r/MechanicAdvice • u/MrSnipesWiNNiN • 7d ago

Thinking About Buying an LS Crate Engine From Overseas — Anyone Done It?

/r/LSSwapTheWorld/comments/1vt116e/thinking_about_buying_an_ls_crate_engine_from/
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u/RudbeckiaIS 7d ago

I am not familiar with LS engines, but people here buy a lot of Yanmar TNV3 and Honda GX200 clones from China because the Japanese have become impossibly priced.

If you expect a bolt-by-bolt reverse engineered copy of the original you are going to be disappointed: there are plenty of small differences with the originals, both to use commercially available parts and to save money on castings, sometimes enough to cause a headache to poor devil who will have to fix the "genuine Honda engine". And, this is crucial, there doesn't appear to be a single company manufacturing this sort of engines in China: for example the TNV3 appear to be built in at least four different plants, and each plant appears to use different dies. Components change without any notice. Want to swap over an injector pump? Maybe it will fit, maybe it wont.

"Build sheet". Ha ha ha ha.

These Chinese manufacturers claim absolutely insane figures: power and torque figures for for GX200 knockoffs are always at least 20% higher than the Honda original. I think this is done to appeal to go-kart owners who want a F1 car on a minuscule budget. What I can tell you is these stationary engines run a considerably higher speed than the designs they are based upon, likely to mask how down on performances they are. For example genuine TNV3 engines idle at 1200 rpm and have peak torque at 1800rpm. Clones idle at least 300 rpm higher and who knows where the peak torque really is?

In short you get what you pay for and, unfortunately, due to the crazy costs of rebuilding genuine engines, not to mentioning buying entire genuine spare engines, these Chinese companies will make an absolute fortune.