where can i find secrets of the inner circ?
 

gonna rebuild a 912 motor. never done it before. trying to do as much reading before i commence. i would like to get a copy of pellow's book as well as any other helpful information for a first time porsche engine builder. I have only built a SB chevy so this is quite a departure. ANY help or suggestions welcome!

I believe that "Secrets" and Harry's other publications are still available from his family and can be ordered on the HCP website. http://www.hcpresearch.com/
Warren

Only available by disk
 

I have a bunch of 912 books if anyone would like to purchase they came with a bunch of 356 books I needed

Buy Duane Spencers book on 356 Porsches. It has most of the info, if not all that you need.

There are NO secrets anymore, at least for early Porsches. Doing EVERYTHING possible will give you, at most 2 hp per cubic inch. Cornering will be about 1.25G max. with good suspension and tires. The rest is "how much weight can you take out of it and still have a Porsche???

On the engine, the secrets are as follows:

1. Get the latest Scat crank. The others are all worn out.

2. The heads. Thats where ALL the power is. Get them ported by Comp eng or someone that knows what they are doing. Should get almost 195cfm at 28 inches of water at 0.55" valve lift. Less dosen't hack it. Flow at lower lift is also very very important, so you need someone who KNOWS what they are doing. Thats of course with a datsun intake valve in place of the Porsche one. I did my final porting and checked it with a super flow 600 flow bench. I suspect that the gurus can do a little better than I did, but its a bench mark to work with. Again thats swirl polished valves with more than 5 angle cuts and the like.

3. Cam. Go with Elgin 7805M or a little hotter. Duration is the answer, not lift.

4. Pistons. Go with Duane Spencers pistons. He has the best.

5. Try to get over 12:1 compression. Takes a whole lot of gonads on tolerance for valve to piston and piston to head clearence.

6. Carbs need to have venturi bored out to 37MM and the jets changed to 160 mains and 180 air correction.

7. The intake stack must equal 110 percent of displacement.

8. Stepped headers, 1 5/8" and stinger pipe is a must.

9. Coatings. Coat EVERYTHING. The pistons, the heads, the ports, the valve springs, the valves, the headers, everything. Go to Swain tech for the coatings.

10. For an engine at this level, NOTHING but Carillo Rods, period.

11. Engine cooling. At least 2 front oil coolers using at a mininum of -10 Plumbing and a thermostat is a MUST.

12. Finally use ONLY Red line 30 wt Race oil. NOTHING LESS.

PS.

Degreeing the cam is an ABSOLUTE requirement. one or even two degrees off is a real problem, big time problem. I suggest talking to Dema ELGIN on exactly how to set the cam timing. You will need flow data to do so. Be prepared.

Another secret is final honing of the cylinders. The final honing operation must be a plateau hone operation. Talk to machine shops about this. If you cannot determine whats going on, just make sure they use a grape style hone for the last operation, its at least a close thing to the optimum. Also torque plates, a MUST, VERY VERY IMPORTANT.

And finally but not least get the straight cut cam gear and the so called power pully. The straight cut gear prevents the cam from breaking at very high rpm shifts and the power pully gears down the cooling to somtining less than 10,000 rpm.

Flywheel, think less than 11 lbs, much less if you have the gonads.

I have personally done ALL of these thngs to my engine, and some I won't talk about. I have seen actual real wheel HP of over 150 at 7800 rpm. Thats on a hot day at sea level. Before final tuning.

There are a couple of guys out there that might be doing a little better than this, one names Dean, from San Juan CAP, now out in the boonies somewhere, he also makes a sawed off 6 cylinder engine of his own design. Go with him or someone like Duane Spencer or Walt Carlson and you will be a very happy camper.

For a conservative race engine go to Ollies machine shop in Santa Ana CA or Honest Engine. They are rock solid, not the leading edge, but very very close to it. Sometimes finishing is more important than being the fastest.

Please remember, these are my personal OPINIONS, not fact, so remember its still YOUR choice, YOUR decision, on whats best.

Yeah, snowman has me convinced. The Pellow books are pushing 20 years old, and some of the cool parts like the pistons and cranks used now were not made back then (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). Pellow's books were not geared toward tricking out the engines anyway; he advocated building nearly stock engines. That said, they are still full of interesting info and fun to read if you can get past the typos. I'll shut up now.

I bought a first edition on eBay and imagine I could double my money if i wanted to.....which I don't. I have Spencers book too, it's a good read, useful.
Harrys books are from a time gone by but relative and worth a look. Harry used Webers which of late have fallen out of fashion, perhaps because they are harder to get or the purist are taking over the BBS... hard to say. In his own way I think he was a bit of a outlaw and interesting character, not everyone liked him. The few times I wrote him he always replied and tried to solve the problem.
Chas.
356 Solex
912 Weber

I called his "Maestro's Hotline" a couple times. Always helpful. A question for C. Clark: Is this a hardcore racer forum that street guy's like me should not post in? After reading replies from snowman, I started to wonder if I have invaded the wrong forum.

The Porsche 4 cyl. engines are pretty amazing, considering the age of the technology and not really having an oil filter to speak of. At 180,000 miles my original crank was still within tolerance and magnafluxed ok!

Thanks,

Jim

Jim,
In a word no, the truth is this forum moves around all the time....I've been checking in since 01, another truth is there is not much action here, but since I started here I check in. The http://www.912bbs.org/ may be more to your taste and style, lots of information, a little partial at times but informative about our cars. They cover the whole subject from purist to outlaws. They are very social but it's not an issue most of the time.
Best Regards,
Chas.
356
912
200k is not unusual if the oil is kept clean....

Thanks. I hope it didn't sound like I thought anyone was being less than social here. Not the case at all.

thanks

Jack:

I pretty much race two motors with 99% of what you mentioned in your post. I too have some other "stuff" I've done and had done to the motors by people I race with like Vic and Ecurie and cox motorsports. All good sources for race setup, engine building advice and any mechanical work you want done on your racer. Another here in VA is Tim Berardelli (sp). in Alexandria, VA. East coast guru.

Have a fellow racer in HSR / SVRA from Charlottesville, VA that frequents R-list more than here as this BBS seems to be more west coast based.

1969912: post away!:D I would love to see this forum get more active. I would love to see the "356 Talk" digest converted into something more modern like this BBS as well. Definitely not a racer forum on 356 / 912 motors / trannys but ... if that is your interest [like mine is] great to see the threads... ;)

Jason

Actually I have a Maestro massaged motivator as he used to say, that puts out 120. He would build you whatever you wanted. And like everyone has said he would drop everything to talk when you needed help. I have all his books. He got better and better at them. Funny stuff.

Les Paul,

Cool. I don't recall him talking about that in the books, but the books are pretty old. Can you give any details about the motor, like # of miles you have on it, components used, compression ratio, etc? Did he give you any estimate on how long it should last?

Thanks!

I'm not at home right now so I don't have the build sheet. It started out as 63 S. The crank was bad so he went with a C crank. I seem to recall he thought it was the best avaibable. Of course big bore, cams, heads ported and polished, webbers and a bursch exhaust. I've had it 7 or 8 years. It runs like a sewing machine. I just keep the valves adjusted and change the oil. I've probably got 20k on it. I used that car as a daily driver for 5 years but it is once again a garage queen.

OK. It looks like the engines he describes in his books. Didn't know the HP would be that high. It is pretty much what I built except for the porting and exhaust. I set my CR kinda low based on his description of detonation problems, and figured the lower CR would be offset fairly well by the displacement increase. If possible, please post the data when you get back.

Thanks,

Jim