Using As Found Gen3 Donor Engines

How many are taking a used donor Gen 3 Hemi engine and using it as is for your swap? Just wondering if its worth the gamble of dropping an engine and trans in as is without going through it first. Figure low mileage if it can be accurately determined. While there isn't supposed to be a lot of wear, bad stuff can happen with these engines. If you are going though it, how far do you take it down?

Curious about this as well. Weighing a 360 swap , but if I didn’t have to rebuild a g3 hemi it may make $$ sense over the 360

I did it, i took heads off to look at cylinder walls, then dropped the pan to change to swap pan for the A-Body and checked the mains. if all is to your liking, let it eat.

what's the worst thing that can happen?

The 04-08 old ones can drop valve seats, this was fixed in 2009-present, so I'd go with one of those, they also have better cylinder heads and make more power than the early ones.

If you find an early one, the seats can be staked to stay in place. No reason to dismiss an early mill especially if you find a low mile one.

I hate to say the LS thing but the Sloppy Mechanics group on facebook has been using 200-400K mile LS short blocks for a long time now. Most of them jam a cam and springs in there(don't look at the cam bearings or they will be bad) and some even add a turbo or two. I don't see why you couldn't do the same with a Gen III. If I were to do it with a Gen III I would tear it down enough to look at the lifters and if you do that might as well toss a cam and chain in it. Ring seal doesn't seem to be an issue on higher mile modern engines.

Oh they work alright



He's putting together a BGE now that will surpass those numbers

Everyone of them I have seen with dropped valve seats was overheated at some point including one I just finished up last week. Look for sludge, discolored cylinders and in the case of my car it had a brand new water pump, brand new radiator, a couple hoses and the one that was leaking was not replaced yet, I am guessing they were overheating it and throwing parts at it to try and make it stop. It runs great now with late heads on the early block and 12 to 1 compression.

I have to replace a lot of cams in LS engines also, they are junk, got a 6.0 in the shop right now as a matter of fact with a bad cam. A lot of times when the LS cam goes bad it spins the bearing in the block then the block is no good. LS heads are nowhere near as good as GenIII Hemi heads. LS engines are not cheap unless they have those really high miles, last early 5.3 I bought for a customer was $1500 with lowish miles, these 6.0s are nearly impossible to find and cost even more for a decent low miles used engine.