Blueprint Engines SBF

Anybody had experience with these engines? The 400 hp 347 with efi kit is tempting me. 7 grand for the whole thing and a warranty.

What is this going in?  You can have a much better engine than a 302 based SBF for $7k.

Im glad to see you back,  daewoo!!! You've been missed.

In reply to Patientzero :

Genesis Coupe. My thinking was that 400 hp is about the upper limit before I start tearing up differentials and subframes, 8.2 inch deck SBFs are light and cheap and I can go around fast left handers without toasting the bearings. Aluminum 5.3 with oiling mods is also possible, obviously, but those seem to be heavier and the T56 that comes with it is certainly heavier than either adapting the Gen Coupe's 6 speed or a G Force T5. 

I could also stick with the 3.8 but those are heavier than both the LS and the SBF, they mount very far forward in the engine bay, they have high COG and they make 100 hp less. They also take to bolt on mods like fish to magma.

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :

Thanks man! Almost finished with grad school. Looking forward to participating in recognizably human activities again!

The worry with a 347 is that they tend to burn oil. The stroke puts the oil ring across the wrist-pin. Not a good thing.

The 331 stroker does not have this issue.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that any engine that you your very own self did not assemble with micrometers and such, is not a blueprinted engine. Blueprinted means that you yourself know that the engine was assembled to the best possible tolerances. Not a mass manufacturing mail-order kind of thing. 

In reply to NOHOME :

This is what I'm thinking of. Blueprint is the brand name of the crate engine manufacturer. I doubt it's actually blueprinted. 

https://blueprintengines.com/products/347-ci-stroker-crate-engine-small-block-ford-dressed-longblock-fuel-injection-bp3474ctf

I think you're right on the 331 being a better idea. 

Be wary of Blueprint engines.  I won't go into detail publicly, but PM me for details.

Or just google reviews of the company.

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

Be wary of Blueprint engines.  I won't go into detail publicly, but PM me for details.

And this is all very interesting cuz JG went with a blueprint in the Vette ...yes?

It's quite possible that mine was just a lemon, but it died after 150 miles and they wouldn't honor the warranty.  The internal parts they used were... um... interesting.  As in, three different pushrod part numbers, some of which were for a Mopar 440 application.  Since they weren't hardened, they whittled themselves down sending a half cup of steel dust through the engine.  Also, parts inside were not as advertised.  Cast pistons instead of hyp, generic cam instead of whatever brand name they advertised, Chinese copy of an edelbrock intake instead of an actual Edelbrock, incorrect piston compression height causing about 7.8:1 compression, rods had rust on them, and one piston was missing the second compression ring and only made about 80 psi cranking.

I would just attribute it to being a lemon, but when dozens of parts are just an outright lie, it's intentional.  At first I thought maybe they pulled a standard reman off the shelf by accident, but it was just a E36 M3ty build with incorrect parts.

Now... this WAS 10 years ago.  Maybe they got their act together.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

That's a fairly significant list of errors.  I'd say that's intentional.  

A truly blueprinted engine should have very very tight tolerances.  

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

DAmn, any one of those issue is bad, but there's just a possibility that it was a one off.  That number of issues says to me run, run away fast and don't look back.

grover said:

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

A truly blueprinted engine should have very very tight tolerances.  

That's not true.  When you blueprint an engine it just means you measure and document all your clearances throughout the engine, that's it.  It's like you're making a "blueprint" of the engine. 

Tolerances are determined mainly by what parts are being used and what the engine is used for.  For example an aluminum rod is going to grow more than a steel rod when it heats up meaning you'll need more piston to valve clearance.  A cheap cast crank is going to flex more than a billet steel crank so you can't run as tight of bearing clearance because it will wipe out the bearings.

Actual blueprinting is way more expensive due to going through all those extra parts, weighing them, tossing the unused parts to the side in hopes of using them on another blueprinting job, measuring all those tolerances a zillion times etc. Of course some of those tasks fall under the umbrella of balancing AND blueprinting.

There’s a lot in a name.  As a teenager I bought a copy of a long out of print book on “How to Blueprint a Small Block Chevy”.   Not having any practical experience, I thought you needed to follow all those steps just to do a simple rebuild.  Put me off on working on cars for a long time.

Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

DAmn, any one of those issue is bad, but there's just a possibility that it was a one off.  That number of issues says to me run, run away fast and don't look back.

I have gone through a litany of possibilities.  I thought maybe someone sent in a core to be rebuilt after they tried to rebuild it on their own, and Blueprint accidentally grabbed it off the shelf instead of one of their own... but if that were the case, any respectable company would trip over their own feet to make it right.  Heck, I bought 112 auditorium chairs from Wenger corp for the theater and one showed up with a miniscule tear in the upholstery.  They sent a friggin sales rep with a new cushion in his carry-on and he personally replaced it.  THAT is customer service.

The whole process from start to finish with Blueprint was a E36 M3 show.  An amazing failure of an engine in a dozen ways, a complete failure of customer service, and a wholly illegal violation of warranty contract which (in hindsight) should have been referred to the state's AG... although they have more important things to do than worry about a grease monkey's hardship.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

This is the first time I've heard of anyone's personal experience with Blueprint. Really amazingly bad collection of failures on their part, before you even get to the warranty not being honored.

There was a certain youtuber who put one of their engines in a burnout car that they shipped to australia and it didn't even make it half way through the event, and he refused to talk about why it failed.  Seeing that the same guy breaks engines built by other people all the time and has no problem saying "oops, that was my fault, here's what broke" it seems a bit suspicious.

Tk8398 said:

There was a certain youtuber who put one of their engines in a burnout car that they shipped to australia and it didn't even make it half way through the event, and he refused to talk about why it failed.  Seeing that the same guy breaks engines built by other people all the time and has no problem saying "oops, that was my fault, here's what broke" it seems a bit suspicious.

Hell, yeah, brother!

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Thanks. That's great information. I'll look elsewhere.

In reply to DaewooOfDeath :

It's been a decade... maybe they're fine.  I wasn't really suggesting you should not get the engine, just do the homework and make sure you have ironclad, in-writing assurances in case things go south.

I've been having a bit of a time this year with the little 5.0 in my swapped Miata. My issues with 2 of the 3 rebuilds of the same shortblock were operator error on my part, but until that realization I was seriously shopping reman'd shortblocks. The 3 on my shortlist were Blueprint Engines, Promar and Professional Products. All of them had great reviews, all of them had horrible reviews. Not sure how you wade through that minefield.

Another option could be to buy a junkyard Explorer 5.0 engine and have a trusted local shop build it for you. Won't be cheaper, but they'll be close if you have issues. My local shop did me a major solid on one of the rebuilds, only charging for parts and eating the cost of labour and machine work even when the issue ended up being my fault. 

Suffice it to say, after my Blueprint experience, I now build all of my own engines.  I kinda had to rebuild the 454 from blueprint.  It was either that or throw it in the trash.  At least if I put $400 into parts and machine work I would have an engine.  I couldn't afford to pay someone to rebuild it, so I bloody did it myself.

Since then I've done a bunch.  Caddy 500, Pontiac 326, Pont 389, Triton 4.6L, another 454, a couple Chevy 350s, one Cummins 6BT, a 7.3L and a 6.0L Powerstroke.  Only one really didn't turn out well and it was machinist error I think.  Spun a bearing.  All of the journals were turned .010" but the one that spun apparently didn't get cut as it measured close to factory size.  Should have mic'd it myself.

It's time consuming and needs a couple specialty tools, but so rewarding and SO much cheaper.

759NRNG (Forum Partidario) said:

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

Be wary of Blueprint engines.  I won't go into detail publicly, but PM me for details.

And this is all very interesting cuz JG went with a blueprint in the Vette ...yes?

They came highly recommended from our friends at Summit, and my dealings with the company both on the PR and the tech ends have been solid so far. 

I FINALLY got a shipping confirmation on the dry sump tank, so that's the final piece of the puzzle before we can actually slide the thing in and do some sweet burnouts, though. If anythign goes wrong ya'll'll be like the third to know.