Care to share where that is documented?
When I search the normal places "regular people", ie not mechanics, go, they don't know the difference between a valve cover gasket, a head gasket and a complete engine rebuild. It is all a foreign language and they depend on what the mechanic says, which is usually it is going to cost a lot of money. My use of the term rebuild was, it is time to tear into the engine to see what needs to be replaced and/or freshened up. Sorry if it confused you, since that is not what the word I used means to you.
I was not trying to be mean or condescending about it so sorry if the written words came out that way.
Unfortunately, most common place normal people search for anything is going to be Google or a search engine which searches the internet and those sources seem to know very little overall about anything mechanical.
You have to then click on some of those results to find actual good accurate information and all of them are not created equal.
It's pretty well established though among anyone with mechanical ability with automobiles or small engines or anyone who is just tinkered with their own engines and stuff over the years that a rebuild is quite different than just digging into one to see what it may need.
That's kind of like comparing exploratory surgery for something they have no idea what's going on versus a laparoscopic appendectomy.
One is very invasive with no known actual problems and they will have to make up their plan as they go along based on what they discover and the other is a set established, simple procedure.
That's what replacing a head gasket is on many / most lawn mowers.
Think back to the traditional Briggs and Tecumseh Flathead engines or L head engines like Briggs calls them.
It was fairly uncommon to have one of these head gaskets blow but it does happen and I've had to do at least a couple of them and the past two or three years but that's compared to dozens of the overhead valve ones.
These old engines would often have the head removed just to clean off the carbon etc which is really a waste of time but even if people weren't in there just looking around you did have to remove the head to get to the valves and valve seats and it was common procedure to use a new gasket when you put it back together but you actually didn't always have to.
There's no push rods or anything there it's just a simple eight bolts or so and it's a part and back together.
Something like that is not quite a foreign language to everyone.
I will admit it's getting more so to a higher percentage of the population but for many decades people have done smaller mechanical repairs and stuff on their cars and even mowers.
Many people did their brake pads and rotors when it was needed and they would do alternators and starter replacement and replace the serpentine belt and mini would also replace spark plugs and wires or spark plugs and the individual coil boots or coils etc.
Now, the majority of car owners can't even or won't, change a tire or remove and replace their battery and many of them don't even know how to check their oil because cars don't use oil as much as they used to and people have been trained to get the oil changed much more frequently so typically by the time they're pulling into the oil change place it's not been that long so the oil isn't low enough to matter.
So I guess it all depends for you are grabbing your sample of people.
If you're getting them from a bank or an IT support firm you're probably going to have a lot fewer I have any knowledge or experience with small engines or car repairs then if you were pulling these people from a smaller more rural town, Golden Corral buffet or Walmart or let's go for the Kings Ransom and walk into your local auto parts store. Lol
Also, many people like to make the distinction between rebuild and remanufacture and I don't really care so much about that until you start talking about purchasing parts that have had this done to them.
Remanufacturing usually means and should require much more attention to detail and checking of all things and replacing any parts that aren't perfectly within specs etc and this usually cost more whereas a rebuilt part just basically means whatever bad thing was broken in it has been replaced and it's been checked out and now it works so in many instances it's more like repaired or basically repaired or repaired plus a little extra like the comedy worn out bushings and stuff but it's certainly not 100% rebuilt and typically not as good as something that's remanufactured.
But there's really no guarantees with any of that.
When you're talking about engines and cars though, there are traditional and accepted meanings to the expressions it's just that people that aren't very knowledgeable about it often use the wrong terms so it's really their fault.
Someone has to have a repair done on their car like let's say a common timing chain repair.
With this they would probably just you say it's a repair and have the timing chain done but if it's an interference engine that been some valves and the head has to come off and go to the machine shop or get swapped out with a remanufactured head...they often, and incorrectly, refer to this as having their engine rebuilt because it will say something like my engine blew or my engine went out and I had to have it rebuilt.
That's certainly not the case. One could argue they had the top half done or the top half rebuilt but that's kind of some old school terminology on the bottom of top half that goes along with the old argument which was also pretty incorrect that if you just do the top it will cause the bottom to go out soon or if you just do the bottom it will cause the top to need to be done.
All that was mostly a bunch of crap pushed by greedy mechanics or shops who just wanted to get the larger repair bill for the complete rebuild or swapping it with reman engine because lots of times it's far simpler to take that whole component or whole rebuild approach than it is to do just the lesser thing that actually needs to be done because the top half is almost always just done in the vehicle and not with the engine out.
Another basic fairly accurate rule of thumb is you can never rebuild an engine without removing it from the vehicle.
This is because a rebuild as far too extensive and you must remove the entire engine fully disassemble it hot tank it clean it check everything replace the damage parts and then replace all of the wear items with new.
You just can't do this in the car conveniently or cost-effectively today.
They used to on the old cars though commonly throughout the 40s and 50s. You could in theory do a fairly complete rebuild on some cars in the chassis today but it's just not cost-effective and it's also not nearly complete like a fully rebuilt or remanufactured engine because at best you only hit like a maybe 90% or a little bit better versus the 100% or very close to that you could hit by having the engine out.
