Crate Motors

Viper Crate MotorsI have been thinking about crate motors, and how they fit into muscle cars.  I know, they fit into a muscle car by bolting them in.  But I was more thinking about crate motors, versus the original engine, versus building one yourself.

Crate motors are probably the easiest way to add more power to a car.  You just buy the engine, and bolt it into your car.  Granted, depending on what you have for a car, it may be that simple, or it may require either a kit or some fabricating to get it in there.

Lets look at the options, the first being keeping the original engine.  Obviously if you have a muscle car with a rare engine, or one that already performs how you want, then keeping what you already have makes sense.  It is also easy, at most you would need to pull out the engine you have to rebuild it, and put the same engine back in.  Nothing would need to be changed, since you would just be putting the same parts back in.  And you have a car that looks original.

Another option is to build an engine yourself.  It can either be improving the power level of what you already have, or building a different engine to go in your car.  Either way, you get the choose the exact parts you want, or the ones your engine builder recommends.  The drawback is that you have to choose the parts you want.  Just randomly putting together parts will probably not get you the power levels you were hoping for.  Each part of the engine needs to work together for the best results.  That is where having someone help you build the engine that does it for a living come in.  They already probably know the best parts combinations (or at least the ones that have worked well for them in the past) for the power level you want out of your engine.  And there are different levels of their involvement.  Maybe you have them build the whole thing.  Or maybe you want to do more yourself.  So, you have them to the machine work on the block and heads, and you put it all together.  Or any combination of the two.

With crate motors, you can have even greater flexibility.  You just pick what engine you want in your car, and buy it.  If you want a Viper V10 in your Mopar muscle car, you just buy one.  Or if you want a Hemi.  Or any other engine that is not common, but available as a crate motor.  Or even a big inch Chevy big block.  It can save you the time of searching for the engine you need as a starting point, and then the machine work and parts.  And you can already see a dyno chart for it to know if it has the power characteristics you want. The biggest problems would be paying for it, and possibly getting it into the car, like with a V10.  Other than making sure it will fit into your car, the only limitations are your imagination and your budget.

As with everything else, the best choice is up to you.  But if you have a car that came with a low performance engine, either a six cylinder, or a low power V8, then either building an engine or getting a crate motor is probably the best bet.  And there were a lot more low performance cars build during the muscle car era than muscle cars.  If you want a Chevelle, it would probably be cheaper to start with a non-SS version and make it perform like you want, than to start with a SS in the first place.

And with a crate motor, and possibly some put together by engine builders, you get a warranty.  There is something nice about knowing that if something doesn’t work, there is someone you can call.


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  1. Pingback: Modern engine swaps - themusclecarguy.net

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