My cousin swore welding a cracked engine block with a cheap rod would hold, now I'm out $200 and a good 350

Honestly, my cousin Tony, who's rebuilt like 3 trucks in his driveway, told me to just weld the crack in my small block Chevy instead of buying a new block. He said 'a little JB Weld and a Harbor Freight rod will hold fine, I've done it before.' Ngl, I was skeptical but he seemed so sure. I spent a whole weekend grinding and welding that thing, looked decent enough. First time I really got on the throttle after installing it, the weld split open and dumped all my oil on the freeway. Tbh, I should have just paid the $300 for a used block from the junkyard in Modesto. Anyone else get burned by a family member's 'proven' repair trick?

2 comments

2 Comments

jessica_dixon12d ago

Ngl, I think people overlook how much heat cycling matters with cheap welding rods. That block goes from cold to hot to cold again, and the filler metal expands at a different rate than the cast iron. Your cousin probably did it on a bracket or something that doesn't see real temperature swings, but a crack on the main block is a whole different beast. Honestly, you might have gotten away with it if you'd preheated the block to like 500 degrees in a oven first, but nobody does that in their driveway.

parkerk5612d ago

Wow, I didn't realize you could preheat a block to 500 degrees in an oven. That's wild. I'm just sitting here trying to picture someone rolling a V8 block into their kitchen oven. I bet the neighbors would think you're baking a really weird cake. But I gotta agree with @jessica_dixon on the heat cycling thing, that's the part that always sneaks up on people. I've seen blocks crack worse after a bad weld than before because the filler didn't expand the same way.