(first posted 9/7/2015. We don’t normally rerun QOTD posts, but the 372 comments in this one make for some fine reading)
The article the other day on the gen2 Seville, with all of its feeble engines, made me think: Just what were the 10 worst car engines ever? Well, who better than you all to answer that. And if a something even vaguely resembling a consensus develops,we’ll make an official CC List in a post. But I’m not holding my breath… Maybe I’ll just pick what I think is the best list and re-post it.
Just so that we keep it a bit real, let’s have a cut-off; only engines that appeared after 1965. Many of us here might not be familiar with the travails of the Copper-Cooled 1923 Chevy. But many of us will remember the hypereutectic alloys and other delights of a somewhat more recent Chevy.
All light and medium duty GM diesel engines, they didn’t get the diesel engine thing right until they hired Isuzu to design the Duramax and even then the very early ones had some problems.
The other pox on GM was the small block Chevy, a very good engine except for lousy valve cover leaks, only took them about 30 years to fix it and the design they used was their own design used since around 1938 on the Detroit diesels. Also exhaust manifold and head design. Lets wrap the manifold tightly around the spark plugs and then see if we can figure out how to keep plug wires from melting.
Small block Chevy engine took a beating when they were used in trucks, real trucks, not pickups.
BL O-Series