Tips: How to Crate up and Ship a 3.0/915 Engine/Tranny

Rusty Heap · Rusty Heap's Garage

For those of you thinking of buying/selling and/or shipping a complete Porsche 911 Engine and Tranny, I figured my recent experience would help cut down your learning curve and show how I built a pallet/crate to ship my engine cross country.

This is just a heads up on my Shipping costs and methods to crate, your milage and experience may vary.

Midlle of January 2009, (just 1 week ago) I sent a complete 3.0/915 engine and tranny from Seattle to South Carolina using Yellow Frieght ground shipping.

www.myyellow.com

total crate weight was 965 pounds. Crate dimensions 67" x 59" x 36"

$950 in frieght costs.

This post would make a great Wiki article on how to do this. It's no easy task to crate up.

Couple photos for you on how I crated it, it's a ton of work but that engine isn't going to shift one bit. Hope this helps, it was a learning experience for me. I used 2x6 nailed down blocking on ALL sides and even capped over the SSI's to retain the motor, also put a long lag bolt through the front tranny mount to secure in XYZ axis too. A couple of ratcheting tie down straps with through bolted eyes in the pallet for double extra insurance and this engine ain't shifting no where!!!

2x4" and 2x3" for the framing using an air-nailer, then used 1 -1/4" decking screws and 7/16" osb board for the sides.

All in All, I have almost 15 hours of labor into the crate, but I was doing the design from scratch so hope this helps you fellow pelicans out and saves your design time............Luckily I have a kubota tractor to load the engine on the pallet, and then the crate onto my flat bed trailer, then I was able to take it to their shipping dock.

6 days estimated coast to coast shipping time.

now to show the fun part...........

cgarr · cgarr's Garage

Looks good! Well protected as long as it cant move around. I once made a metal frame and used the existing engine mounts to attache to and bolted the home made frame to the pallet. How much to ship the whole car?

Rusty Heap · Rusty Heap's Garage

Bump for others presently thinking about shipping an engine.

Zeke · 07-22-2009, 07:04 AM

$950 is a lot of money. Was that the best deal around? I've heard about some air freight company many times. Maybe we should start a list of shipping companies and related costs.

group911@aol.co · 07-22-2009, 09:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by milt

$950 is a lot of money. Was that the best deal around? I've heard about some air freight company many times. Maybe we should start a list of shipping companies and related costs.

Forward Air. Not door to door but terminal to terminal and reasonable.

Zeke · 07-22-2009, 02:54 PM

Thank you.

pt109 · 07-23-2009, 12:44 PM

I just dropped off a 3.2 going to nanas_914 this morning.
Inusred for $5000, weight including crate was 642 lbs.
$399.84 total using Forward Air from Little Rock to San Francisco.

The only minor hassle was taking it to them to be weighed and then fetching certified funds.

joeyjudge · 07-23-2009, 08:16 PM

Bax global is also a good choice

DanielDudley · 07-25-2009, 04:50 AM

Shipping and transport prices went way up with the gas prices. It took them a while to go back down.

wowzer911 · 07-25-2009, 05:06 AM

It may just be me, but shipping to my location from Washington state always costs significantly more than any other state. I've had good luck and pricing from yellow freight from other areas though. I recieved an engine strapped to a pallet and just shrink wrapped with no problems.