East Tennessee Region SCCA

I've ran into an expensive problem. Apparently our Chevy van has one of the engines that's affected by defective cylinder heads that allows the coolant to leak into motor oil.

Anyway, the only real solution is to replace the engine. I wanted to go with the Goodwrench reman. engine which has a good warranty and costs $3200. Chevy dealer wants ~$2500 plus tax to install it, bringing the total to around $6000.

I could also get a used junkyard motor with 66K for $1100 shipped, obviously no warranty.

Does anybody know a good place to have that engine swap performed that could be possibly cheaper than the dealer? It's a work van and any breakdown will cost me beyond just towing it home, so the place has to be diligent in their work.

I talked to a mechanic friend and he said he just moved to RT Clapp on Magnolia and he has been impressed with the way they do business. You might want to give them a shot. They have been in business a very long time.

Thanks Mark. Looks like a good place based on Google reviews also. I'll give them a visit this week.

These vans are real pain when it comes to do anything with the engines. Chevy's estimated labor time to R&R an engine is 26 hours.

Goodluck on your swap. Does that one come out the top or bottom.?

RT CLapp rewired my E28 528e in 1994 and I was happy with their work back in the day.

They were very nice when I went there. They are Jasper engine dealer and that's the only engine they would install. Total would have been ~$5200 which is definitely cheaper than $6000.

But I ended up using Reeder Chevrolet. They offered me Goodwrench reman out the door for ~$4600 and they do all the Coca-Cola Chevy vans, so the service manager didn't even have to look it up from the computer to give me a quote.

Ehhmm, recon ya done good then.

Just wanted to update this now that we have about 5000 miles on the new engine and to give big props to Reeder Chevrolet.

The Goodwrench engine itself is great, it feels and sounds like brand new engine and has used zero oil in the first 5K.

Reeder stayed within the original quote + 2 engine mounts that turned out to be toast, no surprise at 250K. They also installed a new radiator that I brought in. About a week ago at 4K, we noticed a very small coolant drip under the van. They diagnosed it as the small coolant hoses going through throttle body and replaced them both free of charge! They absolutely didn't have to do it for free since the hoses were just old and probably got disturbed during the engine swap.

All in all I cannot say enough good things about the Reeder during the engine swap and after. The Service Manager's name is
Allen Surgenor and he really took extremely good care of us.



As a sidenote, that brand new Vista-Pro radiator started gushing coolant 2K miles later and I had to replace that with a Advance Auto Parts unit. While installing that, it turned out the the quick-connects that came with AAP radiator where so out of tolerance that the oil- and tranny cooler hoses wouldn't lock in. So I had to use those from the busted Vista-Pro radiator. Since I bought the
Vista-Pro from RockAuto, I had to ship it back to for a warranty refund, which was a giant PITA with the radiator oozing out coolant, ATF and motor oil.

What year van is it? You guys must drive it a lot in order to have put 5K miles on it already. LS engine (you mentioned coolant hoese to the throttle body).

It's an 2006 with a LR4. Delivery van , so it sees about 50K a year.