in town does remarkable work, id trust him with anything.

The bill for a V6 i built a couple years back was ~3k canadain so figure 2K USD. that included most parts and assembly of the heads. so id guess that half the bill was parts and the other half labour. (balancing, cleaning, cyl boring/honing, etc, nothing fancy but all the stuff that should be done)
So think ~1k USD for the labour, and might be a little less for a 4cyl.

 

yeah and i'm not even letting them touch the head, all i need is the block preped. that means new main bearings, hone the mains and bore/hone the cylinder. install the 2G pistons on the big rods and install them on the crank with new bearings. If they give me a reasonable quote i want them to hot tank the block as well.

my budget is probly around $600 ... what do you guys think?

 

I go to this place in Richmond called H&M machine shop. They do honest, quality work. They charged me $250 to install new valve seals, cam seals, and do a 3 angle valve job on my 63T head. They also hot tanked, lubed, and reassembled everything so it was ready to go that afternoon.(I dropped it off at about 10:00a.m. and picked it up around 3:00p.m. the same day)

They could definitely do what you need(bore, hone, assemble) for alot less than $600. They have experience with the 4g63t. I can give you their number if you like.

 

Jackson Auto is a pretty good place for machine work. They do an excellent job at what they do and they are one of the few places in the tri-state (DC, VA, MD) that has a torque plate. Take your stuff there and have them do the work. If they want to explain something about machining then listen, if they want to talk to you about parts tune them out.

 

I have deal with Jackson Auto Machine and used some oftheir products, which I have been satisfied with, but they don't build my motors. I know their race motors don't run any balance shafts and I have spoken to them many times. I never heard them mention leaving the balance shafts in the motor, but then I never discussed daily driver motors either.

I have had several motors built by the same private machinist and almost every 4G63 crank I have sent for him to balance is almost perfect from the factory. He has seen enough that I don't even get cranks done for driver motors anymore just the rods(they tend to be alittle further out). He also sees no harm in running no balance shafts because the 4G63 are such greatly balanced motors from the factory. For an application under 500 flywheel HP I normally use forged pistons(bad luck with factories) and 1G rods.

My cousin has been running the same motor for 2 years on JEs/1G rods and an untouched crank with no balance shafts. He daily drives it and uses it as his weekend racer with great success. The only thing my machinist is picky about is the use of a harmonic balancer. If you upgrade to an aluminum underdrive pully (Unorthadox,etc.) it has no balancer. Even if the pulley is balanced it won't help eliminate crank vibrations. However Buschur, Extreme, FP and Turbotrix, along with a few others offer an upgrade crank pully wiht a damper.

If you feel comfortable with the 2G pistons I say get the motor built as you planned. The only reccommendation I have is use a crank pully with a damper.

 

If not them, WHERE can i take my block to. I'm in the washington DC area. i'l drive where ever it takes to get the work done right.

There's a machine shop in Frederick called Gunther's. A few of my friends (3 run 10's) have had their block and heads done there, they do good work, definitely one of the best in the DC/Baltimore area.

 

I've heard of Gunther's but I was not aware that they have a torque plate? Do they have one?

 

Jackson Auto Machine is very reputable, well equipped and experienced shop I wouldn't have problems to trust even with my own block. Either they exaggerated or you misinterpreted them, but there's a little truth to every of their claims. Putting 95 pistons (or any but the OEM 7.8:1 pistons for that matter) no big rods without having the crank counterweight/piston + rod combo ratio brought back to OEM specs and rebalancing the crank in the process may be, in fact, less reliable than the original OEM configuration. There's a reason why one shouldn't be running the butcher and randomly knife-edged cranks on the street or just bolting any kind of rods with any kind of pistons to the stock crank since the counterweights of the crank weren't designed randomly either - and their mass was calculated and matched to the specific piston + rod combos. Of course, no one ever bothers to take the fact even to consideration while wondering why his built block didn't last. It also pays off to have the oil passage plugs of the crank pulled and clean all the crap that accumulated in there for the past 14 years.
As for the balance shafts removal, they're there to help to cancel the harmonic frequences of the engine as well as reduce the natural vibrations of the rotating assembly associated with every I-4. Removing the balance shafts may promote material fatigue of the components of the rotating assembly, but those issues are rarely associated with our engines (although cases of cranks split in half, thrown rods and shattered flywheels are well known and documented). Although utilizing smaller and lighter rotating assembly, the Mirage block doesn't use the balance shafts straight from the factory while being very similar in construction to our blocks - which could be used as an argument in favour of the balance shafts removal in our blocks as well.
As for acidikjuice's budget and expectations, $600 won't get you too far and many corners will have to be cut, which may result in decreased reliability of the engine. If you want to build a reliable race engine, hot-tanking, magnafluxing and sonic-testing the block is just the start. Weight-matching the rods and pistons while assigning them to individual cylinders during blueprinting and prepping the crank is not cheap. Any monkey can slap together a 4-banger in less than an hour, but there's a huge difference between building a POS street engine that will not survive 20K miles without crankwalking or throwing a rod and top-of-the-line reliable race engine. Of course, not everyone wants or can afford some mega-buck beast that will support 900 HP, but one should be aware of the fact that the more corners he cuts, the less reliable the rebuilt engine is going to be - especially if mixing components that weren't designed to work together in the first place. Can you have the 95 pistons put on the big 6-bolt rods, the block machined and the rotating assembly assembled for $600? Most likely yes, but one can also spend just a couple of hundred bucks for some cheap junk tires, Maaco paint job or listen to the stock radio through the stock speakers. There's nothing wrong with that and it's obvious that if you're using the cheap TopLine rebuild kit and only consider hot-tanking the block, the reliability and performance of the engine aren't the highest priorities and requirements you're after. In that aspect, having the block torque-plate honed or Jackson Auto Machine do the work would be unecessary overkill. The engine you're building might not be the most bad-ass wonder ever built or last for ever, but it'll do for some mildly moded street car on a tight budget.

 

well said taboo. i agree that my $600 budget was unrelisticly low. i did go there today and we work out a vary nice setup. i tossed the topline pistons, going with JE's on the big rods. Putting on JE pistons that were ment for the 1G 6-bolt would address your concern with counter blance weight/viberation, correct?

after hearing what you said, i guess that in some respects the shop was 100% correct about what they told me. They are the nicest people i have ever done DSM bussness with. They didn't rush or make me seem like my job was too small! The orginal est. they gave me for over $2000 was the full blown setup. i got about $700 worth of labor and about $400 worth of parts including oil pump, pistons and rings, bearings ect. nothing in the block was going to be topline except the pistons .. but not anymore i guess.

i don't want my post to seem like a slam at jackson, i was just surprised because i had read so much good things about what i thought was a good setup, and they told me it was not. Jackson could have easily done good work for under $600 because they had an est for 550 when i got there, before i had said anything to them. THEY ARE AN EXTREMLY GOOD SHOP, i was just thrown off and disappointed when they told me my crap was just that, crap.

One more question: should i pay the extra $250 to have them assemble the bottom end? i took it apart mysaelf with no fuss or confusion, so i don't see why not? or is there some hidden techinical aspect im missing here that would justify the cost? sorry i don't mean to sound so dumb but if it is worth it then i will bite another pay check and let them do it.

Thanks again you guys, BTW my name is william. i'v been here so long and can't thank you all enough for the help.

 

Yes, its a good idea to have them assemble it.

If not then you need you should at least get with someone that has done it successfully before. There are things such as aligning the thrust brearing, checking the ring gaps, etc. that should be performed if you want your engine to actually run and stay running for any length of time.

 

I deal with jackson very frequently and know them very well. They are great to deal with and wont give you bullshit info. They wouldnt tell you something isnt a good setup unless it really wasnt. They will give you the info they have found to be the most useful. I'm sure they have built more motors in their life than everyone on this site combined. I would take the advice of someone who has built 8 sec motors over some jacksass on here that has a 13 sec motor and blows it up every month. They are good people and only want to see you build a RELIABLE and fast motor

 

by the way I love the piston with the valve head stuck in it!!

 

One more question: should i pay the extra $250 to have them assemble the bottom end? i took it apart mysaelf with no fuss or confusion, so i don't see why not? or is there some hidden techinical aspect im missing here that would justify the cost?

It depends on how big chances you're willing to take just to save $250 and how much reliablity is worth to you, but, in your case, I'd say you should let them do the assembly since the probability of the block being assembled correctly is nearly 100% (or at least much higher than in case of doing it yourself) - if performed by Jackson Auto Machine. The days of slapping the engine together with Plastigauge and feeler gauges are long gone and may possibly apply to some low-RPM old Chevy 350 built on very tight budget and put in some beat up truck, but building a modern high-RPM performance engine requires specialized tools and fair amount of experience not everyone has. I'm not saying that there's no way in hell you could do it yourself, but would have to invest into a set of calipers, bore gauges, dial indicator, ring filer, etc. and really take your time.

 

I wouldn't go with JE pistons for a daily driver. The metalurgy of the piston makes them prone to expansion and contraction, which leads to scoring the walls of the block. I recommend Ross pistons.

 

Yeah when i was gonna get a rebuilt block i didn't hear anything positive about the JE's. but on a sidenote about assembly of the block and all, i'd let them do it all, at least that way you should get some kind of a warranty with it, aside from them saying *oh, well we guarantee that it'll start. after that yr on yr own*

 

Yeah that valve is nice and stuck in there! i'm gonna keep that one as a show off too bad i can't say i wacked it in there myself.

so they will be putting it together is all i can say. i stopped being a cheap ass after you guys got on me for it so i guess everything will turn out alright now so thanks!

So no JE's? just get the ross pistons? okay i'll do some jmore searching.

 

Interesting, I have had two street motors built with JE and both have been running and are still running well(good comp checks) for the past 2 years, one is still daily driven 20+ miles a day. I have heard other complaints of JEs piston slapping, no problems their either. I believe most of peoples' problems arise from shotty machine work.