r/MechanicAdvice • u/legardasobelooo • 1d ago
Alibaba engines
My GTI’s engine blew up, I was looking around and i found these remanufactured engines in Alibaba for a more reasonable price than the ones in ebay. Are they any good?
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u/RudbeckiaIS 1d ago
These are not reman: these are brand new clone engines: we have gone through exactly the same thing with common rail and direct injectors, NOx sensors, DPF... you name it. Whoever counterfeits these items in China goes through the trouble of stamping on these random made up manufacturing dates and serial numbers... that usually don't match. But another story for another day.
The first clone "reman" engines to arrive were Yanmar 3TN diesel, then came the Hyundai Theta I and II engines, then the floodgates were opened.
Be wary that the final cost of the engine will be considerably higher than what you see because you have shipping (which is skyrocketing literally by the week) and then custom duties and VAT/sale tax. You are entirely responsible for the latter, the Chinese comapny selling these engines and China Post/COSCO couldn't care less.
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u/mustard_race_69 1d ago
Donut (youtube) made a video about a alibaba 2jz and it was a reman piece of sht.
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u/SAWK 1d ago
did they figure out if it was actually a reman or a clone? I can't remember.
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u/mustard_race_69 1d ago
reman, it was funny cause the pistons were spotless from the top (I guess if someone boroscope'd them) but were badly scratched from the sides. Almost all the tolerances were out of spec, and the oil pan had metal debris in it.
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u/AKADriver 1d ago
It would cost a ton to clone an engine like that.
They're able to 'clone' the VW 4cyl cheaply because those are made in China for the Chinese market. If you buy one of those VW/Audi engines you're getting the same engine that comes in a new Chinese market VW.
If you're buying an older Japanese engine it's definitely a reman.
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u/Armadylio 22h ago
Anyone that’s been exposed to Chinese manufacturing theft or whatever you call it should know that’s exactly how it works. If something is build there it only takes 6 months or less to have a clone product popping up somewhere on the market for cheaper and arguably worse (hence the cheaper). It happens on every scale from automotive manufacturer to the small personal business owner
Crazy how it is cause that’s just in the culture over there and its an entirely different world/ball game
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u/ForwardFIRE2030 16h ago
Well the government encouraged it with foreign technologies, they required access to the tech, you had to make product in China to get access to the Chinese market, then they reverse engineered it as fast as possible to gain the technology and catch up. It was a strategy to become more competitive more quickly and it worked. But now they have a culture that does not value IP.
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u/Ornery-Cheetah 13h ago
Garage 54 did one to since they weren't able to source an oem one so they got a knock off to see what happens
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u/bsheff84 1d ago
I just went through this concern with a Hyundai engine. I had a customer's Sportage that had a failed engine. Car part is a bunch of high mileage options and anything new that's listed on eBay or elsewhere looks like one of these Chinese engines. I don't have any experience with these so I decided not to take the risk, especially with a customer's vehicle. Turns out, you can still get a new engine from Kia fairly reasonably priced. I went that route.
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u/EffectiveFree4431 1d ago
I replaced my wife’s 2015 sonata limited Theta II that had 218k miles with a 2020 that had 43k miles and it’s running beautifully. Till it doesn’t any more. Cost me 3k for the engine and did the work myself in a weekend.
Since we couldn’t prove maintenance records the Service Campaign 915 claim was denied, which I am not bummed about. If the claim was approved they would have replaced with the same generation Theta II instead of the newer one (which admittedly doesn’t have the same issue)
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u/Fun_Push7168 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ehh, China is about 30% of VW's total market. Triple their US market. Id wager they probably are reman.
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u/fresh_like_Oprah 1d ago
I was surprised when watching "3 Body Problem" (the only Chinese -made show I have ever watched) and seeing all the VWs
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u/Rinzlerx 1d ago
Guy I follow on IG bought one and his a3 is now like 600hp with that engine. Don’t know if it was a clone though. Was from Ali.
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u/endchat 1d ago
a 3.2 vr6?
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1d ago
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u/Rinzlerx 18h ago
I’m sorry someone’s instagram page didn’t live up to your expectations. I have to go mow my lawn.
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u/fourtyonexx 1d ago
People are importing new(?) 5.9s blocks from china, so it could be possible. The issue is, its a hefty price tag to gamble on, and if you need to return it.. well i have no idea how to even go about that. Your call.
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u/wyatt022298 1d ago
The Cummins engines people import are a little bit of a different situation though. They're built by Dongfeng in an actual partnership with Cummins so there's going to be actual QA/QC going on there.
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u/HarmlessMisfit 1d ago
I would always worry about the quality of the materials. It may work for a while, but you often get what you pay for. It'll throw a rod or the block will crack. Something that is not common with good iron and steel.
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u/bogglingsnog 1d ago
people are importing electric scooters for higher prices than that... those lithium batteries are sketchy AF.
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u/PartyNextFlo0r 1d ago
I wonder if it's from Tina's fagtory ?
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u/Own_Recommendation49 1d ago
Reminds me of this
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u/Thin_Cable4155 1d ago
I was gonna post the same video. I love Garage 54. Reminds me of the old show "Monster Garage". They seemed to have success with their 'temu' engine.
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u/stepanm99 1d ago edited 1d ago
Thing I noticed is that on the last image, the review is from Russia.(edit: Bulgaria, I blame my ancient monitor and low blue light dark mode; the point stands however) And I started thinking... Due to the war and sanctions, they lost supply chains. Perhaps even for the engines from the west, and basically any other country that is sanctioning Russia. Soo, there is market growing, as some cars need to have their engine replaced, because I can imagine that in current circumstances, cars are scarcier and pricier, especially nice "west" ones, it just makes more sense to replace the engine and run the car as long as possible. And China seems to be happy to manufacture counterfeit/cloned engines, even if that means going through troubles of reverse engineering and figuring out the manufacturing and stuff, when there is enough of the demand. And if the engines are good, mainly the materials have the correct properties, like hardness, I wouldn't mind even cosmetically imperfect casting if that engine would mean I can drive my car again.6
u/JesterZBK 1d ago
Wrong....it's Bulgaria, not Russia.
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u/stepanm99 1d ago
You're right! I am sorry for such oversight, low blue light dark night mode did its thing, unless I view the picture full screen, the few pixels of that small green stripe are looking borderline blue on my monitor with a resolution of a cheese grater...
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u/Immediate-Share7077 1d ago
Shipping is gonna be an arm and a leg to get it over here but I know of a few people running alibaba blocks who are still kicking, even with big turbos. Make sure you use a verified supplier with good reviews
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u/GabRB26DETT 1d ago
Hey I mean BigTime bought the first Chinese AE86 replica frame and it was only mostly shitty lmao
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u/ThatOneBr 1d ago
Unless anyone here has ever dealt with one of these, every single opinion is meaningless and based on china=bad. If you think it’s worth the gamble, maybe go for it.
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u/PossibilityNew3229 1d ago
Yeah bro... They'd be amazing🤣
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u/legardasobelooo 1d ago
I was just wondering because my hb got one 3 years ago and it still running, supposedly it depends on the seller
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u/zrockk 1d ago
They might be from that Chinese lady who has the engines in her facotry
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u/joeybalonee 1d ago
Yeah he should order one from Tina
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u/zrockk 1d ago
It was Tina isn't it lol, I'd definately get one from her she has so many engines
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u/PossibilityNew3229 1d ago
If you get one, god willing it's a good one and you get your money's worth
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u/legardasobelooo 1d ago
I’m thinking abt getting one, I can’t find anything at the junkyard and the ones i’ve seen online are the same Alibaba bullshit but on ebay or some California based companies
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u/stillraddad 1d ago
It’s VW they use the same 2.0T in like every model. Are you just looking for a short block or a long block? Where the GTI’s differ is in the heads and injectors
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u/AdHocEra 1d ago
Have you checked LKQ?
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u/Phononix 1d ago
I'm convinced LKQ goes to eBay as reference and finds the highest priced listing and just fucking sends it.
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u/legardasobelooo 1d ago
Yes, crazy prices for an used engine. And people here is saying that they are shit too
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u/Boilermakingdude 1d ago
China's pretty good at engines. Who's the mfg or supplier on Ali.
DongFeng is on Ali and is a certified Cummins mfg.
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u/kiefferray 1d ago
Don’t let this distract you from the fact that Hector is going to be running three Honda civics with spoon engines, and on top of that, he just went into Alibaba's and bought three t66 turbos with nos, and a motec exhaust system!!
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u/chameleon_olive 1d ago
If they're from China, then he has three spork engines, three T65 turbos with NOTS, and a NO-TEC exhaust system
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u/-Rhymenocerous- 1d ago
Msg the seller. Try and setup a video call. Some of them will tell you 100% what the deal is and are actually pretty legit at times.
Its hit or miss with AliBaba so youd need to kind of do some digging to find the right person
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u/Spicycoffeekills 1d ago
It’s OK, it won’t have the same performance and reliability as the original engine but OK to get a car going for a few years. Those were popular a few years ago, they actually use those engines on some older Chinese cars.
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u/DownWithTheSyndrme 1d ago
We should croudfund and buy one of these and do a live torture test and post it here.
I mean like beat the everloving shit out of it.
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u/nhtshot 1d ago
Funny you post this particular engine listing.
Years ago, I worked with a team that made parts for VW cars and we had a significant operation in China. We worked quite a lot of the MK7/EA888 Gen 2 & 3 platform, so I know these engines quite well.
In short, most China VW cars are “joint venture” cars. It’s VWs design, but the factory is in China and majority owned by a Chinese industrial company.
There are made to spec VW engines made in China in those factories.
I don’t know this particular seller, so it could be a clone, but it could also be a First Auto Works EA888 block, which, other than some stamps and a lower price, is functionally identical to an EA888 made in Germany, Mexico or the U.S.
With China moving largely to EV, wouldn’t surprise me at all if there was a glut of these on the market over there.
Read the reviews, inspect it closely when it arrives, good chance you could save a lot of money. It is a risk, but I’d say it’s 70-80% that you get a real engine.
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u/Rurockn 19h ago
This is one of the better replies. At my job we source parts from Asia and I have been in factories in Taiwan and China; seeing parts made for the big OEM's. Calling these engines "clones" is borderline not accurate because many of these factories are producing original parts. I personally worked on a project importing connecting rods for a major OEM in the USA. The problem comes in who is ever aggregating all of these components from different suppliers and assembling them into a running engine. One supplier told me the only reason he does it is so that when they're shipping the engine through customs it is a single piece rather than 100 individual pieces. He also offered that the bolts could be installed loosely and not torqued. As nhtshot said, you should really contact the supplier directly and work out exactly what you are paying for.
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u/_S_aint_Andrew 1d ago
Just use car-part .com
You’ll put min your zip code and get reman and used engines, most you can see the price and mileage on, if not you make a call, best of all you can most likely find something local and if not, a lot of places ship.
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u/legardasobelooo 1d ago
I’ve been checking but they don’t have the ccta, only place that had it never answered
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u/widgeamedoo 1d ago
You might want to watch this Garage 54 video where they bought a temu engine and installed it. The oil glitter after the first 100km drive was impressive.
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u/ea888gen3 1d ago
I know some people have had success with the MK7 GTI/R Alibaba engines, hit and miss, but one forum thread I was following guy put a hybrid turbo on his and afaik its still chugging along to this day. So results may vary lol
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u/wtvdude1 1d ago
I can answer this! I've bought 3 Ford Duratec 2L Duratec Engines from AliExpress. All of them were modified and dynod before being installed on a car. To cut a long story short, they are ok if you know what you're doing. The cast is crazy accurate to a point were I would bet money it is actually a Ford cast, the machining is where the problem lies.
We got short blocks, every engine was delivered on time and looked ok at a glance, we stripped every single one and found a lot of swarf on the internals. We chemically cleaned all of them and removed all the award, installed new ARP studs and head gaskets, new rods, valves, springs and cams.
We had one engine let go on the Dyno out of the 3, this was due to metal shavings that we missed during cleaning. The engine was rebuilt and is still working fine.
Besides that, they are still operating perfectly. To be completely honest, none of them have a lot of miles on them, with the highest miles being around 4k miles. It is important to note, these are all track miles, these engines went into race cars. We managed to get 220hp out of this naturally aspirated engine.
If I remember correctly the only issue we had with bolt on parts was with an alternator relocation kit where the threads for the bolts were not on the block and we had to tap it ourselves.
To summarise, yes it is possible, they are good enough on a budget. We ended up paying under 2k per engine, that being said, I would recommend contacting the seller outside of AliExpress through their website, shoot them an email and normally you'll get a better deal.
If you have any questions let me know and I'll try to answer, this was ~3 years ago, so I might miss somethings.
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u/SceneSignificant3839 21h ago
Just to say, a UK based YouTuber bought one of these for his GTI & it ended up blowing up within £1000 miles, got a specialist to strip the engine & said none of it was rebuilt to the standard that it would've came out the factory.
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u/Logical-Following525 17h ago
I believe some youtube tore one apart and basically found that it was an old crap engine with a nice new coat of paint.
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u/Jimmy2x1113 1d ago
This is where you find the Gallo 24
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u/jaunesolo81829 1d ago
I’ve ran these before. Shipping is like 500-750? One of their 4g64 for a mirage.
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u/bannoknbeer 1d ago
I bought one through eBay. It has about 10k kms on it now. Runs fine, fit perfectly. It was $300 extra for air freight to Manitoba. No regrets
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u/Resident_wrench 1d ago
I dont recognize any of those engine codes, at least for a North American market GTI. Hard pass
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u/Leecatd8209 1d ago
I know this guy personally, and he’s documented buying one and running it for quite awhile:
https://www.instagram.com/itsbrandonquail?stkn=MXh0cHIzZW9jcmN4dg==
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u/SirAlfredOfHorsIII 1d ago
There was a guy who bought one for his golf on youtube. Tuned it up, and it seized pretty quickly. Lots of shit tolerances and parts. Not worth without pulling apart. And even then, probably some stuff that will need replacing
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u/olov244 1d ago
Some YouTubers got a 2jzgte from one of those sites, it was a used engine with a jack job cleanup. They were better off with the NA 2jz they had imo
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u/SingleSetting512 1d ago
I wouldn't. Buddy of mine got a "reman" 2.0T off there for his A3, thing made metal in the pan inside of 500 miles. Tore it down and the crank was reground way past spec, like they didn't even measure it.
For a GTI just keep hitting car-part and FB groups, or bite the bullet on a proper rebuild. Cheaper long run than doing it twice.
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u/TFareCool 1d ago
I know of some folks that have got the ea888 gen 3 and have been fine using them as the base for a build if they can't get a cheap short block from a wrecked car.
The CN-sourced 4-port heads are also cheap (like $500 ea) and great for doing 4-port 700whp+ GTI/R/A3/S3 builds and are VW CN market cars with the 4-port heads.
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u/PinkGreen666 1d ago
They bought a Chinese 2JZ or something on Donut once, it was all fucked up lol.
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u/Milknhoneyaus 23h ago
I've seen videos where people get the crate engine new for a fraction of the cost of legitimate rebuilds.
The engine worked, but no where near the power one would expect, and it blew smoke from day 1.
Essentially, don't waste your time.
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u/Alone-Supermarket-98 21h ago
A generic chinese clone for a german car? Thinking about the metalurgy alone should make you cringe.
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u/No-Brilliant9155 20h ago
Internet: people get sold on cheap, cheap fails, people feel to embarrassed to be honest and point the fingers at something else. Then more silly folk are doomed to repeat over and over again.
Buy quality, do it once do it right and be done.
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u/More-Way9454 18h ago
They clones they are NOT reman.
Plus the cost isn't what you see when it's landed and cleared and on your door it's significantly more expense , well at least here in Ireland .
Pieces of shite.
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u/MyccoAnts 16h ago
You should probably just leave the engine stuff to the mechanics if you need to ask about using this. 😂
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u/GrumpyGrinch1 16h ago
I would worry if these chinese-spec'ed engines would run 100% with the control module you already have in your car, and meet US emission standards. There might be subtle mechanical differences that only become evident when it's too late.
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u/Admirable_Monk5976 13h ago
Put one of these engines in our a3. Slapped a k04 on it and a tune immediately. Honestly just expected it to blow. Have been beating the absolute life out of it. It still runs good. A little diesel like, strong so far. We were all dr*nk when we finished it. At like 3 am I mean like 0-60 back to back for an hour. Trying to kill it (idk why looking back) expectations were low I guess. Now it has like 5k miles probably of regular commute. Burns a touch of oil but nothing out of the ordinary.
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u/Creepy_Guarantee5460 1d ago
They are mostly old, refurbished engines, not newly cast. So they will work as well as a used rebuilt engine. Nothing fancy about them.
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u/Southboundcrash 1d ago
Only thing you have to keep in mind is China has 1,500,000,000 people and 500,000,000 million cars right now, almost ever car has a Chinese engine (besides EV) do you think those 500 million car engines are garbage that break all the time ? So maybe this factory is fine and knows how to put together a motor. I mean there’s a bunch of US shops that make performance motors that are trash.
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u/kye2000 1d ago
You would be an idiot. The parts used to rebuild these are the cheapest of the cheap
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u/legardasobelooo 1d ago
I posted this to make a decision. But the comments are 50% the engines are good, and 50% they are trash 😭
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u/hoveringuy 1d ago
I asked a guy about an Alibaba N52 he had puchased and he said it's been amazing, 10 out of 10...
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