Sears, Ward's, Western Auto, and a bunch of regional franchise stores used to offer rebuilt engines, usually at a slightly lower price, (and quality) than local shops could provide. Characteristically, those engines were the ones that needed big overbores, and lots of crankshaft grinding. It wouldn't be uncommon to find .060" oversize cylinders and a .030/.030 undersize crankshaft in a Sears or a Ward's engine. A lot of the time, they were sold as a "short block", a rebuilt lower end without a cylinder head. A customer would get a machine shop to do a valve job, and re-use his old cylinder head. His worn-out block got turned in as a "rebuildable core", so if it had major damage, there was an extra charge involved. Usually, the engines were supplied by high-volume rebuilders, and the specification tag would be applied showing the name of whatever big-box retailer was selling that particular engine. All the building was done on a "low-bid" procedure, so nobody really knew who was supplying the engines.
I've seen Dad refer lots of people to the Sears store right down the street when they balked at the price of his rebuild estimate.
Jerry
Last edited by Hotrod Lincoln; 10/20/2010 12:59 PM.
