I would like to have your opinions on this subject. The following criteria should be taken into consideration regarding your answer:
o Only engines within the last 50 years o Give preference to engines that get good MPG (v8's do sometimes!) o Try to use some facts! And give examples to justify. o Current parts availability (the cheaper the parts the better) o Reliability is highly rated o High performance is not that important o The vehicle the engine is used in can/does affect the ability to repair, so mention that if you could. o What did I leave out?
I know this asking a lot, and I give thanks in advance for those that are willing to help.
I will summarize and post the results back to this newsgroup.
My vote would be for the 225 slant six. Reasonably peppy and great access even in an A-body (which would actually be my platform of choice.) Everything still available for dirt cheap. Cast iron reliable.
Honorable mention - Volkswagen 1.8L gasoline engine, early type with CIS and mechanical lifters - for the same reasons. Loses points for accessablility as it came in FWD cars, also loses points for requiring too many special tools to work on. Still an awesome engine.
Honorable mention - Studebaker 259 and 289 V-8. Included just because I like 'em. No idea how difficult they are to work on as I've never done any more serious internal work to one beyond replacing manifolds and water pumps and setting the valve clearances. They just run. Parts availability is a minus however - everything is available, but you pretty much have to order everything.
The easiest engine I have ever personally worked on was the Ford 1.6L "Kent"
4 cylinder. Second easiest was a Ford 2L Pinto Engine (the German built one, not the 2.3L Lima engine). Other easy engines were the 4 cylinders in Austin-Healey Sprites, Ford Vulcan 3.0L V-6, Ford 4.9L inline 6 cylinder. Worst engines - hmmmm Toyota Cressida 6 cylinder, Ford Taurus 3.8L, Datsun
280Z 6 cylinder, Audi 2.2L 5 cylinder., any Ford modular V-8, Lotus 2.0L DOHC 4 cylinder. In between - Ford 2.9L and 4.0L OHC German built V-6s, Mazda 2.0L SOHC 4 cylinder, Ford pushrod V-8s, Chrysler 2.2L SOHC 4 cylinder, VW 1.8L four cylinder, Ford 2.3L "Lima" 4 cylinder.
In general, push rod engines are generally easier to work on than overhead cam engines. Over head cam (OHC) engines with belts are easier than OHC engines with chains. DOHC engines are harder than SOHC engines. OHC engines with finger followers are easier to work on than OHC engines with bucket tappets. Inline engines are easier than vee style engines. Fewer cylinders are easier than more cylinders. In my experience the difference in complexity between the 1.6L Kent OHV 4 cylinder and the 2.0L Pinto OHC 4 cylinder were minimal. The 2.0L actually had fewer parts than the 1.6L, but you could work on the 1.6L with a couple of crescent wrenches.
In the United States the small block Chevy and its variants are the cheapest to buy parts for, and often by a long shot. The distributor is in the back, making timing awkward, but is otherwise pretty straightforward to work on.
That's easy. Right now, Big-block Chrysler v8s are incredibly easy to work on. Well, they always were, and flatheads were even easier, but the big Mopar v8s still have excellent parts availability and flatheads don't. You can build a big mopar out of a catalog, for that matter.
Somes specific reasons:
1) Waterpump- 8 bolts (4 on the water pump, 4 on the fan). And you don't even have to remove the A/C and alternator belts, OR the radiator. Just unbolt the fan and move it forward, unbolt the water pump, and replace it. And that's on any car that it came in from the factory, except maybe the ultra-rare 440 A-bodies.
2) Distributor right up front (and electronic in everything after '72 so you rarely need to service it anyway)
3) Lower block- Y-block design with a flat oil pan rail and flat oil pan gasket- easy to put together with no oil leaks.
4) No coolant in the intake manifold- change manifolds without draining coolant.
4a) one-piece intake manifold gasket/valley pan gasket. None of those goofbag "end pieces" that you find on smallblocks and that leak like sieves unless you hold your tongue just right while assembling...
5) Oil pump- located on the left front of the block. You can change the oil pump without dropping the pan. You can also change the oil pressure regulator spring in most cars without removing the oil pump from the block.
6) oil filter accessibility- right up front on the lower driver's side. Don't have to shinny under the car far, nor reach up past suspension components and obstructions.
7) So damn tough you rarely have to do any of the above anyway :-)
235/250/262 Straight six stuck under the hood of just about any GM product. In the cars you just lean inside. On the P/Us you can sit under the hood on the inner fender.
Second choice is the Ford 300 Straight six. Mainly for the same reasons as the GM.
That's the kind of answer I like: facts to back up your opinion.
I had no idea that the mopar engines were like that. The only thing that I ever fixed on Chryslers were that damn starter. More of those starters went out than I can count.
What about any chrysler four cylinder engines?
Ever work on some Honda, Toyota, or Subaru engines?
Austin A-series, hands down. The simplest car engine I have ever worked on, and I've gotten 50 mpg out of one. I've also seen one pass a Mustang GT-350 on the outside of Turn 2 at Mosport (of course it had a little help from the Cooper S it was installed in).
The engineering on the SBC was excellent. The execution often suffered, with bad valve guides and seats in most stock engines, and some very Mickey Mouse head castings in the late Gen1 era. A blueprinted, balanced SBC built out of "good guy" components would last as long as any gas engine in its displacement and weight class.
Chrysler 2.2 4 cylinder engine. With no AC and no turbo, they are very easy to work on and reliable. With AC and Turbo, they get a little crowded under the hood, but not unreasonable.
(Actually the 144 cid version of the Falcon Six was the real 98-pound weakling, especially when coupled to the Two Flavor Slush Cone, er, Ford-o-Matic, whose gear selectors should have read L and O, for Lugging and Over-revving.)
Seriously, all the Slant Sixes were rightly honored for reliability, but I'd give the nod to their Ford counterparts for ease of what repairs were needed. A lot of old-timers thought that was the best engine Ford ever made, and fortunately they soon started making it in much bigger sizes, culminating in 300 c.i.d. for pickup trucks. I always thought setting the breaker points in a Slant Six in a smaller body was a bit of a pain on account of, well, the slant, and then you had the mechanical lifters to set.
(A 4WD crew-cab three-quarter ton Dodge that I once maintained at work presented the opposite problem: I was not big enough to get at everything easily from the outside and not small enough to just sit
*in* the underhood cavern and reach 'way over to the engine... A stepstool and a backache filled the bill.)
Of course, none of these problems are all that big a deal even for the beginner, and not within an order of magnitude of getting at the rear plugs on some traditionally mounted GM vee engines, or doing almost anything to the dark side of almost anybody's *transverse* vee engine. Almost any single-underarm-cam inline Six mounted fore and aft in almost any American car built before what a friend of mine calls the "heart-lung machine era" of pollution-related engine controls is going to be pretty copacetic for the beginning mechanic, and most of them could take a fair bit of abuse and neglect before large hard-parts problem reared their ugly head.
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