We all have our hobbies and passions, whether that be basketball, MMA, skating, gaming, or being a gearhead and amateur mechanic. Some are easier, more accessible, and cheaper than others, though, and when you are an amateur mechanic on the weekends, you can’t just go nuts and start disassembling your car or bike and pray it somehow reassembles again. No, you have to know what you are doing, invest in your know-how and expertise, and have nimble fingers and tools long before you touch your engine. Rebuilding your engine is almost a rite of passage, the moment that separates the mere dabblers from the serious tinkerers, and even though it sounds ridiculously difficult, building your own engine isn’t, with a bit of help and tips. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Plan First

Rebuilding your engine has more in common with an operation, a surgery, than it does with a hammer and nails, which means you cannot just get up in the morning, take your tools, and start hammering and screwing away, tearing the engine apart. You want to plan first and ensure you have all the necessary tools and parts, like an M11 Cummins rebuild kit, so you can, well, rebuild the engine. If you already have some experience, you likely have most of the necessary tools already, but some more specialized tools will certainly prove helpful, like a good micrometer and an accurate torque wrench.

Workplace

You will also need a place to work that is calm and quiet, and small parts will not get lost so easily. You can just disassemble your engine in the kitchen and rebuild it outside your front door, but that is not the optimal solution here. A garage is best. If you already have your own, perfect; you are pretty much good to go. If you don’t, see if you can rent or perhaps borrow one, ideally one that has an engine hoist, so you can pull and install the engine, which puts it at a working height and gives you access to every side and part.

Research

Not all engines are made equal, and most are entirely different from other engines, so even if you know a lot about one kind of engine, you will likely be clueless when it comes to another and may even damage it during the process. So, time to hit the books first, study, research, and learn as much as you need to. Ford, Chevy, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, BMW, etc., all have their layouts, quirks, and access points, and there are many ways to rebuild an engine, so whatever you choose, you should do some research first. Your resources are plentiful, from books to manuals to the vast depth of the internet to tutorials on YouTube; you have a myriad of different sources to choose from. Especially if you run into a problem, you will quickly notice that someone has had the same issue in the past as you and what they did to rectify it.

Piecemeal vs Complete

You have two options when it comes to rebuilding your engine. You can choose to just replace individual parts, perhaps just upgrade your current engine, and save money, which is the piecemeal approach. Or you choose to go the complete engine rebuild route. The piecemeal approach is usually just meant to replace parts that have broken or are all worn down while leaving the rest of the engine untouched, making it more of a maintenance routine, and you stick to standard parts like valves, pistons, rings, and bearings. But if you want to get some seriously superior performance with fantastic results, then a complete overhaul is likely to be your preferred approach. Here, you will be replacing major wear parts and components like the bearings, pistons, timing chains, exhaust valves, or belts, pretty much making a brand new engine as a result.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

That age-old adage of carpentry, measure twice, cut once, exists for a good reason. You are extra careful while you still can be, so once you start cutting and replacing things, you will not have any regrets; you cannot fix them anymore. You are the mechanic here, so it is your responsibility to check and measure every dimension of every part before it finds its new home in your engine. Even the best, most qualified, and experienced race mechanic in town is still a human being, which means he is not immune to errors, miscalculations, or mistakes. So, measure the ring gap in your cylinders before you install the new rings onto your pistons, and once they are in, check their fit in their grooves. Measure the bores on the pistons, and measure the cylinders, combustion chamber volume, deck height, and rod length. Once you are nearing completion, use a paint marker to indicate that each critical fastener, rod, main, and head bolt has been tightened to the right specifications. Yes, this all sounds very boring and time-consuming, but that is part of the process and steps you cannot afford to skip if you want it to go over smoothly.

Choose a Machinist

Unless you have destroyed, rebuilt, and tinkered with hundreds of engines in the past and are or could already be a professional mechanic, you will need to outsource some of the machine work on your engine. Unless, of course, you already have a milling machine, Sunnen cylinder hone, and Serdi valve seat cutter sitting in your garage, in which case you do not need to read any of this. But for the rest of us, choosing the right machinist is a crucial step of the rebuilding project. The machinist will be controlling how the components fit together, and a great machinist simply is never going to be the cheapest one. If you want quality work and a fantastic engine, you will need to find someone who is worth the rate they are charging.

Rebuilding your engine is not as monumentally difficult a task as it may appear to the uninitiated, but it is not a Sunday walk, either, especially if you are new and just tinkering around.