POLL: How old were you when you assembled your first engine?

[smallblockjay]

Re: POLL: How old were you when you assembled your first engine?

Wow, almost half the folks in the poll assembled their first engine while they were younger than 16.

Including me. I was about 15. First engine was a 305 SBC that I pulled out of a '78 van. The van was supposed to have a 350, but I didn't check if before I pulled it out and it turned out to be a 305. Put new rings and bearings in it and put in a little Wolverine Blue Racer cam :-X Long story short, that motor was a mess, but I finally got it all put together right and it ran well, at least as well as a 305 can run anyhow. Put it back in the van and sold it.

[fahrenschnell]

Re: POLL: How old were you when you assembled your first engine?

12- It was a four banger out of a 1982 S-10. My uncle supervised and helped with tightening bolts. Great learning experience. Taught me how to swing wrenches, and now I make a living swinging wrenches.

[65 L79]

Re: POLL: How old were you when you assembled your first engine?

13 , Dad told me not to take any gas down in the basement , but when I fired the old briggs mower up he was impressed . Refreshed my first 350 300 hp from a 70 caprice at 18 yrs old and put it in my 80 4spd elcamino and ran 14.0 et , got 20 mpg with 3:31 gears.

[Greybeard]

Re: POLL: How old were you when you assembled your first engine?

By the time I was 12, I could knock the flywheel off of a Briggs in my sleep and install a new piston using a soup can for a compressor. If I knew that I could hot rod one back then, who knows where I would have wound up - probably the hospital.. But I didn't do much automotive stuff till I was 15.
In 63, just shy of my 16th birthday, I worked after school at an engine shop. I was indentured to the dip tank and bead blast booth for a buck an hour (didn't need no stinkin' EPA or Child Labor Laws...)
The owner let us use the shop after hours to assemble a machined 283 for my dad's '56. He let me install the rings and bearing shells, and run the pistons in and install the bearing caps. But he told everyone that I had built it, even though he was the one who checked the clearances, and did the torques, and selected the cam and did the tune up.
I was 17 when I build a short block ford 6 for shop's Econoline, and 20 when I scratch-built a wicked sounding 301" 283 on my own. It lasted into the mid 70s. I've since built dozens of MG engines, many for vintage racing, and maybe ten killer SBF 5.0, 331 and 347 motors, but most were just rebuilds of the same three blocks that were originally done by Panhandle. Still do my own Briggs rebuilds though...

[71SC/360]

Re: POLL: How old were you when you assembled your first engine?

I was about 19. It was one of the best ones I ever built. Probably because I was so taken by making sure everything was perfect, details, details, details. Now I do it so fast, I find myself forgeting something or making stupid little mistakes. Fortunately in my later year builds, the worst thing I've had happen is a few bent push rods.