I am going to look at this guy's ls / hydro b16 setup he's got for sale and he says it only has around 60K miles on both. I have never bought a motor and trans from anyone personally. I've always bought from retailers. My question is, what should I ask the guy about the motor specifically and what should i look for to make sure he isn't selling me trash? They are together but not in a car, so i can't test drive... Please help a guy out n give me some tips.

 

A compression test would be good, but with it out of the car you'd need to set it up on a engine rig with a starter to do a compression test. That's pretty much the only test you can do to determine an engine's health besides taking it apart. Either way, almost any engine can be fixed with some machine work. A warped head or block would be the worst (possibly unfixable depending on severity) problems. You need to take the head off and put a straight edge across each angle of the head and deck surface, put a feeler gauge under the straight edge to determine how much clearance difference there is between the outside edges and the inside edges. If it's warped, I wouldn't touch it.

Could have other problems that you won't see without measurement, such as camshaft wear, journal straightness, etc.

Most people are going to lie through the teeth. I can't imagine someone telling you, "Yeah, I dogged the sh** out of it everywhere I went until it started smoking and clunking". It's usually "I babied it the whole time. Ran great when I took it out."

 

My friend alerted me that you can do a backyard compression test with the engine out of the car using an air wrench to spin the crankshaft. So, tools needed : air compressor, impact wrench, socket, compression test kit. It sounded good when he talked about it. I can't wait to try it out myself.

 

60k is BS!