Machine shop advice please
 

I have decided to rebuild my 1973 911T CIS engine. I live in south central Kentucky and would like to find reputable and therefore knowledgeable machine shop to do the necessary work. Anywhere within a day's drive would be great so that I can meet and discuss before committing.

Any suggestions that this forum has will be greatly appreciated.

Recommended machine shop........
 

Search for CGarr (Craig Garrett) in the Engine Rebuilding Forum. Send him a PM for his telephone number or email address. He is in Michigan and long drive from Kentucky. Nice guy to do business and he is very reliable. Pack your stuff in a well built shipping crate and you are good. I like to deliver my stuff personally but can not do that all the time because of the distance between PA and MI.

Tony

Ah, the old flyover state problem. Bruce (Flat6pac) lives in N.C and is a regular contributor here along with Craig. He'd be a good guy to talk to about where he sends his stuff as he's pretty close to you, relatively speaking. I believe he does some of his own machine work in house too, I think.

You're mag case will require some very specific work. It will get $pendy very quickly. Brace yourself.

My pick for a mag case is Ollie's or competition engineering. Ollie's is a bit less expensive. Both have capability to probably line bore your case back to standard so that you can use standard bearings.

what shape is the motor in? are you looking to just refresh a running engine? like heads, rods, crank refreshed, cams, rockers and such? or do you expect the case to need to be redone? or is that just a standard in redoing a mag case??

Thanks for the interest and helpful comments so far.

The engine has at least 100k miles on it. Compression test shows 5 cylinders at or near spec. # 6 is below spec but not disastrously so. Leakdown indicates valve wear on #6.

Smokes quite heavily at start up but does not burn oil. Starts right up every time even after a winter under covers. No oil leaks and it does not look like the engine has ever been opened.

Still has plenty of power and runs willingly. Oil pressure meets specs.

All in all I think that it is a tired but unstressed engine and a refresh is what is needed.

Spendy it is likely to be. The decision to rebuild has been made after thinking about replacing the car with a 2009 or later Cayman. But after looking at a few and driving them I have decided to go this route. Nothing compares to the pure pleasure of this car doing all that is asked of it. So instead of being spendy on a Cayman I will put the money into this project.

I will do to it what needs to be done, hence my eagerness to be able to consult with the rebuilder to understand what is best for it.

I don't know KY, but I think William Knight (Knightrace on the forum) is located there. I'd not hesitate to have a conversation w/him about your rebuild. There are lots of other options if you want to ship parts & pieces around the country... It's worth it to spend some time doing due diligence on whomever you'd like to end up working with - posting here is a great start. It's not rocket science, but it will be $$$ and having to go back & redo things that weren't done right the first time will take away from your enjoyment and cost even more $$$... I speak from experience : ) : )

I started on a 2.7L rebuild last Jan. - tore down the engine & sent a lot of parts out for inspection, cleaning & machining etc... It's been 6 months and the only thing I've received back is the case from Ollies. Shops are busy, so plan accordingly.

Best,
Tom

you might get away with doing just the top end from what you've described. tom is right on most of the good shops/machinists are very very busy right now and will likely get even more busy when the race season is over in late fall.

As a data point on shipping a case to the machinist:

I built a nice crate thinking I would get to reuse it for other motors. I sent it to the machinist and got back a bubble wrapped case in a cardboard box. "Where is my beautiful crate?!!!"

Turns out that UPS/Fedex tends to destroy rigid crates. The machinist told me that excessive bubble wrapping is the way to go. They told me that once they got just the cover of a crate - the cover had the Send-To address.

best way to ship a case and the cheapest is get a large cooler remove the studs, them wrap it in cardboard. place in the cooler then close it with metal bands.

William Knight is in Tennessee.

A crate only works if you ship it ltl on a pallet. For small parcel service, as mentioned, super bubble wrapped is the way to go.

If you pull all the studs as Ken suggests, ship the studs too. They will need them for align bore.

I'm sure he meant the *head* studs. They stick out the sides quite a ways making a larger box necessary and subjecting them to sticking through the box and/or getting bent.

I meant the head studs, and all the others sticking out the sides and top. You know for the chain boxes and oil breather return. I think also for the oil cooler. depends on what cooler you get. But it's less than buying a wood crate or even materials to build one and protects the case really well.

:eek:

Did you get bumped by the other customers ?

As he mentioned, but you didn't quote, many top vendors in specialized fields have long lead times. Weidman is over a year to get Fuchs restored. Aase and other top engine builders frequently have a 6 month long line. Guys used to buy and sell options on Raby type IV builds.

Understood shops are busy but it wouldn't surprise me if one time DIYers like folks here get less allocated time than or get triaged by regular and higher volume customers, some of whom are bound by fixed external schedules.

My question was whether that's the case here.

Ah, I see. What you said and what you meant were two different things.

I couldn't say. I am definitely a VERY junior customer and I suspect my stuff isn't shuffled immediately to the front... I say that not with ill feelings, but with realistic expectations. It's hard being a little guy sometimes, but it is what it is. I chose to work with high end shops and thus am willing to trade some patience and some $$ for the expectation that my pieces and parts will come back as good as they possibly can be.

Some of these places do A LOT of work and a lot of that work is on high dollar projects and restorations. A $20K++ engine rebuild is barely a blip on their radar... sad maybe for the little guy, but reality.

With Ollies for instance, where I sent my 2.7L case, I'm pretty sure they wait until they have a bunch (I don't know how many a bunch is) of similar cases needing similar work so they can do them all at the same time. With all the jigging and set-up time on their machines, it makes sense to do it that way so they can be more production oriented and efficient with their set-up time etc... So maybe you get lucky and your case is the last one to officially deem it a "bunch" or maybe you send your case to them right as they are finishing the "bunch" of similar cases, so you have to wait for the queue to fill back up...

I'm sure there are shops that do great work with less lead time, but if you want to work with the established, reputable shops, this is likely something you'll run into. Same in just about any industry...

Tom

I find it really funny some of you guys think that machining Porsche parts is a black art.

Your high end Porsche machine shop is using the same equipment your local machine shop does, possibly lesser stuff.

Go support your local machine shop and enjoy life.

It's not a rocket engine going into space travel requiring a clean room to handle it's parts..... 😂