Frozen block repairable?

[goatmans]

I bought 4.3L Mercruiser powered Chapparral last week with a freeze damaged block. I am ready to spend the $3000 to have short block replaced, but a friend told me about a guy who can patch most cracked blocks. Says he's done it for 7 years with only one warranty return. Charges about $1200 depending on degree of damage. Is this possible? Anyone else heard of this? Thanks in advance.

 

[llerrad]

Re: Frozen block repairable?

Have seen crack repaired blocks done but this is an art, any casting is hard to weld, repair areas expand at diferant rates and become a stress point, sometimes they need to resleeve a cylinder. Can you trust it? only time will tell. You might have a higher comfort level with a replacement block or engine.

 

[flashback]

Re: Frozen block repairable?

Goatmans, sorry to hear about the cracked engine, hope you knew it was shot when you bought the boat. 3000 is too much for the short block. I would take it to buford auto machine shop on Holiday road in Buford. Talk to Dave about a rebuilt unit, Im sure he can do one for less than 2000 and he does good work. (re-builds for many of the marine dealers in the area).<br /> As far as repairing your existing block, in most cases, the cracks are too numerous to bother repairing. the most common method is called stitching, and it does work well for a single crack or two, but usually on a v block engine the cam valley gets a lot of small cracks thru-out. personally, I wouldn,t trust it... good luck