Why does it cost so much to Rebuild an Engine?

Hello today we are replacing an engine in a 2013 Dodge Durango. Welcome to Mercie J auto care where compassion and craftsmanship come together. I’m Rick Smith, master certified technician. This job is not pleasant on the pocketbook, so I’d like to help you answer the question “Why does it cost so much?” Secondly, I want you to understand that there is no one specific way to do this job. I thought I’d show you a couple of obstacles that I had to overcome and how I went about handling them. So, let’s get started. Here is the old engine, I’ve already got the new engine in the vehicle. This is what we would refer to as a long block, it has cylinder heads on it and most of the components except all the external items. These client’s were driving up the mountains pulling a grade and the engine start overheating. Unfortunately for them, they were not able to find a safe place to pull over. So you can see here this plastic fitting literally rotted away and broke which could’ve been when it got really hot or it could’ve fractured. One of the most important things is when your shop suggests to service your radiator fluid or coolant or antifreeze, they are not just trying to take your money. Overtime that fluid degrades and it actually can develop acid and electricity which can rot away plastic components like this and cause very serious money problems. On a job this complex, it’s very important that whoever you have do it is trained and experienced and is a professional who pays attention to detail. In other words, they are a little bit of a craftsman. You can see I’m almost done with the job so these are just a few of the bolts, but everything is in order and organized. That really helps because on a job like this it doesn’t take much to forget one little part that’s deep down in there and then the technicians face with a choice. He can either pretend that part wasn’t there or actually take the time to take tear back into it. Here’s a picture of the engine up in the car, hopefully not too much backlight, but where my fingers at is the back of the oil pan. The whole pan comes down and in order to get the engine out we have to lower the differential to get clearance. What I chose to do is remove this entire cradle which includes the differential, axles, rotors and the power steering. I did that for a couple of reasons, one of them being that we have to get up to the starter to get to the torque converter bolts and then we also have to get to the engine mounts. This just gave me a lot more access, the disadvantage I suppose is that I will have to do an alignment on this when I’m done. Lastly I just wanted to point out that boards can be quite difficult to get to disconnect the engine and transmission and so you have a choice for those top goals you can either lower the sub frame right here and lower the transmission and transfer case so you get access up above to get to those bolts or in my case I remove the intake manifold and that allowed me to get access to those two bolts. I hope this video has been helpful to you and I hope you enjoyed watching it and until we see each other again safe travels and blessings to you.