Most Reliable Engines

[tcs]

Charlie Boorman tests the reliablility of the ubiquitous Honda horizontal:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SLjnqkXNWJs

He acquires an elderly and well-used Super Cub and proceeds to "test" it in various ways. At one point, he drains the oil out of the crankcase and replaces it with deep fryer oil. The bike continued to run just fine. His ultimate test is chucking the bike off a three story building. The engine started first kick afterwards!

Tom

Fun facts: the Honda step-thru is sold in 162 countries. Over one-third of the 150,000,000+ motorcycles Honda has built have been Cubs. Honda now builds a Super Cub model with EFI.

[Grider Pirate]

Originally Posted by kta

The only thing I've taken from this thread is that - Almost every motorcycle engine ever made is reliable. Obviously this is an overstatement, but clearly the list isn't being narrowed down at all. For total longevity (aka distance traveled) I think the BMW K motors are it. I love Jap engines, and there are lots of great daily steeds. But NOTHING Japanese will do the mileage a K bike will without a topend rebuild.

Sure. K bikes are fine if you only want 4 or 5 hundred thousand miles out of it with little or no maintenance, but then what!
K's are underrated.

[dungspreader]

[quote=Uncle Ernie]Re Land Rover; Somebody who should know once said to me,
"The reason the Brits don't make computers is they haven't figured out how to make them leak oil." I don't know about the older ones, but the new ones are castrated yuppiemobiles. Get a Toyota Land Cruiser.


Well bud , I DO know and don't have to ask "someone who should know " .
You won't find 2,25 litre petrol engines in the new Landies btw .

Toyota diesels are good as well .[ I asked a man ,who knew a man ,who lived next door to a guy who had one ]

[motu]

Originally Posted by dungspreader

Toyota diesels are good as well .[ I asked a man ,who knew a man ,who lived next door to a guy who had one ]

You obviously haven't had much experience with 3C powered Estima's then.Or seen the results of cambelt breakage on the C series or bucket follower L series engines.Some Toyota diesels are very good.....others you don't want to go near.

[clangers]

Originally Posted by tcs

Charlie Boorman tests the reliablility of the ubiquitous Honda horizontal:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SLjnqkXNWJs

He acquires an elderly and well-used Super Cub and proceeds to "test" it in various ways. At one point, he drains the oil out of the crankcase and replaces it with deep fryer oil. The bike continued to run just fine. His ultimate test is chucking the bike off a three story building. The engine started first kick afterwards!

Tom

Fun facts: the Honda step-thru is sold in 162 countries. Over one-third of the 150,000,000+ motorcycles Honda has built have been Cubs. Honda now builds a Super Cub model with EFI.

This is very funny.

[KinkyWinks]

If I were going to do an around the world trip, I would figure out how to get more distance between the handlebars and seat on a Honda Rebel 250 parallel twin. They have made them for 40 years and now the Chinese have started building the same engine and it will probably be around for the next 40. It is almost bullet proof, low tech, and anything on it can be fixed by the average Village idiot. And it gets around 80 miles per gallon of fuel.

[justGone]

most reliable engines ive ever come across are the toyota 1c(1.8) and 2c(2.0-2.2) inline 4 diesel engines that came in a number of different cars and some toyota machinery... regular oil changes and timing belts and these are utterly bomb proof. ive had 5 1c's and my mate(the type of guy who knows better but does it anyway- washing filters out with water, had a sock on the manifold as an air filter for a few months etc etc) has had 3 2c's and he never killed one; a TRUE testement to the reliability of these incredible engines, I was away for six months and came back to -17 degrees and stuck a battery in mine and it fired on half a turn... its hard to convey the amount of abuse they will take...utter,utter, utter dogs abuse... id deffo take mine around the world after a full service and it already has 278,xxx miles on it. cant beat a pre 1997 corolla diesel. i fookin love em
gets an average of 45mpg too. god knows what it would get driven with manners

the larger 4cyl's are shite btw


edit:just noticed the date of the last post

[eric123]

Honda CX500
Yamaha XS650
Toyota 22R/22RE
Ford 300 straight 6

[The Raven]

Originally Posted by Mattbastard

FINALLY somebody said something...

I got an 05 Wrangler X with 30K on it right now. I hope to add a 2 in front of that easily. She'll be my shitty Wisconsin vehicle.

Jeep 2.5 I-4 cyl Yeah, it's not powerful, but damn it runs 180,000mi and not burning a drop of oil. Apparently the Oil pump is really good in these engines

[Steve G.]

Bikes:
Honda 90 Cub
Laverda 750 twin

Car/Trucks
Ford 300 inline 6
Hino 4 cylinder deisel

Steve

[Mandello]

Originally Posted by The Raven;

Jeep 2.5 I-4 cyl Yeah, it's not powerful, but damn it runs 180,000mi and not burning a drop of oil. Apparently the Oil pump is really good in these engines

i had one for many miles, reliable yes, but ridiculously crappy mileage for a slow 4banger.... sold it for the 4.0, after 11 years still loving it and the fact it'll keep up with traffic even with the a/c on.

oh...and the G5 eats cross country trips for breakfast and loves the city too, never skips a beat

alexM

[fishkens]

Originally Posted by scrubs

ford 302 straight six

wtf?

never heard of that before.

[bdjuju]

Originally Posted by eric123

Honda CX500
Yamaha XS650
Toyota 22R/22RE
Ford 300 straight 6

You might want to remove the 22RE from your list. That's after Toyota realized their folly and de-contented the engine to the tune of a row of timing chain.. went from double to single row sometime in the late 80's and things have been downhill from there.
I've two 1990 22-RE engines that have had their timing chains take a shortcut through the front case. Sure there are workarounds (DOA Racing tensioners, for one), but from the factory it wasn't all that. The original recipe 22R was the stuff, if you were alright with carburetors.

Much like Mercedes and BMW of late, Toyota realized they built their stuff too well & dialed back on bulletproofness where they could save a buck.

[marksbonneville]

My current 22RE has 285,000+ miles and still going strong, my late model 22RE's also gave an excess of 200k miles, never had a problem.

Originally Posted by bdjuju

You might want to remove the 22RE from your list. That's after Toyota realized their folly and de-contented the engine to the tune of a row of timing chain.. went from double to single row sometime in the late 80's and things have been downhill from there.
I've two 1990 22-RE engines that have had their timing chains take a shortcut through the front case. Sure there are workarounds (DOA Racing tensioners, for one), but from the factory it wasn't all that. The original recipe 22R was the stuff, if you were alright with carburetors.

Much like Mercedes and BMW of late, Toyota realized they built their stuff too well & dialed back on bulletproofness where they could save a buck.

[Mad Git]

Most reliable engines, mmmmmm,
well, top of the list has to be the honda cub 90, my wife had one years ago, until the frame snapped in half! The engine had a burnt exhaust valve when we first got it, but it still ran pretty good. When the frame snapped, the wife got a scooter, and the kids got the honda engine. It was stuffed into an old Z200 frame and was thrashed around for years and years, half the time it had no oil in it, was left out all year round, and still ran good.
After many years of this, the threads went in the spark plug hole, so I got a cylinder head from a cub 50, which works great, it seems to have slightly bigger valves, and there's loads of power. Eventually the youngest lad got bored, he's 21 at this stage, and fitted the same engine into a midi-moto!
The poor old engine is minded a bit better now, but has put up with this for about 15 years!!!!!!!
I can't remember the original age of the 90, but it was old when we bought it.
Other engines; I had a GSX1100es, 2mm over bored, very powerfull, I drove the nuts off of this for nearly 15 years, and it never once let me down. After that I had a tatty ZX10, drove the living sh*te out of that, damned scary beast that one, the engine is totally unbreakable. This same engine has now gone into an off road buggy (with reverse!!), and is still a scary monster. 30 years ago I had an ex post office (An'post) renualt 4 van, this engine went through 2 bodys, and was still purring like a kitten when it when to the scrap man, almost twice around the clock on the milage.
THEY DON'T MAKE EM LIKE THEY USED TO