Nate,
Lately? No; I did it in year 2001.
However, let me throw my 2 cents in here as I do it everywhere else.
Many people can rebuild an engine. Some of us here have done it with sub-optimal conditions and tools and achieved spectacular results and thus are darn proud either for the money saved or simply for the achievement in accomplishing something that is normally out of our comfort zone. That being said, I draw your attention to a couple of things to think about:
1) Cees mentioned something to the effect of "as long as you go through the effort of removing the engine, you might as well go for the long block as opposed to the short block rebuild". He gave a good reason. I thoroughly concur.
Having learned the hard way about attempting to save a few dollars during a rebuild/repair/restoration, I'm a strong advocate for not re-installing anything unless you are 100% certain that it is in good working order and more importantly,
will remain so for a long time. While it is impossible to know this all the time, if you went to replace the pistons and rings, for example, after XXX,XXX miles because they were worn, would you not suspect that maybe things on the head are worn too? (N.B. If I ever see you in person remind me to tell you about the story of when my transmission was in and out of the car 3 times in a year...)
2) Nice things about Metric (perhaps it applies to the other well known rebuilder, Noel's in Florida) are the following:
a) They do not care one iota what is "wrong" with your engine. Everything in gets the same treatment. They go through an identical rebuild procedure. If you do things like that, you can be most assured that the end results--the engines out the door--will be mostly identical. Most (
I did not say all) people or machine shops who do it as a side business to their overall business will do a tear down and try to find out "what" needs the work...when you do that you run the risk of overlooking something. My cylinder head had a slight crack; they discovered this and welded it (no charge). I believe when
bpossel sent in his engine for a long-block, they discovered the head not rebuildable. I've seen
theengineer's cylinder head that some rebuilder somewhere, sometime machined down beyond spec, but more importantly, not evenly. That's the kind of thing that has me afraid of going to someone doing it part time or not knowing these engines, such as "Ace Auto Machine Shop" in your hometown.
b) Metric does not change oil at 7AM, do a brake job at 10AM, and then rebuild engines after lunch.
All they do is Mercedes engines. They have been doing it for a
very long time. You would like to think that they then have a well-honed process, and when they make or have made mistakes, they have corrected them.
On a simpler level, I would much rather "exchange" my Bosch starter for a factory rebuilt rather than take it to my local "Joe's Auto Electric" service for precisely the same reason. Bosch doesn't care what the state of your core was, they apply the same set of rebuild processes to achieve identical quality going out the door. (Been there and done that too--I'll tell you that story after the first story...
) I think they are too small for this, but firms achieving either ISO or Six-Sigma quality certification will design their processes as Metric has.
Metric will, at your discretion and based upon their inventory, either exchange your head or engine, or rebuild what you send them. Perhaps if you were unlucky enough to need an engine rebuild on a early ML series you would not care about which engine was in and a swap would be in order. Generally on our collectible cars, they are well aware that we are willing to wait for our own engine to be completed.
Pay attention to Dr. Dan! See his list? That is, in a nutshell, why my "repair" job on my Uncle's old beater turned into a complete restoration...
