Replace those items? Opinions varie, please help.

[TimT]

WOW!!!! Wayne take that knot out of your undies, or take a trip somewhere and relax.

Jacks numbers may have seemed low ball. But I know for a fact about markups from the wholesaler to the retailer of autoparts. A very good friend of mine has a shop here in New York, one of the major wholesalers here is called Worldpac.

As part of a barter agreement between my friend and I, he lets me use the Worldpac account to orders parts for my cars.

Perhaps I should scan some bills?

just an example belt is $4 something on the bill, yet the other column on the bill tells you you should charge about $15 for the belt?

Thats a substantial markup. If the people the wholesaler bought from had a similar or larger markup, well........ Now it gets serious...


and about that #8 bearing...A-101-138-53 is now $153. dont you think for sh|ts and giggles you MAY want to replace that 25 year old nose bearing? you have replaced the other 7 already?

As a percentage of the whole rebuild replacing the nose bearing is not significant,and it cant hurt..

[farleyd]

Originally posted by TimT
As a percentage of the whole rebuild replacing the nose bearing is not significant,and it cant hurt..

This is what this topic is all about. As someone said: do you replace the part because its cheap to buy or because you HAVE to?

Money is an object for me, good thing its not for some other. But i wont compromise the rebuild for a $50 part. All of my sources - mainly people who have rebuilded engines before, is it the case for most of us? - said to me that while it is true that the #8 bearing doesnt get much stressed, it can be reused IF on spec.

I am quoting someone who replied that topic: Would you have the same opinion about a $2K piston/cylinder set? Would you replace them even if they would be on specs?

Now that leaves me with the evil question:
*Who, in this topic, has ever opened a 911 case or even rebuilded it?* Dont flame me for that one :-)

[TimT]

I have opened and rebuilt some 911 engines.. Its not my livelyhood but I know how to build them..

A few years ago I built my 2.2 into a full out race motor...

I was getting ready to assemble the case, and I realised the ONLY part i had not replaced was the nose bearing... so I installed another one. Gave me the confidence that the "whole" bottom end was rebuilt!!

This does not mean the original 8 bearing would not have worked either...

the 1-7 bearings are $100

The 8 is 150

do some math...

If you have a question about your rebuild.. email me....

[snowman]

Wayne,

I will send you copies of receipts from a company you probably deal with it starts with IM and ends with you can guess.. Theses are the actual invoice numbers I paid. Although these are jobbers prices, and may be what you pay or even one step below what you pay its what anyone in the business of doing a whole lot of these things would pay if he were careful where he bought and bought in quantity, ie as a rebuider would do, ie as many as 1000 or more valve springs to my spec from a leading mfg of valve springs.

[snowman]

PS wayne,

I also have selected some things that are in the extreem to make a point, but in fact are true. Markup is common knowledge to anyone seriously interested in any business, but unfortunately it is not appreciated by many cost sensitive people. This markup is not really a ripoff and therefore you should not worry about defending it. It is simply a fact of life.
Your business is not as specialized as a rebuilder is, you do not deal in the same numbers of parts you really understand extreemly well, therefore you may not get the best prices for everything.

There is a trend in the whole industry for garages to simply buy whole subassemblys, ie rebuilt short blocks, or even long blocks, and pass them off to their customers as their own. The reason is simple, a specialized rebuilder can and does obtain parts at prices that cannot be matched by any garage that only rebuilds 10 or 15 engines a year. The specialist also makes use of semi production line savings. This is a trend that is increasing every year.

[john walker's workshop]

i wouldn't trust anyone's 911 long or shortblock unless it was from the likes of jerry woods. no telling what was done to it. and i'll take a truckload of those $5 valves please. are you pulling our collective legs, jack?

[snowman]

Just order at least $2000 worth of parts per month from me and I will supply them to you.

Thats the not so secret, secret.

Also know enough about the parts to know what you can use instead of the high priced Porsche factory parts. There are parts of equivalent quality for quite a bit less, some good, some better, and many not so good. For example a JE piston is every bit as good as a Mahle one, and a whole lot cheeper. I will give you an example using BMW.

I can buy factory pistons for my BMW for $600 ea, or about $450ea wholesale. I can buy the same one direct form Mahle for about $240 ea Wholesale, or $180 for the so called jobber rate. I can buy a BETTER JE piston for $150 ea. Thats still expensive by chevy standards ($4.50 ea std cast piston, less for jobber price).

You can also buy custom parts from some suppliers for less than Std Porsche ones. Like valves and valve springs. But again you may have the mininum order problem.

Why don't people like Wayne do this and sell them to us at a break? They do on some parts, on most others, there are simply to many variations, and to much specialized knowledge required to obtain the correct one. Parts people are in the business of reselling stuff, not engineering.

Is there a market for this type of engineering? I don't think so, not enough of them. For the do it your selfer, like most of us, the engineering can be had for free, if we put our minds to it, but on the other hand there ain't enough time to do everything, is there?

Anyway, considering the response I have had I will no longer mention specific prices, but I will show how I have done something and give enough info so you can do it if you wish to. The specific price info does make a certain point though. It is the reason that a rebuilder, that specializes in specific types of engines, can do everything the right way, at a price we cannot match, even cutting corners. On the subject of good vs bad rebuilders, that gets scary. You may get the south of the boarder special, with only the broken parts replaced, or the better than factory one. Thats a whole other topic.

[Bobboloo]

Years ago my family was in music retail and saw the result of what Jack is talking about. It used to be that each city had it's own privately owned store like my families store. When the eighties came so did the winds of change. Some of the big stores from NY and LA realized the advantage they had on stores across the country in that their orders were large enough that they were buying for much less and they could sell mail order to customers in smaller towns across the country . It wasn't long before they were opening chain stores as well across the country putting the mom & pop stores out of business because they could sell at a profit for what a given item cost the small guy.

Wayne can't offer such a diverse catalog of merchandise and be able to buy in the kind of quantity needed to always get the "jobber" price. At least not yet. This is why he probes the board on certain items to see if the demand is there to justify a large enough order to get the "jobber" kind of price. Example: Momo Prototipo.

All I can say is that rest assured he passes the deal on as was the case with the Prototipo. No one has offered it anywhere near the price he has.

Thanks Wayne

[Doug Zielke]

Further to bobo's comments (and heading a bit OT from #8 bearings)....
My main concern is usually customer service and integrity first, and price second. I also don't give a rat's arse if your valve springs etc. are a couple of bucks cheaper. I always think about product quality, having learned the hard way.

[john walker's workshop]

jack, with all due respect, this board is for proper information about rebuilding 911 engines. do you have any experience on 911 engines? as far as cheaper (generic) parts are concerned, no porsche tech worth his salt would substitute them for the real thing, if indeed they are even out there. the fact is that there are very few parts out there for porsches that are crap. what crap shows up occasionally, fast fades away because nobody will buy it. porsche folks want quality stuff and are not afraid to pay the price. J+E as good as MAHLE? i don't think so.

[Wayne 962]

Still waiting for those scanned invoices from Jack...

John, JE's quality has gotten really good over the years - I now recommend them as a adequate replacement piston, and superb for custom work. However, given a choice, I would indeed choose Mahle over JE.

-Wayne

[snowman]

Wayne,

Just give one good reason why you would recommend Mahle over JE Pistons. THere is none I can think of as the JE piston is a high quality forged piston with race pedegree and no known failures in Porsches.

This is an example of the Porsche "mystique". There is no real value in Mystique. A quality ss valve is a quality ss valve and the technology is more advanced than 50 years ago when Porsche designed this engine. Any bolt from SPS is far superior to any bolt ever used on a Porsche. The basic science is there to be utilized by the knowledgeable and the ignortant will loose in the next race.

[911pcars]

Snowman,
What is the recommended piston-to-cylinder clearance for JE pistons? If it's the same as Mahle and they're just as light (or lighter), then I would also explore their use. They do look pretty though.

Sherwood Lee
http://members.rennlist.org/911pcars