I'll explain the background of this post/survey.
I was put in a unique position this year with regards to vacation time, and since there is practically nowhere to go, I figured I would spend some vacation days doing something constructive. Something that I love, as well as offering a service to the community.
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My intention was to knock out a few engine swaps at one go. A matter of economies of scale - I would buy/facilitate purchase of a truckload of engines and deliver them to a predetermined location where I would mass test them, then prep them all at one go.
We'll use 10 as an example.
Prep would be pretty intense being as temperamental as the VK56VD is; but after opening up the engines to check on the health of the hardware, I would cover the usual fluids & maintenance items like belts, gaskets, plugs etc...but also include an intake valve cleaning.
All of these are somewhat tedious tasks, but they break down to a much simpler exercise when you have 10 engines sitting on the floor in front of you. This would be a commercial location with enough lifts and space for safe and efficient engine drops & installs.
Ideally, I would have loved to do the work close to me in Indiana so that I work around my schedule, but I understand that the cost of shipping vehicles and getting them back can add up quick depending on distance...unless I can get a massive discount on shipping 10 non-running vehicles to me.
That's why location mattered.
Alternatively, if the logistics work out I could be convinced to travel to the location that most members are located and do the swaps there. Think of it like a fancy mobile mechanic.
My time and travel costs aren't cheap, but again - look at the economies of scale - one roundtrip to fix 10 cars instead of 10 different interactions.
Again, location matters. Do we have 4 in the East Coast, 7 in California and 2 in Texas? That's the whole point of a survey.
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Another benefit was going to be the investigation phase on the damaged engines. If we took them apart and found a majority of engines to have failed from one obvious defect, then it would be easier to set responsibility where deserved.
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That was the plan I initially explored, but have decided that it would be best to keep my services to myself and stick to my own projects.
There simply doesn't seem to be much of a demand for this, and I have only gotten one respondent.
As for costs, for November 2020, M56 engines are going for an average of $4,300+. There are outliers with very low miles, but for the most part we're looking at around 100k-mile engines.
As you can imagine, M56 engine swaps will not be cheap. The cost of parts & labor will quickly approach the book values of some of these cars.
Maybe with time, the M56 engine prices will drop. Back in the day, the M45 engines also cost an arm and a leg before we started showing people that JDM engines could be made to work at a fraction of the price of a questionable US model unit. These days USDM engine prices are neck to neck with the imported alternatives. I love seeing the effect of market forces
Although there seem to be very few alternatives to the VK56VD sedan engine, I sure hope the prices will drop with time.
But then again, the book values of these M56s will have dropped as well, so even a $2,000 engine might seem expensive compared to the car. What a cycle!
Perhaps in the future someone will find some use for these ramblings. For now, I will wish you all the best...and that you stop blowing your M56 engines.
