@Cruiser Umm… blueprinting may work for older American engines that were built with no regard for tolerances, but not for modern engines or any Japanese engine in the last couple of decades. Then again, aren’t you a fan of classic American muscle cars?
An old-school big-block may see performance gains of up to 20% and a newer American car may see 5–10% just by building it the way Toyota, Honda, and Nissan have been doing it for decades. Blueprinting those engines gets you such minimal gains (<2%) that it isn’t worthwhile unless you have more dollars than sense or are racing professionally.
It is also a case of “garbage in, garbage out”.though. I’ve seen shadetree mechanics do some impressive stuff with some makes/models and not so well with others. Of course than may also have to do with skill sets and not always the inherent quality of the engine. For instance, anybody who has ever straightened a head on most engines who tries it the same way with an older (‘80s) VW will bend the camshaft in a way that will cause it to break fairly soon though not immediately due solely to a lack of knowledge. That goes back to competence, since they should know enough to be familiar with the peculiarities of certain vehicles if they want to justify earning more than minimum wage.
And @koanhead is correct that many places do not have the proper equipment to do it right. I’ve seen may a garage that lacked the basic stuff like bore gauges and a full set of micrometers, so I would not trust those garages to work to within 0.050” whereas I am accustomed to working to within 0.001” in my sleep… given proper equipment, like a Haas HL-2, a nice Osaka Kiko, or even an old Bridgeport.
You would also need a good scale for making sure that the reciprocating parts are close to each other in mass. I have not seen one of those in many garages either, but if your engine has rods that vary from each other by more than ~0.5 grams then you are going to have balance issues that will tear the engine apart over time.
Or you could just get a Japanese engine that is already effectively blueprinted since they have this little thing that I, as a machinist, am intimately familiar with. It’s a little thing called QA.
@koanhead “Do you have a foundry, a mill center, or a flywheel grinder? I sure as hell don’t.”
That is what I am here for. Give me a blueprint and I’ll see if I can whip it out during my lunch break ;)