I found some interesting engine tear down videos

[TJ Hopland]

I have really enjoyed watching this guys engine tear down videos and figured others may like it too.   The YouTube channel is called I Do Cars.   Looks like he runs some sort of used parts/engine biz but his YT channel has at least more recently become mostly these tear down videos.   

He does tear down a Northstar which I used to think was up there for complexity but once you see him get into some of the more modern turbo direct injected engines the Northstar looks like something out of an antique tractor.  He also does some 'classic' push rod engines if you really want to see a contrast. 

Its really interesting to me that from the 30's to the 70's engines got better and better as far as how long they ran before needing some sort of repair like say a valve job or rings that were just something you had to do every 20k-50k.  The overall engine designs didn't change that much they just refined what they had.   

80's seemed to be when 100k sorta became a norm likely due to computer controls running engines better which let them tighten them up a bit.  By the 90's 100K was just about guaranteed and 200k wasn't unreasonable to expect with some basic repairs like say timing belt/chains.  Obviously there were some really good engines that often went way longer and some that were kinda duds but I'm speaking in general automotive terms.

Now it seems like we have sorta gone backwards.  We have 100K ish engines that are not really repairable.  They do get pretty decent fuel economy and a 3-4 liter V6 is getting the same power as your average big block V8.  Physical size wise some of these new things are not that small but are probably lighter.  The packaging seems to be one of the problems with service and repairs. We get things like the Northstar with the starter under the intake and engines where you have to remove them from the car to change a belt or water pump. 

Are we ahead?  I'm not saying we should go back to the 60's but are we really saving anything with these engines that are so complex and serviceability wasn't part of the design criteria?  The LS engines are an interesting critter,  I think they are about the only pushrod engine built in any numbers over the last 10 years.  Ya they have done some dumb things to them but overall seem to be doing a decent job without being overly complicated.

The videos tend to be 30-60 minutes long so not too bad to watch and you get a good look at how things go together.  Sometimes he says how long the tear down took but most of the time he doesn't.  I'm assuming tho that the longer videos tend to point to a longer tear down.  For examples a classic push rod and even the Northstar one I think were around 30 minutes but pretty much every modern direct boosted engine is at least an hour including ones he has done before which you assume makes it go faster.

Since I like diesels I have watched several of his diesel tear downs too and was kinda surprised to see that for what appear to be contemporary designs the diesels seem to be less complex.  Since the direct injections are practically diesels I was expecting them to be very similar but the gassers are more complex for some reason.

Since these are all used and often broken engines you get to see their issues especially on ones where he does several similar engines.  There appears to be lots of failure trends on these new designs.

Give a few videos a watch and let me (us) know what your impression is.  Did you know how complex engines were getting?  How badly packaged they are?   

[Clewisiii]

We do new car tear downs at my work. After stripping a Ford Truck V6 on a stand. At the end I had to package everything up to send it off. I was shocked at my ability to just pick up that engine block and put it in a box.

[TJ Hopland]

You can get an idea of the weight when you see how much they bounce on his stand and then again when he does things like lift the heads and cranks out.  I wonder how much fuel every say 100 lbs actually saves?

Its hard to tell for sure the scale in the videos but if you just go by cubic volume many of these V6's look like they take up as much space as a big block V8.  With overhead cams the engines get really tall.

[smokuspollutus]

An important point for those who live in states where vehicles need to have an annual smog inspection is the change to OBD-II in 1996.

Here in New York, vehicles under 25 years old need to be smogged. So some of even the OBD-II cars are just beginning to age out of tests.

For years, buying a pre-96 car was a smart choice with the way fewer number of less sensitive, less expensive sensors & electronics. Namely the post cat O2 sensor. Most cars aren't going to keep a catalytic converter going for 15+ years without losing enough performance to set a code-subsequently failing inspection and rendering the vehicle a 2 ton unregistered paperweight.

At this point daily driving a car older than 1996 isn't really practical for most people. I'm sure 99% of the used market is OBD-II. So it should be interesting to see what happens to the guy who buys a 8-10 year old car and is then hit with having to source and put for an OEM quality obscure emissions related part to keep it on the road. Wouldn't surprise me if the cost (assuming parts exist) is several times the value of the car.


One example of this is the Northstar equipped Cadillacs of the late 90s and 2000s. These cars have a pressure sensor in the transmission that is supposed to control something with the converter lockup. It's also a marginally made part that's now 15-20+ years old, so they fail regularly. Of course converter lockup has to do with fuel economy, so it's monitored and turns on the check engine light. So if you want to register the car in a smog state, you need to fix it. Replacing this sensor involves dropping the whole powerplant and basically rebuilding the transmission to access it. How many people would pay to do that kind of work to an old car? This also figures nothing about the head gasket and oil leak issues, or other basic mechanical needs of old vehicles.

Depending on the political situation of the next few years, it wouldn't surprise me if the federal government begins to put pressure on all states to reintroduce emission tests with the goal to get all of the old "polluters" sustainably recycled in a faraway land and replaced by battery powered transportation. So it's something to consider no matter where you live. It could even happen at a state level once enough maniacs are installed in the bureaucracy of what was a reasonable place.

For me at least, the symphony of packaging/serviceability, fuel injection/ overdrive/conveniences, comfort, visibility, rust tightness, etc. peaked some time in the 80s or early 90s.

When catalytic converters, revised carb settings, air pumps, remapped ignition timing, lean burn, primitive fuel injection, random aluminum and plastic parts, and other weight saving pieces got legislated into existence in the 70s, it was accepted that when buying a new vehicle, you would be paying more for the cost of all of these additional components or deaigns that were pushing the limits of engineering, for a vehicle that would not function as well as the one you were replacing.Right before it got totally out of control the standards were largely frozen for about 25 years which gave the consumer and manufacturer breathing room to learn to live with and design these things, and we got basically reliable, and allegedly economical and environmentally sound transportation from the 1985ish-2010ish period.

Then a group decided throw a bone to the 3rd world lithium miners and unfroze the regs   

[TJ Hopland]

I think lack of reasonable quality parts will be what takes most older cars off the road or at least those that put any significant (polluting) miles on.  It seems it doesn't matter if its a mechanical or electronic part, when you get into that 10-15 years of age your chances of getting junk are much higher than getting something that works.   

[TJ Hopland]

Another thing someone pointed about looking at many of the new engines is they look like the kind of thing one of us DIY people would have built in our garages.  Things like half way through the build we go oh crap we need oil over here so lets just run a tube.  Oh crap we need egr over here lets just toss a bracket here and run a tube here and on an on till we have something that works but boy would we have done it different if we had to do it again. 

Aren't all these engines new enough they should have been designed and simulated in computers where its really easy to find problems and make changes?  Or is that the problem?  These are being designed by people on computers fresh out of college that have never even seen under the hood of a real car?

[James Landi]

T.J,,  I, too, enjoy and also encourage others to watch "I Do Cars" You Tube Videos.  As you stated, the videos raise so many questions about modern cars and their durability.  Recently, "MECHANICALLY TOTALLED" super expensive European cars have been subjects of "I DO Cars" videos... If you ever dream of purchasing a cheap Rolls or Bentley, check out the videos on the engine tear downs.   

[TJ Hopland]

Does anyone know what engines Cads have used more recently and if he has any of those or ones from their families?  I have no idea what is current in any GM stuff other than a little about the trucks.

[Jeff Rosansky CLC #28373]

I have met this guy. He bought my son's wrecked Miata. He was going to hold the new exhaust system for us to get after he parted out the car. We ended up not needing it. Went to his shop to find another part and he remembered me and gave me a tour. He also said he still had the exhaust system at his house waiting for me- Pretty classy.
All the parts were marked and tagged on his shelves showing what car it came from. We saw the clutch and other parts from my son's car tagged with "Black 96 Miata."

Meaningless information, but thought I'd share it.

Jeff R

[TJ Hopland]

He does seem like a decent guy on camera and one of the rare channels his size that isn't chocked full of sponsored ads which is kinda nice.  There are quite a few people I can't stand to watch anymore because of the sponsors.  I don't mind as much when its a product related to what the channel normally does thats Ok but when they get the meal sponsor, vitamin drink, and their own branded crap that has nothing to do with their main subject....  Might as well watch regular TV for that. 

Does anyone know what engines Cadillac is currently using and are any of them exclusive to Cadillac or do they just have a different logo on the cover?  I think I have watched all the teardowns that say Cadillac in the title but I assume they are sharing with some other GM's these days.

[TJ Hopland]

I have been watching a bunch of these videos especially what appear to be the more or less current engines.  So we can get big block horsepower and torque out of a 3ish liter engine.  My question is should we? 

Package size doesn't look like they are a ton smaller but I would imagine they are still lighter. 

These modern engines have a zillion parts which has to mean they are expensive across the board.  Expensive to design overall and all the parts.  Expensive to make all the parts some of which are very complex.  Expensive to deal with all the logistics to get all those parts to where they will be assembled.  Expensive if one of those parts is delayed leading to a whole car that can't be built.  Expensive to assemble.

I would think because of the number of parts and complexity greater chances of something going wrong and with more parts when things go wrong the more wrong just at the initial assembly stage. For sure that is the case when it comes to repair.  It doesn't seem to take much to 'kill' one of these engines because they are not built or installed to be repaired.  Watching this guy tear some of this stuff apart in a stand looks pretty bad so imagine trying to do that in the car with no clearance on 3 1/2 sides.  It also seems like there is a trend to have a 100k or 150k service item that pretty much requires the engine to be removed. 

Is it worth it?  From what I have seen the mileage isn't that outstanding compared to the very few remaining more simple engines in similar vehicles. 

One thing that seems to be a terrible idea is overhead cam(s) on a V engine. That makes for long chains.  What happened to belts?  Its not like the long chains last more than 100k.  Is that because people didn't change the belts so you have a better chance of neglecting chains?  Is anyone still making an inline 6?   Did anyone ever make a dual cam pushrod engine?     

[TJ Hopland]

Another observation / question.   I would say at least 75% of modern engines are dual overhead cam and about half of those still have what more or less looks to be a rocker setup with a roller that runs on the cam.  The other half the cam rubs on a pretty large disc. 

Are there still hydraulic lifter sort of things somewhere in these things?   And for all those engines that don't have rollers how is that different than the flat tappet engines most of us are dealing with when it comes to the oil and zinc issue?    I was kinda thinking all engines had rollers so they just didn't care about us but that doesn't seem to be the case. 

[TJ Hopland]

Overhead cam engines which appears to be the vast majority of them for the last 20+ years don't have replaceable cam bearings.  The lower bearing is the usually aluminum head and the top is an aluminum cap, no bearing insert.   This means you don't change your oil or something goes wrong and sends junk through the oil your head is scrap metal. 

[TJ Hopland]

Is anyone watching these videos? What do you think? 

He just did a Nissan variable compression engine.  Pretty neat but wow takes the parts count up by another order of magnitude.  At the end he basically said what I was thinking.  Neat but for being installed in a basic car?  Just too many parts and chances for things to go wrong.  Like he said if say Cadillac made an engine like that for a new roadster sure.  If it breaks you could afford the roadster so you can probably afford a new engine but does that level of complexity need to be in basic transportation?

Another observation is most engines appear to have a mechanically driven vacuum pump.  At first I thought it was an anomaly but it seems pretty standard. I'm not positive what its for but my guess is its for operating various mostly emissions devices kinda like the 80's all over again. Seems odd to me that they went to vacuum vs electric servo sorts of things which also look like they are used in some places.    

[TJ Hopland]

Something I was pondering earlier today is why do you need variable compression with a turbo?  Don't turbo's usually run lower than usual compression? 

Did or does Cadillac ever do any turbo engines?   Seems like more recentlyish they had a supercharger option?  I would think they have some now since many GM engines are.

[James Landi]

TJ,

That Nissan variable compression tear down is fascinating. The engineering/design looked to be ground breaking, but apparently, there have been repeated low mileage failures.  I, too, encourage members to watch these "I Do Cars" videos... highly instructive... here's my take-away.  This Nissan THREE CYLINDER engine develops 200 hp.  With the turbo, an all aluminum engine block, its relatively typical -- light weight, super high performance, the engine architecture provides maximum power output with minimum material weight. This type of engine design can not tolerate overheating, low oil pressure, or owner neglect.  Long periods between oil changes and cooling system failures apparently create catastrophic engine failure that render the engine un repairable 

[TJ Hopland]

Another running theme seems to be unique bolts that require a special tool.  Some brands seem a lot worse than others but it seems like just about every engine he mentions an odd tool or that maybe he doesn't even have the tool and sometimes its ONE bolt with this odd head.

I get that sometimes other design aspects cause clearance issues where you may not be able to use a standard hex head bolt but it seems like in many of these cases they are not doing it for clearance reasons. 

[TJ Hopland]

I wonder if the wacky fastener head thing has to do with the training and skill level of the factory workers?  Basically the factory worker just has to know to stick their calibrated tool into everything it fits in and press the button till it stops then repeat?

[James Landi]

"Another running theme seems to be unique bolts that require a special tool.  Some brands seem a lot worse than others but it seems like just about every engine he mentions an odd tool or that maybe he doesn't even have the tool and sometimes its ONE bolt with this odd head."

TJ,   Oh yes, it makes my head spin just viewing the challenges involved in the tear down. I can't imagine a dealer tech rebuilding one of these complex, highly machined engines with all kinds of intricacies, oddities, and challenges. A late model MECHANICALLY TOTALLED car that looks well maintained and clean becomes understandable when the cost of a removal of the broken, useless engine and the installation of a new one are factored. Gone are the days when a shade tree, weekend mechanic can drop in a used small block over a weekend.   James 

[TJ Hopland]

Does anyone know what engines Cadillac has been using in recent years?  I sort of tried some searching and could not really figure it out.  I'm assuming this guy has torn some down they just didn't happen to come out of Cadillacs.   I'm just curious if they are using any of the really crazy complex engines.

Watching these videos is making me think the 4100 was a pretty good and simple engine. Simple at least.