crazyal
Super Member
How many shops in your area provide free magnafluxing?
But then a complete magnafluxing of a 4 cylinder engine block that takes only 15 minutes probably should be free.............
Around here you don't get the option, it's included in the bill. The only way to not have it done is by agreeing to take full responsibility and pay up front. A good portion of the parts brought to machine shops are from engines that had a mechanical failure of some sort or from a salvage yard with an unknown history of the part. After all a salvage yard would rather sell an engine whole if it runs. A lot of the time if someone has a block they want worked on they buy the parts needed, pistons, rings, bearings, etc from the machine shop. That usually means a shop has a lot of time and money into an engine. Some people would just walk away leaving the shop on the hook. Even if they took a 50% deposit they are still going to be out money once you include the labor and shop costs.
When inspecting a block or head there's only a limited number of places you can test. The rough surfaces of castings are extremely hard to check and are unlikely to be cracked. So you would focus on places like the cylinder walls and the mating surface to the head. I preferred to use fluorescent particles using a UV light to detect cracks when working indoors. Any crack shows up like a neon sign. If you were doing testing for a part, say a valve going in a nuke plant, then there's lots of rules you need to follow. However if the purpose of your testing is just simple go/ no go testing where you are looking for a crack on the surface then it's a very simple process.