Great process and quality control GM...

[ProPower engines]

I don't have much experience with 250's but surely you're joking about a U-joint on the distributor...aren't you??

Thanks
Randy

Sloppy GM core shifts and machining is nothing new.I was building a 50's GMC 302 inline 6 for performance. The lack of stamped numbers meant this was a replacement short block.The standard bores were off their centers,the block deck tilted side to side and front to back,the connecting rod centers varied about .006. But the main bearing bores were perfect....The engine will function as intended ,but.......
The last years of GM 250 inline engine had an HEI ignition.Many of the HEI's have a U joint on the shaft. A U-joint? A GM power plant engineer told me the machining was so sloppy the distributor bored hole was cocked causing warranty issues with worn distributor bushings.The U joint was an easier fix than trying to get the tooling sharpened and set up correctly.
I heard that it was common for GM to use dull or poorly set up tooling .These orders came from management trying to save a few cents. I'm sure the other auto makers did the same but GM was the biggest so it made more sloppy stuff.

U/joint in the dist. shaft you bet.
There was a ton of them engines that failed a cam or dist. gear on a regular basis and I have seen the split shaft thats pinned to for a u/joint.
We make our own lower shaft for the 6cyl. class's that run the 250 engine as there is so much misalignment of the cam gear and dist. gear they wear out in no time driving a std oil pump above 3000 rpm

[Kevin Johnson]

If you go to a mini CV joint you will probably pick up some power by removing the spark scatter that would come from a u-joint. It is only money.

I don't have much experience with 250's but surely you're joking about a U-joint on the distributor...aren't you??

Thanks
Randy

Sloppy GM core shifts and machining is nothing new.I was building a 50's GMC 302 inline 6 for performance. The lack of stamped numbers meant this was a replacement short block.The standard bores were off their centers,the block deck tilted side to side and front to back,the connecting rod centers varied about .006. But the main bearing bores were perfect....The engine will function as intended ,but.......
The last years of GM 250 inline engine had an HEI ignition.Many of the HEI's have a U joint on the shaft. A U-joint? A GM power plant engineer told me the machining was so sloppy the distributor bored hole was cocked causing warranty issues with worn distributor bushings.The U joint was an easier fix than trying to get the tooling sharpened and set up correctly.
I heard that it was common for GM to use dull or poorly set up tooling .These orders came from management trying to save a few cents. I'm sure the other auto makers did the same but GM was the biggest so it made more sloppy stuff.

U/joint in the dist. shaft you bet.
There was a ton of them engines that failed a cam or dist. gear on a regular basis and I have seen the split shaft thats pinned to for a u/joint.
We make our own lower shaft for the 6cyl. class's that run the 250 engine as there is so much misalignment of the cam gear and dist. gear they wear out in no time driving a std oil pump above 3000 rpm

[Grocerius Maximus]

People keep talking about 'the good old days' but fail to show me average cars that lasted 200K+ miles on minor tune ups and regular fluid changes. Modern production materials, machine work, and QC is *far* better than it used to be. Humans still make bad decisions.

[stokerboats]

Based on my personal driving experience with my 2011 Silverado the GM quality has never been better. Anyone can take one example from any manufacturer and tear it to shreds.

[ProPower engines]

Based on my personal driving experience with my 2011 Silverado the GM quality has never been better. Anyone can take one example from any manufacturer and tear it to shreds.

Withv the bail out they got they should be putting quality into the road vehicles.
But the fact still remains is that they put all the reject parts into crate engines and that fact alone would deterr me from buying one.
Not to mention the 40-50 I have seen fail because of various reasons directly related to QC during assembly

[stokerboats]

Based on my personal driving experience with my 2011 Silverado the GM quality has never been better. Anyone can take one example from any manufacturer and tear it to shreds.

Withv the bail out they got they should be putting quality into the road vehicles.
But the fact still remains is that they put all the reject parts into crate engines and that fact alone would deterr me from buying one.
Not to mention the 40-50 I have seen fail because of various reasons directly related to QC during assembly

I purchased a goodwrench 350 which was an absolutely excellent engine. I am suspicious of some intentional decision on the part of GM Powertrain or Performance to use inferior or deficient parts in a crate engine. There is little logic in that. The aftermarket over the counter crate engines are like any other. With modern cnc machine work I am simply suspicious that they would intentionally chump the customer. From what I'm seeing they are trying their best to bring back customers. There will be failures and approach to remedy is everything.

[ProPower engines]

I do not dispute that they have produce some good engines but all the best parts go into the road vehicles they warranty and the over the counter parts such as cranks rods and heads are definitely not of the same quality.
Some years back for a race class that said an OEM stock GM or Ford or Chrysler crank and rods must be used I ordered several LT-1 cranks and after checking them reordered another batch and repeated that process till we had 35 cranks here and after checking all of them I was able to use 3 and they all needed to go 10/10.
And guess what the GM rep came to the shop as we cleaned out every dealer in canada for these and they wanted to know why we were getting so many returns on these items.
It was then he disclosed the issue and how parts are assigned and designated and he told me outright.

Well you know this is not totally uncommon and while there were 12 of those cranks that were bent as much as .030 after a straightening and in need of going 20/30 to use them but he maintained the factory did not use them because they were too far out of spec for bend and journal diameter so they are sold as new through the HP replacement parts div.back to the dealers
And if that is not bad enough I had a 604 crate here 2weeks back that only had 5lbs oil pressure cold idling with the mobil 1 recomended oil in it. When the dealer was called about it they offered to have the vehicle towed to them for inspection and after a tear down it was found the rods had a +.0025 bearing and the mains were +.003 and it still had .0047 main clearance and .0033 on the rods.
Rather then get another dud it was decided that a regrind on the crank and resizing the rods along with a line hone would be allowed rather then a replacement and the dealer supplied the misc. gaskets and bearings and he paid the 3hrs shop time for the dealer to inspect the engine.
Now since I have a good thing with the service manager this was a better way to go in the long run then a replacement as I touched up the heads while we were at it and the whole deal was an extra $2500 over what he paid to the original engine.


But I am hust one shop in the big pond and I have to believe I am not the only one out there that has customers come back for a custon engine after a crate has left a bad taste in their mouth.

It can also be argued that their crate program has been good for them with all the race class's going to crate stuff so I guess some are better then others and while we do hear about the bad ones all the time its hard to say how many of the mass's that work properly that we never hear about.

I know up here we seem to always get the bottom of the barrel when it comes to this kind of thing but as far as population here in BC its not like say califoria but as far as size goes you can put washington oregon and about 3/4 of cali. in BC so the good and bad are further apart then in the US.

[lorax]

The REAL story is We send all the crap to Canada. There, I said it and you have the REAL STORY

[nickmckinney]

I used to love the GM cars, the G body is one of my favorites. Went they went to front wheel drive in the late 80's they started using a dashboard that would peel up pretty fast. After the 3rd car in the family peeled the dash we haven't been back for awhile. First a Beretta, then a Lumina, last straw was a Pontiac. The Pontiac not only peeled the dash the same way it had the infamous intake gasket leaking like the Exxon Valdez. These cars were much more responsive and fun to drive than the similar Fords. My oldest just picked up a new Cruze so we shall see how that holds up, so far its nice but the dealer loves screwing with her about needing $80 oil changes only done there.....

[ProPower engines]

The REAL story is We send all the crap to Canada. There, I said it and you have the REAL STORY

Thats not news I have seen that for 30yrs in this biz.

Its got worse now that the exchange rate is almost par

I have just learned to live with it and deal with each issue as it comes. Gettin too old to get wound up about things I can't change

[BrazilianZ28Camaro]

I'm sorry but GM using returned defective parts on crate engines is hard to believe.

I'm saying this because I work overhere at south of Brazil as a tool and die maker at the GM factory wich have the World largest bodywork pavillion, and I can say for a fact, the quality control is very rigid and works.

We make popular fuel efficient cars (Chevrolet Celta, Prisma and Onix) and just as an example, if any of these cars get a dimple on the C pillar after the car is finished, it will be scrapped without a single part being reused,no trick will be done to try to save that car and fellas, we're third Worlders here.

I guess a much cheaper part like a bad crank should go to the trash can...

[ProPower engines]

I'm sorry but GM using returned defective parts on crate engines is hard to believe.

I'm saying this because I work overhere at south of Brazil as a tool and die maker at the GM factory wich have the World largest bodywork pavillion, and I can say for a fact, the quality control is very rigid and works.

We make popular fuel efficient cars (Chevrolet Celta, Prisma and Onix) and just as an example, if any of these cars get a dimple on the C pillar after the car is finished, it will be scrapped without a single part being reused,no trick will be done to try to save that car and fellas, we're third Worlders here.

I guess a much cheaper part like a bad crank should go to the trash can...

Its not parts that have been returned defective its the parts that don't make the cut to go into engines that are installed in cars/trucks.
For as long as I can remember they have the largest number of select fit bearings to correct machining inaccurateness with over and under as well as over under bearings then any other manufacture.

And yes the parts that don't go into the production vehicles are sub-standard and sold as replacements and there is 2nds and 3rds and 4ths in quality.
Ford is the same way. Had a 302 from Summit a few months that was so bad it would not run below 3000rpm cause they installed alum. heads with 202/160 valves and the reliefs were too small so they retarded the cam 6deg to get PTV clearance and a stock chain hung below the bottom gear barely touching enough to turn the cam but it needed a -.010chain set to get that issue corrected but they seen that problem when it went together the 1st time.

Just saying its the same old deal that when you see build in hot rod magizine and its advertized relentlessly to the world
they will find 100,000 people that will but the stuff and when you multiply that by $6500 thats a fair chunk of change for substandard parts.

its the same all over the net you see unbelievable deals on brand new parts and when they are sold on ebay at 50% below my cost I know quality is bad
I am not trying to bash any one particular engine I am just saying that if you seen as many parts as I have in 30+years from the dealer and other sources you begin to wonder and just add extra time to check or correct problem areas when certain brands of parts are used in a build.

The buying group here returns lots of sub standard parts that don't measure up and for the 500+ machine shops that belong to it thats a ton of returned parts that are out of spec

[Cubic_Cleveland]

X1000000!

We get the same crap down here! Not so much bought from OE's, but OE create motors sold by distributors down here of both GM and Ford flavours. Seems a lot of resellers think "its going all the way to Australia so who cares?!?"

It's disheartening the amount of times people buy their cheap 'quality' parts off flea-bay, and then want to run them because they're too tight to spring for quality pieces in the first place. Seems like they always have the money to fix it the second time though!

Ok, my rant is finished, carry on.

[wil8115]

X1000000!

We get the same crap down here! Not so much bought from OE's, but OE create motors sold by distributors down here of both GM and Ford flavours. Seems a lot of resellers think "its going all the way to Australia so who cares?!?"

It's disheartening the amount of times people buy their cheap 'quality' parts off flea-bay, and then want to run them because they're too tight to spring for quality pieces in the first place. Seems like they always have the money to fix it the second time though!

Ok, my rant is finished, carry on.

completely agree Cleveland.
people never seem to have the money to do it right the 1st time, but they sure seem to come up with enough to do it twice. Costing more then if done right the 1st time.

we say..
Cheap, Reliable, Fast.. pick two.