buying an engine with a bhg - bad idea?

[stan]

I'm going to buy a 7M-GTE to rebuild this summer while i earn money to buy a supra, and I've been trying to find one thats here in southern california so that i can go pick it up rather than paying to ship it. Go-Motors in Anaheim has none and doesn't know if they will get any in the next container (which is 2 weeks away), but i emailed aaron at driftmotion. He said he has one that has a BHG. If I'm doing a rebuild anyway, intuition says that it would be fine, but are there other issues that would come along with a BHG that would cost me more money?

he also mentioned one with the "head off but surfaced nicely with new valve seals"


can anyone offer advice to someone looking to get into the supra community? are either of these engines good or should I keep looking. no offense to aaron or driftmotion on the engines, I just have to keep a tight budget - being 17 makes cash come less than easily.

 

[born2drv]

if buying a used supra i would assume it had a BHG anyways.... figure what it would cost to get the HG done (driftmotion would do a fantastic job on it).. and figure an extra $3k ontop of whatever he quoted you to work out all the bugs that could go wrong with it. if after buying the car + his HG work + $3k you still can afford it, go for it.

I'm going to buy a 7M-GTE to rebuild this summer while i earn money to buy a supra, and I've been trying to find one thats here in southern california so that i can go pick it up rather than paying to ship it. Go-Motors in Anaheim has none and doesn't know if they will get any in the next container (which is 2 weeks away), but i emailed aaron at driftmotion. He said he has one that has a BHG. If I'm doing a rebuild anyway, intuition says that it would be fine, but are there other issues that would come along with a BHG that would cost me more money?

he also mentioned one with the "head off but surfaced nicely with new valve seals"


can anyone offer advice to someone looking to get into the supra community? are either of these engines good or should I keep looking. no offense to aaron or driftmotion on the engines, I just have to keep a tight budget - being 17 makes cash come less than easily.

 

[stan]

$3k?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?? i was figuring doing a rebuild would cost me about 600 bucks! it will be running as stock when it goes into a car, so i'm not boring out or doing MHG or anything special... just new oem gaskets / bearings and cleaning things out...where will the $3k come from? am i totally missing something? i was planning on doing all this work myself too

 

[stan]

oh wait were you thinking i'm talking about a whole car? I'm talking about engine only right now. I won't be buying the car until the end of summer, so i'll spend this time doing the rebuild a little at a time.

 

[IJ.]

Stan: Most if not all 7M's will do the BHG thing at some stage of their life and as long as the Head isn't annealed (soft) it'll rebuild fine!

 

[ForcedTorque]

MHG would be well worth the extra money. Once you get a Supra and drop the motor in, you are gonna fall in love with the car. As you get older and have access to better money you will want to upgrade the car. Having the MHG already in place will be a blessing at that point, not to mention it will help you get to that point. New cars will always look nice to you, but you're never gonna want to part with it.

 

[frank]

Not that I am a supra expert, but here's my take:
BHG is not a big deal as long as you know what happened. If the head gasket went and then the engine was run, rather than being shut down and fixed there is the possibility that coolant got into the crankcase and it was run like that, which will destroy the bearings. Not a big deal if you plan on doing a full rebuild, but if you're counting on just changing the head gasket...
There are always "what-ifs". For instance I have a spare parts 7mgte head, which has good cams, shims, valves, and so on, but which is junk. It did not recieve proper coolant changes and the water jackets are corroded out right to the edges of the combustion chambers. You never know what you got until you open it up IMO.

 

[koulee]

The most important part to check is if the head warped after getting a bhg.

 

[mkiiSupraMan18]

If that engine has been sitting for a long time I'd check to make sure that the cylinder(s) aren't all rusted out like the one I got. Because if they are then you have to factor in the cost of machining, rings, and bearings(roughly $7-800+) and while you did all that it'd be stupid not to get the head done (another $200+) and then to put it all back together you'd need a gasket kit ($160-$300) and while you're doing all the work I'd suggest a water pump ($40) and others would say a new oil pump ($160+) so, look on the cheap side of things, $1200 + the price of the engine, so you'll end up w/ $1500 (atleast) in that engine. I'm having mine done right now and got everything on the cheap and I'm still pushing $1200, not counting all the little stupid stuff like oil/plugs/atf and the like.

But deff don't just slap a head gasket on. You'll want to get those bearings out at the very least.

 

[The Reaper]

i bought my car for 300 with seized na motor

bought a slightly modded 7M for 1800 fixed the head gasket on it and i was done. 2200 done drove it for a year now.

 

[stan]

i talked it over a little more with my dad / a supra-owning friend. we all agreed that if i'm gonna keep my DD volvo i might as well just hold out till i can buy an entire car and fix the engine in that as needed. that puts me with about 860 towards a supra, and 340 a week coming in from a summer job starting a week from monday.