Actual video of MotorMeister rebuilding engines

[svandamme]

Originally Posted by aigel

It looks to be easier to hire 12 guys to do the job of 2 people with proper tools. I also think they did a good job checking tolerances which I bet they keep pretty open.

I think it was no different in the west before WW2 and the advent of healt and safety lawsuits...

And In the Khyber pass or wherever these guys are.. it's probably muuuuch cheaper to find laber then to get big and heavy machines shipped in..

[sc_rufctr]

BTW The OP's video has got 2,202,173 views since Aug 22, 2021 and "Pakistani truck" has 522K subscribers.

I guess someone over there is making real money and good for them.

[drcoastline]

Very cool video.

[GH85Carrera]

Back in the early 80s one of the guys I knew was in the national guard. He was out of town for a deployment and the engine on his car had a head gasket blow when his wife was driving it after she overheated it from not paying attention. She took it to a local mechanic with a decent reputation for engine work for a rebuild. Just a simple 383, and I have no idea what she paid for the rebuild. The husband got back and noticed something was way off the first time he drove it.

She finally confessed about the rebuild, and he pulled the engine to check it out. It was a horror story of mismatched parts, used parts, and crap left in the engine. He ended up doing a full rebuild and all new machine work. Of course "while he was in there" there were a few upgrades he felt he deserved after his wife overheated the engine and had it rebuilt by a crook.

I wish I remembered all the things wrong with the "professional" rebuild but it was a few years back and not my engine. He was really happy with his tweaked final engine.

The main point, that rebuild by a local mechanic was not any better than the one in the video.

[asphaltgambler]

Brings back the memories of working at a local Exxon station in the early 80's. 6 bays, we did everything but paint / body work there. We had several fleet accounts, one of which was the county police vehicles which were rode hard and put away wet. They were always blowing-up / overheating the engines. We were so busy, we did not have the time to send out the components for machine work, then rebuild in house.

So we decided to send the engines complete out have whatever needs done, then reinstall. There was a new 'machine shop' that wanted our business. They also offered pickup / delivery. So we give them a 318 Mopar that was toast, about a week later brought it it back. We would only remove the carb, distributor, exhaust manifolds, water pump, pulleys.

So I put engine back in the car, bolt everything up. I go to install the distributor, and it will not sit all the way down. I fool with it a few mins and realize that it's hitting something. I shine a light through the hole and there sits a giant breaker bar in the lifter valley with the business end sitting over the cam distributor drive hole. Of course already had coolant, oil etc. So I take the intake off, and retrieve it, reinstall. We gave them a call and asked if they missing any tools? Because we found a giant breaker bar in the lifter Valley. We also asked what were they doing with a breaker bar on assembly? Didn't they they own a torque wrench? Probably not. It was the first/ last thing we let them touch.

[Jeff Higgins]

I've dealt with a lot of Third World machine shops over the course of my career. While not purely axiomatic, the dirtiest and most cluttered often produced the best work. I found if I could meet the machinist and speak with him (through an interpreter, or by drawing things out), I could easily "separate the wheat from the chaff". A lot of those guys are very, very talented, and make do with equipment that many American "machinists" would scoff at. And they turn out better work than their American counterparts, because they know what is important, and they take pride. Especially when in the presence of an American engineer - they would get really excited over the opportunity to show me their stuff.

My favorite, a guy with whom I became fast friends, was a little guy in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. I was demonstrating the use of some in-situ boring equipment that we used to refurb engine strut mounts on the 767. These mounts are comprised of two double bushing clevises about three feet apart that need to be line bored to a TIR of less than .003". We feed a long boring bar from one end, doing all four bushings with one setup. Well sometimes the single point boring bit will pick up a bit of a chatter on the third bushing, three feet away from the first two. With a bunch of their airline reps (engineers included) watching, they were all hearing the chatter, and starting to look pretty darn nervous. This little guy was standing in the background, not saying a word. I grabbed a can of cutting fluid, squirted the boring bar, and grabbed it with my hand. The chattering stopped. It was just a harmonics thing we ran into sometimes, but by no means on every one. The little guy was grinning ear to ear. When we made eye contact, he just nodded and winked. He knew. No one else there that day did. This guy had obviously made some chips in his day. We hung out together for the next two months, even though i didn't speak a word of his language nor he a word of mine. Yet we did have one language in common... Oh, and as an aside - never drink with a Mongolian, no matter how small they are. They're really good at it. They have long winters to practice...

Here he is, feeding us some lunch from his Dutch oven, somewhere about 150 km west of Ulaanbaatar:



Here's the scenery directly behind him. Yes, that's a wolf:

[fastfredracing]

Definitely not motor meister, no red fan . And they actually finished the engine and it ran

[jamesnmlaw]

Great work! Wonder if they could do the same for my Isuzu.....

[Pazuzu]

Back in the day when it was a top notch forum, Pirate4x4 had a doctor named Eshan who was part of the Islamabad Jeep club. He always sent over pictures and videos of the Paki guys building, fixing, designing and driving nearly 100% custom made vehicles. Calling it a "Jeep Club" was a joke, since they rarely got actual Jeeps, but they would convert other trucks, piece by piece, made by hand, into Jeeps.

All were done in sandals, "squint" welding and, as my Ranger friend would call it, the "Arab squat". PPE? Who?

An example...(I think this forum is publicly available...)
https://www.pirate4x4.com/threads/hand-making-tailgate-hinges.191257

[red-beard]

When I lived in Pakistan, there was an AK47 shop nearby. You could buy a full auto AK47 for $200‐250.