The condition of your engine matters to overhaul shops and the two most important pieces they care about are your crank case and crank shaft. After they take apart the engine at the shop, clean it up, and inspect it, these parts will fit into 1 of 3 categories:
- New limits – Basically the parts measure up to new standards. They don’t need any additional work, and can get reassembled as-is. This happens maybe 10-20% of the time and deserves a celebration dance. Hopefully luck is on your side.
- Can be repaired to ‘new limits’ – Thankfully you don’t need to replace the parts because repairing them is usually a lot cheaper. But who pays for the repair? Is this included in your quote? Ah, this is the whole purpose of this section. Keep reading. 60-70% of cases/cranks fall in this category.
- Needs to be replaced – Ouch! Your parts can’t be brought back to ‘new limits’ and you’ll need to buy a new or overhauled ‘new limit’ replacement. Around 10-20% of engines need to replace a case or crank. 99% of the time, the owner pays this bill, not the shop. Costs vary widely so I’m taking a real swing by saying a case or shaft could cost $3-7k for an overhauled replacement. This is when owners and shops discuss the merits of sending it to the factory for exchange.
Ok, let’s get back to our scenario of the case or crank needing to be repaired to ‘new limits’. What you want to see is language that says the price is contingent on parts (like cases, cylinders, cranks, cams, ect.) being ‘repairable’. You don’t want to see ‘serviceable’. What’s the difference?
Let’s learn about this through example. An engine is taken apart at an overhaul shop and on the crank case they find fretting (wear) on the bearing slots and along the metal where the two halves rub against each other. This is pretty common. But, the good news is it can be repaired to ‘new limits’ at a case shop (almost all shops outsource this). The overhaul shop is going to have to pay the case shop around $1,500 with round trip shipping depending on what needs to be done. Will they pass off this cost to you, or is this all included as part of your engine overhaul quote? The answer depends on whether they have a ‘repairable’ or ‘serviceable’ contingency in their quote.
If this happened with the shop who quoted a ‘serviceable’ contingency, you may be looking at extra charges. The shop with the ‘repairable’ contingency won’t charge extra. Make sense?
Ok, one other thing – if you weren’t aware of the difference between serviceable/repairable contingency, you might be able to negotiate with the ‘serviceable’ shop about covering the repair. Some shops look at this stuff on a case-by-case basis. Read that last sentence again if you missed the clever pun I threw in there. Someone needed to lighten the mood!
← Price Contingencies **Important**
