Hmm well I'm not to sure where to post this, but i guess I'll put it here.

I want to build(not super race spec, just basically tinker around) a motor, but I'm not sure which motor to get. I don't have a Honda and i won't be using the motor on any cars i just wanna build one and then sell it to someone so they can put it in their car. Any recommendations on which motor will hold it's value the best? b16, k20, etc.?

Sorry if this out of place mods, feel free to delete.

-Curtis


Modified by hoodrider at 7:22 PM 4/12/2007


Modified by hoodrider at 7:22 PM 4/12/2007

 

i think you'd probably lose money building it yourself and trying to sell it.. maybe even break even, especially if you are paying someone to build it for you

 

I'm not talking about doing a whole bunch of specialty work, just taking it apart doing basic work and installing some performance parts. I'm in school for engineering right now and i want to get experience with engines so when i graduate i know what I'm doing.

 

i hate to say this to you, and it will probably sound odd coming from me to most people, but i think you should quit before you even get started, you actually still have the chance to get out of it that a lot of us dont.

say you build one engine.. it starts with the first thousand dollars worth of tools. then youve got those tools, so you might as well put them to use doing another engine. then someone wants to pay you a little, and now it makes sense to reinvest that money into more tools. the problem with this business is that there is no end to the reinvestment, its a disease. and you get to be the little guy who has to compete against 30 yr established businesses with well over a million in equipment, full time employees, insurance for when it goes wrong and so forth.
there are only a few types of engine builders. we all start at the bottom with minimal equipment doing relatively crappy work for lack of options. one half either doesnt know or care that theyre doing **** work. their reputation keeps them scrounging for bottom dollar poor customers, and thats a shitty life, fast road to grease stained fingers, a sore back and a stack of unpaid bills, angry customers...
the other half invests every cent into better equipment in order to achieve the better results that will fetch a higher paying customer. the problem with this is that if you actually do good work, your little business takes off uncontrollably fast and just completely consumes your life. i cant hide from my cell phone and i swear, work 300 days straight.. no amount of money will make you feel good. the sacrifices that half of us here are making for engines is obsessive, myself included. ive missed out on a lot of life and im still as broke as when i started, except now i HAVE to make thousands to pay for it every month. slave to my own machine, and it isnt as glamorous as anyone makes it sound. you dont even wanna see the cars i drive for lack of time to wrench on anything of my own.

you're going to be an engineer, that means engineering. read your internal combustion, fluid dynamics and heat transfer books. the engineers work with equations in an office, not engines on the plant floor. it's a mechanic's job to have the $5,800 snap-on tab, not yours.

i started off with the exact same sentance as you just typed in this thread, and its forced me out of college 3 times. how i wish i could go back. think about where you are headed.

 

if you decide to go ahead, plan to lose all of your money for atleast 4 years.

 

Mike, that is good advice but really.. what are the chances he is going to listen? Live and learn...

I do want to talk about job satisfaction though..

I am an engineer and I also manage to put out a few motors each year... the satisfaction from cranking my new motor cannot be compared to my daily boring engineering job..

Most of us have bills to pay, one way or the other.. but if you can do what you love and get paid for it, then I say you are succesful.

 

keep your head up mike

 

Engineering is a great profession. There is the satisfaction of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realisation in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings homes to men or women. Then it elevates the standard of living and adds to the comforts of life. This is the engineer's high privilege.
- Hoover

i would much rather struggle threw life holding onto my passion than spend my days waiting for something to be passionate about.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by mike_belben@yahoo.com &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">i hate to say this to you, and it will probably sound odd coming from me to most people, but i think you should quit before you even get started, you actually still have the chance to get out of it that a lot of us dont.

say you build one engine.. it starts with the first thousand dollars worth of tools. then youve got those tools, so you might as well put them to use doing another engine. then someone wants to pay you a little, and now it makes sense to reinvest that money into more tools. the problem with this business is that there is no end to the reinvestment, its a disease. and you get to be the little guy who has to compete against 30 yr established businesses with well over a million in equipment, full time employees, insurance for when it goes wrong and so forth.
there are only a few types of engine builders. we all start at the bottom with minimal equipment doing relatively crappy work for lack of options. one half either doesnt know or care that theyre doing **** work. their reputation keeps them scrounging for bottom dollar poor customers, and thats a shitty life, fast road to grease stained fingers, a sore back and a stack of unpaid bills, angry customers...
the other half invests every cent into better equipment in order to achieve the better results that will fetch a higher paying customer. the problem with this is that if you actually do good work, your little business takes off uncontrollably fast and just completely consumes your life. i cant hide from my cell phone and i swear, work 300 days straight.. no amount of money will make you feel good. the sacrifices that half of us here are making for engines is obsessive, myself included. ive missed out on a lot of life and im still as broke as when i started, except now i HAVE to make thousands to pay for it every month. slave to my own machine, and it isnt as glamorous as anyone makes it sound. you dont even wanna see the cars i drive for lack of time to wrench on anything of my own.

you're going to be an engineer, that means engineering. read your internal combustion, fluid dynamics and heat transfer books. the engineers work with equations in an office, not engines on the plant floor. it's a mechanic's job to have the $5,800 snap-on tab, not yours.

i started off with the exact same sentance as you just typed in this thread, and its forced me out of college 3 times. how i wish i could go back. think about where you are headed.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I appreciate the advice and warning. I geuss i need to rephrase what i'm trying to say.

I'm a very money conscious person and i usually can't invest tons of money into anything so i won't be out of college because of an engine. I don't want to be an engine builder, if i could work as an engine creator for an automotive company it would be ideal, to get to this point will be extremely hard. As you probably know reading books doesn't count for **** these days. I know that if i get my degree, but i know my way around an engine/car i will have a far better opportunity of getting the job i want.

I'm not looking to build up a nice engine i geuss right now i want some shitty old engine to take apart and tinker with, i just like to get my hands dirty and look at stuff i guess.

I know i probably can't get an engine for free so I'm looking for the best engine to get that i will lose the least amount of money with.

-Curtis

 

i posted that for anyone thinking about taking the plunge really.

i know all about passion, i let it drag my entire life into this whirlpool. dont get me wrong, its treated me well. i got a full time job 4 months ago making $21.55 an hour when times were tough. right now im losing about $30 an hour going to work for them every night instead of myself. one downside is that steady money is worth more than sporatic money. the real downside is when your passion starts to kick the **** out of you and you start resenting it for all the opportunities it's costing.

if you believe books wont help get you there, then they probably wont. as for me, i couldnt have done any of what i have without them. there arent enough lifetimes for me to live to figure it all out alone.

you can get all the D series engines you want for free if you're willing to do a little hustling.

 

That's why, despite my love of cars and bikes, I've never wanted to be a mechanic, engine builder, or head porter. In the past, when I've had jobs where I worked on cars, I always found it frustrating and it got old fast. I never wanted to work on my own personal stuff after doing it all day at work, and it started to make me hate a hobby that I used to enjoy.

 

Don't take me wrong i think books are great and i read tons of them. They give you a direction to and a basis to off of, but to a company nothing replaces experiance.

I have friends that love cars and so they went to school to be mechanics only to realize once the graduated they were only working on boring cars and it was too much work, now they have other jobs they could have gotten without the certification. I do admit i want to engineer new cars, but i have tons of other intrest in mechanical engineering that i can fall back on.

-curtis

PS good discussion, thanks everyone

 

Loyning's Engine Service. One of the best in the US, and in Portland. Have Arnie do all your machine work. And if you want it really want it right have him build it.

 

Find a D, like they said. Too bad you don't live by me, i would give you one for free, i need it gone anyways. If you have some extra cash, find an old honda, and start fixing it up. Rebuild the engine, so on. Personaly, i would never want to rebuild engines and what not for people. Too many factors that could go wrong. I love knowing that the engines i drive though, were done by me, and actually lasted (knock on wood) I wish i had the smarts to want to be in college back when i started in engineering. Now i have a finance degree, and just have my hobby. Since we are having fun with advise, anyone have any on how to get hooked up with a race team?

 

in hindsight, another mistake that i made was trying to build what everyone else was building right from the start. i spent a lot of money on trying to do a built B20vtec while simultaneously trying to put my machine shop together.. and the only thing i never found before running out of money was a block, so eventually i had to sell it all off.
i could have built 3 D series using stock parts id modded that would have hauled ***, and that would have helped me get paying customers earlier. instead i ran out of money so i couldnt build anything of my own to use as an "advertisement" and i had no reputation to charge anything reasonable for customer builds.. so for about a year i had to build motors so cheap that people couldnt say no, just to prove i could do it. im talking 100 hours in a motor for $500 type of ****, seriously. only now, 4 yrs later, am i getting what its worth.

so the average guy could have his built b20vtec done for him somewhere between $4-7k. TODAY i could do it myself for about $2k, but that wasnt until i spent $40k first.

D's may seem obscure, but if i built one that was mostly oem and eating up the local twirps' b16's id have been selling like hotcakes. everyone roots for the underdog, remember that. do more with less.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by coneheadsracing &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Find a D, like they said. Too bad you don't live by me, i would give you one for free, i need it gone anyways. If you have some extra cash, find an old honda, and start fixing it up. Rebuild the engine, so on. Personaly, i would never want to rebuild engines and what not for people. Too many factors that could go wrong. I love knowing that the engines i drive though, were done by me, and actually lasted (knock on wood) I wish i had the smarts to want to be in college back when i started in engineering. Now i have a finance degree, and just have my hobby. Since we are having fun with advise, anyone have any on how to get hooked up with a race team? </TD></TR></TABLE>

Cool thread. So looking back do you wish you had done engineering instead of finance? I'm in a similar boat....1 year left to finish my accounting/finance degree which I don't have much interest in, but constantly think I wish I had done engineering because of my interest in internal combustion engines, forced induction, efi tuning, and that all of my questions seem to be answered somewhere from deep within thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid dynamics. I'd rather read books about this stuff than about my business classes. Then again, is this the same case where turning your hobby into your job isn't a good idea?

 

If you dont have a honda and are not into hondas, it is not realistic to build an engine and expect to sell it... Noone is going to buy it. Unless you are a proven engine builder which is not the case

 

I'm not trying to sell for profit, i just wanna get an engine to tinker with and then sell it so i do not lose much money, but if i got and engine for free then i would probably just give it away after i was done.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by LeGeND4LiFe &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

Cool thread. So looking back do you wish you had done engineering instead of finance? I'm in a similar boat....1 year left to finish my accounting/finance degree which I don't have much interest in, but constantly think I wish I had done engineering because of my interest in internal combustion engines, forced induction, efi tuning, and that all of my questions seem to be answered somewhere from deep within thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid dynamics. I'd rather read books about this stuff than about my business classes. Then again, is this the same case where turning your hobby into your job isn't a good idea?

</TD></TR></TABLE>

Well, the good news is i can still do this as my hobby. So i am still having fun with it. HOwever, idealy i would love to work for a race team, doing engineering would be fun, i just like to theorize and play around. I have no issues with finance, it's just a bad part of the nation for me to find the ideal job with it. And moving is not really an option at this point in time. For me, i wish i had gotten out of highschool and headed somewhere to sweep floors in a race shop Oh well, now i guess i'll just build cars, and go to HPDE's still fun taking something you've made and beating the hell out of it

 

start with something cheap like a d15b2.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by mike_belben@yahoo.com &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">i hate to say this to you, and it will probably sound odd coming from me to most people, but i think you should quit before you even get started, you actually still have the chance to get out of it that a lot of us dont.

say you build one engine.. it starts with the first thousand dollars worth of tools. then youve got those tools, so you might as well put them to use doing another engine. then someone wants to pay you a little, and now it makes sense to reinvest that money into more tools. the problem with this business is that there is no end to the reinvestment, its a disease. and you get to be the little guy who has to compete against 30 yr established businesses with well over a million in equipment, full time employees, insurance for when it goes wrong and so forth.
there are only a few types of engine builders. we all start at the bottom with minimal equipment doing relatively crappy work for lack of options. one half either doesnt know or care that theyre doing **** work. their reputation keeps them scrounging for bottom dollar poor customers, and thats a shitty life, fast road to grease stained fingers, a sore back and a stack of unpaid bills, angry customers...
the other half invests every cent into better equipment in order to achieve the better results that will fetch a higher paying customer. the problem with this is that if you actually do good work, your little business takes off uncontrollably fast and just completely consumes your life. i cant hide from my cell phone and i swear, work 300 days straight.. no amount of money will make you feel good. the sacrifices that half of us here are making for engines is obsessive, myself included. ive missed out on a lot of life and im still as broke as when i started, except now i HAVE to make thousands to pay for it every month. slave to my own machine, and it isnt as glamorous as anyone makes it sound. you dont even wanna see the cars i drive for lack of time to wrench on anything of my own.

you're going to be an engineer, that means engineering. read your internal combustion, fluid dynamics and heat transfer books. the engineers work with equations in an office, not engines on the plant floor. it's a mechanic's job to have the $5,800 snap-on tab, not yours.

i started off with the exact same sentance as you just typed in this thread, and its forced me out of college 3 times. how i wish i could go back. think about where you are headed.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Well thats just ******* depressing.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by spun Vtec &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

Well thats just ******* depressing. </TD></TR></TABLE>

depressing but it's the truth, as im sure almost every job has a depressing side to it.

 

Damn mike, that's probably the most insightful post i've ever seen on H-T.

 

it is depressing. ask around, see how many days off brad takes in a month, ask how often larry gets to take a vacation, or how easy it is to find a manager for an engine building business. those with the talent to do it already have their hands full.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by mike_belben@yahoo.com &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">i hate to say this to you, and it will probably sound odd coming from me to most people, but i think you should quit before you even get started, you actually still have the chance to get out of it that a lot of us dont.

say you build one engine.. it starts with the first thousand dollars worth of tools. then youve got those tools, so you might as well put them to use doing another engine. then someone wants to pay you a little, and now it makes sense to reinvest that money into more tools. the problem with this business is that there is no end to the reinvestment, its a disease. and you get to be the little guy who has to compete against 30 yr established businesses with well over a million in equipment, full time employees, insurance for when it goes wrong and so forth.
there are only a few types of engine builders. we all start at the bottom with minimal equipment doing relatively crappy work for lack of options. one half either doesnt know or care that theyre doing **** work. their reputation keeps them scrounging for bottom dollar poor customers, and thats a shitty life, fast road to grease stained fingers, a sore back and a stack of unpaid bills, angry customers...
the other half invests every cent into better equipment in order to achieve the better results that will fetch a higher paying customer. the problem with this is that if you actually do good work, your little business takes off uncontrollably fast and just completely consumes your life. i cant hide from my cell phone and i swear, work 300 days straight.. no amount of money will make you feel good. the sacrifices that half of us here are making for engines is obsessive, myself included. ive missed out on a lot of life and im still as broke as when i started, except now i HAVE to make thousands to pay for it every month. slave to my own machine, and it isnt as glamorous as anyone makes it sound. you dont even wanna see the cars i drive for lack of time to wrench on anything of my own.

you're going to be an engineer, that means engineering. read your internal combustion, fluid dynamics and heat transfer books. the engineers work with equations in an office, not engines on the plant floor. it's a mechanic's job to have the $5,800 snap-on tab, not yours.

i started off with the exact same sentance as you just typed in this thread, and its forced me out of college 3 times. how i wish i could go back. think about where you are headed.</TD></TR></TABLE>Couldnt agree with you more Mike.It's a very rough life in this biz,nowhere as glamorus as people think.I didnt even get to goto Morroso the other week I was at the shop working all weekend till 11 pm,and I'm just anemployee now,lol. .It takes the love of what your doing not money to keep you in this game.