For $5k, Chevy Will Let You Assemble Your Corvette Z06’s Engine Yourself (2015)
caranddriver.com
caranddriver.com
It turned out to be an amazing experience. I stripped the truck down to a bare frame and built a brand-new rolling chassis [2] with new motor [3], transmission, transfer case, and suspension. I moved the old body over onto the new chassis, which gave it a sort of retro look with proper period-correct gear but the reliability of all-new parts. The shop owner was there to direct me what to start on next, to answer questions when I got stuck, and to help me lift the really heavy things, but for the most part, I wrenched alone.
Over eight weekends of work, I went from knowing how to do only the most basic of maintenance (oil changes, etc.) to being quite confident that I could do another project just like this entirely on my own. The cost was about the same as paying someone else to do the work but I can be confident that everything was done right--every bolt torqued correctly, every dirty thing cleaned, every broken thing replaced. I take my truck out to the desert for multi-week camping trips and the experience gave me much-needed confidence in my ability, my tools, and my gear.
[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/albums/721576407048...
[2] https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/13052224614/in/albu...
[3] https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/12399960314/in/albu...
Is it something that is advertised by the shop? In what location (or region) was this? What was the expectation in terms of timeframe, and how many hours were you typically putting into the project in any given week? If you're comfortable, shop info/specifics would be great but no worries if not.
Awesome outcome BTW, and is something you can be very proud of and continually enjoy -- love it!
The offroading community is huge and tight knit.
Once the truck was rolling, I took it back to my house to finish up the non-essential things, like wiring up the speedometer and aftermarket things like my winch and bumper. There were a bunch of little things that needed to be solved and the last 5% of the build took at least 50% of the time, mostly due to having to air-freight less common parts from the U.K.
Defenders Northwest is owned by Brian Hall and he's a great guy to work with. However, if you're seriously interested in Defenders, take some time to do the basic research on your own before calling a builder. I run one of the big Defender forums, NAS-ROW (NAS being "North American Spec" and ROW, "Rest-of-World" spec). https://nas-row.com - lots of info there.
Your many new friends will alert you when opportunities like this come up.
This could be a nice thing to try.
anecdote: I remember when I bought my first laptop (2nd hand on ebay... foolish) I was very very nervous at every sign of failure. After a few years of dabbling in electronics (rpi fad helped) my fears are almost all gone; I know I can intervene easily on a third of low level issues (blown component, broken trace/wire/contact), and may hack on other things. It's not a bad feeling.
Yep, this is why it's frequently more economic to dispose of or resell something old and buy a new replacement, rather than to repair it. Factories are far, far more efficient at making things than repair shops, and also don't have the problems of doing things incorrectly (it happens in factories but a couple of orders of magnitude less frequently), or running a scam.
Repairing things frequently only really makes sense if you're doing the work yourself.
After repairing a few appliances and laptops I think there's potential for less difficult products to repair. But it requires cultural shift (very difficult) into crowds that like poking into things. It's not all good, it kills some of the magic of buying a box. But it's not devoid of pleasure either, there's beauty in how minute things are done and done well; it's just a different kind of pleasure.
Because of all this, repair ends up being disproportionately expensive. It doesn't help that it's usually not done by the original manufacturer, but instead by others seeking to profit on failed devices.
You seem to be arguing for DIY repair, which I only partially addressed before. I'm not talking about that. Most people cannot repair their own devices: many simply do not have the aptitude for it, and many other have no desire to do so. Repair can be dirty work, or even dangerous, and also require special tools. Replacing an axle on a FWD car, for instance, can be very difficult for backyard mechanics because getting the axle nut off is extremely difficult as it's a large nut and torqued to a high degree, and after years of age and corrosion gets even tighter. I've seen videos of people using 6-foot extension bars to break them loose, and even then failing sometimes, and sometimes they resort to using the car's starter motor to assist, which is just plain dangerous. But a handheld air impact wrench can usually get them off pretty easily. But most DIYers don't have air compressors and impact wrenches like this; they're not that cheap. Aside from difficult axle nuts, car repairs in general can frequently be dirty, and a good way to get your hands cut up. There's nothing wrong with doing this stuff yourself (I do), but to expect for instance some 50 year old woman who has zero mechanical skills and very little arm/hand strength to take on this stuff is silly, and even with more able people, many people these days don't even have a place where they're able or allowed to work on cars (apartment/condo parking lots for instance usually don't allow this).
That's automotive repair, which many people at least are able to grasp intuitively, and the simpler jobs are able to be done with some simple hand tools (wrenches etc.). How about electronics? I'm sorry, you can't expect someone with a background in law (for instance) to be able to use an oscilloscope to diagnose a failing electronic part. People go to engineering school to learn about that kind of thing, it's not something just anyone can be expected to do. Even doing simple electronic repairs with a soldering iron is out-of-reach for most people; I've taught laypeople how to solder, and it's like welding: there's a lot of technique, and not just anyone can master it. It's easy to do a poor job, or to even damage the thing you're repairing.
The point to all this is that we have specialization of labor for a reason (some people are better at certain tasks than others), and that repair specialists exist for a reason: because there's a market for them because many people can't/won't repair things themselves. But by its very nature, repair is not and never will be as efficient as factory assembly. Also, technology improves: repairing a 1965 vehicle might be fun for some, but it'll never have the fuel efficiency, reliability, or safety of a brand-new vehicle (unless maybe you severely modify it, which brings us to a Ship of Theseus argument). At some point, except for a museum relic, it just makes more sense to dispose of the old and buy new. I know I, for one, do not want to be involved in a crash in any pre-2000 vehicle rather than my mid-2010s car. And given how inexpensive many manufactured products are, compared to the labor rates of qualified repairpeople (plus the risk factor of them doing it wrong, intentionally or not), there's a certain point where it just doesn't make economic sense to repair. However, when you're DIYing (or paying a friend with beer), that calculus changes. I will say that YouTube videos and other sources of information on the internet have really helped a lot here too in making repairs more accessible and feasible for many things.
Say for instance that the alternator plug breaks (because it is made of cheap plastic), but a new part is available. But this means potentially removing everything that was installed after the alternator, and even then you may need to remove more stuff to get at the correct bolts. Some of the stuff you remove may be plastic clips that were only intended to be installed, never removed. Some of it may be rusty or had been replaced by some other third party part that wasn't exactly the same and now interferes. It's so easy for a simple part swap to eat up many hours of labor and additional parts due to the design of the engine.
I did realize how much complexity [1] there was, but at the same time I'm not sold on the possibility of people capable of repairing. Designing would be another level, but repairing .. maybe.
[1] also there's a human element of going to see someone to service you. You get to enjoy the result, he gets to enjoy producing happiness through something complex he/she wanted to master and earn a living through it. Before that i had zero interest in letting others benefit from this and wanted to do everything.
Also if you visit the factory make sure you visit the Corvette museum across the road. The most interesting thing about that museum is a good section of it was swallowed up by a sinkhole. Many corvettes were swallowed up. Most were restored but several were totaled to disrepair. You can see them on display and shed a tear. There is a good section of the museum dedicated to the sinkhole mishap.
What should be done is to make sure museums are located in extremely safe places, both from natural forces (like sinkholes, hurricanes, etc.) and also from political problems (this means putting valuable artifacts in certain countries is probably a bad idea).
"Under the Purchase Tax system of the time cars supplied as a kit (known as "completely knocked down" or CKD) did not attract the tax surcharge that would apply if sold in assembled form. Tax rules specified assembly instructions could not be included, but as the rules said nothing about the inclusion of disassembly instructions, they were included instead and all the enthusiast had to do was to follow them in reverse.[citation needed] However, once the UK joined the EEC on 1 January 1973, the VAT system was adopted instead so the tax advantage of the kit-built Lotus Seven came to an end."
The car is still sold as the Caterham 7, still available in kit form.
Contrast this with companies like Apple and Tesla, who attempt to maintain tight control over their products and use legal action against those who want to "open them up".
(From what I've seen, European and Asian automotive companies are somewhat less open, but once again there is still a large aftermarket.)
It adds to the romanticism and involvement. The original GT40 Le Mans car from the 60s that originally beat Ferrari was built from parts that you could go to your local Ford dealer and order. Maybe I'm wrong but I think that if you had enough money at the time you could actually buy all of the parts to build the same .427 they were using in the professional races. Pretty cool.
The GT40 was a bespoke race car built to settle a grudge. Henry Ford II wanted to beat Enzo Ferrari at his own game after the sale of Ferrari to Ford fell through. Ford failed to beat Ferrari in their early attempts with the GT40 and the entire car went through several revisions to reach the LeMans winning form. These were not typical parts and I would be surprised if they were widely available.
Also, domestic US engine displacements were given in cubic inches. In this case a Ford 7 liter engine is 427 (whole) cubic inches. A period is not prefixed because it is not a fractional measure.
Back then, you could order performance parts from dealerships and whole engines. Could you walk in and order a gt40 engine? I have looked and have not found a part number. However, some race engines did not have part numbers because they were aftermarket parts.
https://performanceparts.ford.com/engines/
http://www.chevrolet.com/performance/crate-engines
http://www.chevrolet.com/performance/connect-cruise-powertra... up to 727 horsepower, with transmission and electronics included and ready to go. Connect and Cruise.
Nowadays, an LS crate engine and a smallish turbo can get you 600 wheel horsepower on pump gas.
Chevy has an extensive offering of "crate engines", given equal billing with its performance car models. Ford also has a "performance parts" site selling everything from engines on down. I had no idea.
I couldn't find anything similar for Toyota or BMW; their "performance" parts catalogs seem to consist only of superficial accessories like steering wheel covers.
Not quite true. Toyota Racing Development (TRD) does sell performance accessories (superchargers) for some engines. BMW has M Performance and you could put some of the M Performance parts on a non M vehicle if you wanted to.
Other manufacturers also sell fully built race cars for customers to buy and race (Blancpain GT Race series).
You can get aftermarket non-OEM versions of practically every part except for the chassis for old Nissan Skylines and Silvias.
If accepting that people can die if they make poor decisions, which they ought be allowed to, was a thing - I would be right there with you. But today everybody wants somebody to blame for everything, especially with new technologies, and when freedom enables people to make bad decisions that can hurt a manufacturer much more than help them.
While their primary motivation might be greed, I'm not convinced it is. Apple on the other hand...
Apple has been pretty lenient with the Hackintosh community -- but that may be coming to an end, if Apple moves away from intel.
My last place of employment wanted to do something similar, but it was shot down by the owners once they determined that practically every shop insurance provider flat-out said no. That $5000 fee is likely just for OSHA and your insurance company to look the other way in a state where regulations arent so stringent. All of us as vehicle techs also said no.
The average luxury customer isnt qualified to do much more than sit in the waiting room and watch an episode or two of Ricky Lake. Luxury customers betray an absolutely criminal lack of self control sometimes. Ive had customers wander back into the shop to stand over my shoulder demanding to know everything im doing and why. Ive had an old persian customer who demanded to drive his car home that day and wouldnt leave the shop until I completed the week long work. Ive also had wealthy couples leave their kids in the car. Another customer demanded I never drive the car or sit in it. Point being: anyone stupid enough to waste $5000 on the chance to work on an engine they couldnt possibly understand on their own, isnt going to be someone you want in a shop. Dynastic wealth leaves you with a Reaganomic level of competency.
The z06 is only an $84,000 car, but If i were the mechanic who had to deal with $5000 tourists chasing piston return springs across the shop floor and pulling main bearings out of their kids mouths, I'd do everything I could to find a new job.
I bet they do get some terrible customers but that’s what the $5,000 is for — to make it worth it for them.
This isn't targeted at the "average luxury consumer", it's targeted at someone who is willing to spend $5K to do this as a vacation. I used to see a lot of Corvettes at the autocross events, and that average owner knew more than a thing or two about mechanicals.
Now, if this program was "You can SAVE $5K by assembling your own engine.", you are probably going to get a lot of idiots. The people willing to pay $5K are probably going to be intense enthusiasts, and in my experience those people could do this job.
Not all of them, of course. The kids that brought a GTR and a Sylvia to the track for open track day, and then proceeded to be trounced by pretty much everything else on the track, I wouldn't want putting together my engine. :-) They weren't happy at not being able to keep up with Miatas in the hands of very skilled drivers with R compound tires. :-)
900kN of thrust, and when the bell cracks you can just cut off the cracked part!
So yes and no.
It will probably depend on a given recipient/vendor/repairer/whatever values making a fuss of the customer over plain technical competency or not.
For want of a better want to articulate this, I've just realized that it probably happens all the time for people with tons of money to like "helping" with things, and cause irritating damage in the process.
(And that's not including every-day micro-manglement in some large proportion of work environments everywhere in the world... or the client horror stories everyone has...)
Check out the Tonowanda engine plant online
https://www.gilmorecarmuseum.org/education/model-t-driving-s...
I know it makes for very good marketing, but is that it?
Why not buy it used and fix it yourself? Cheaper, more fun, puts hair on your chest, gives you proper bragging rights, puts marketing departments in their place