Here Are The Worst Engines You’ve Ever Driven

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I’m going to pick a Small Block Chevy as the worse engine. The 4.4L V8 that GM built from 1979-1982. Let’s count the ways it sucked.

1. Power. In 1979, it made 120 HP. By 1982, it was under 100. Out of a 267 cu inch V-8. Torque values also sucked.

2. Vacuum Hoses. Every put 10 boxes of spaghetti into a two quart bowl? That is what the engine bay looks like. Most touched the exhaust manifolds.

3. Parts Compatibility. It’s a SBC, you can always update parts … Except it doesn’t share a single part with any other SBC. Even swapping heads from a better engine (yes, even the 305 heads were a massive improvement) took welding and machining.

4. Quality. Long story short, my dad was on his 4th engine before the car got to 5k miles. With 2k oil changes, it failed (rounded cam) at 70k miles. It cracked a head at 80k miles because they were fragile.

5. Fuel Economy. The 267 was supposed to get much better fuel economy than a normal SBC. I got 17 on the highway in a Malibu with insanely tall rear end gears (2.42?) I had a friend with a Malibu wagon police car. He had 3.83 gears and the police special 350. He got 19 on the highway, even though his car weighed more, had twice or more the power and a short rear end.

6. Ease of work. It was a “Metric Engine.” In theory, all the wrenches should be metric. In reality, it was a hodgepodge. I changed an alternator on the car. It needed a 1/2″, 12 mm, 13 mm, 9/16″, 7 mm, 3/8,” and a square drive socket to do the work. Most bolts in the engine bay had different wrenches for the nut and the bolt and almost all of them used both Metric and Standard wrenches. My dad found the AC compressor used a Whitworth for some damn reason.

7. Reliability. Until I upgraded the engine with lots of modified aftermarket parts, the car was 0/50 on trips over 100 miles. No joke. It NEVER completed a 100 mile trip without a tow truck being involved at some point in stock form.