Engine rebuild prices
 

Is 10K typical when doing a top to bottom engine rebuild for a 944 S, not doing the work myself having a shop do it at $80/hr. So far he has brought web cams, solid lifters, and new valve springs for the top end. He says he is going to get JE pistons and other performance bits he needs for the rebuild. I was a bit taken back by his final estimate, but I should mention he offered to fix a bunch of other little things like my hatch closing correctly, fixing my headlights (installing HID Kit). So far I am 5K in already so going to someone else is already not an option. I was just a little worried about it, it seems like anyone who can-will get over on you!

Will post a receipt when I get the car back eventually. What do you guys think? if he does a good job is it worth it. Or did he see me coming two miles away?

JE pistons will require the block to be steel-sleeved.

They cannot be used on Alusil.

If you want to go that route, I have a set of turbo-spec JE pistons slightly oversize (for ~101.6mm bore) that you can take for $150 shipped. My block is too out-of-round to reuse them. These would put your compression ratio in the low to mid 9:1 range.

"Standard rebuild" 944 engine parts can approach $2,000 so your hot-cams etc will add up, to $10k? I dunno.

Full race rebuild? Lots of goodies and fancy machining?

...or mostly stock

Think about it. For $10k, you can probably buy 4 whole running cars within 24 hours. Should be able to find a good motor in there somewhere and you'd have 3.975 cars left over.

Back when I was into Datsun Zs a few years back, you could buy a complete 3.1L inline 6 Rebello stroker motor putting out 300+ HP for only about $6000, I think $10K is awfully steep for a rebuild.

Do you really want a solid lifter motor? And JE pistons, I would expect if you were doing those you could bore oversize and get an S2 crank to have over 3L of displacement. If not, why touch the bores and change pistons at all? That'd probably save $3000, or $2500 if the block is bad.

For $10K you could have set your car on fire and bought a nice 944S2 that'd probably be faster without being a cammed up high strung garage queen.

You might consider backing out and paying a restocking fee on parts.
-Joel.

Sounds like your mechanic has a boat!

Not according to Dave Lindsey and Swaintech.

I do agree with the bulk of the comments, though. How often will you be pulling the cams to adjust clearances? Ugh. Not a smart build for a street car.

I'd look for a $10k S2.

That's marketing talk to sell parts & services. This was tried way back in 2002 when many people bought JE pistons and had them teflon-coated or ceramic-coated. While they worked at first, after a year or two, the coatings were all worn or flaked away. Result was scored cylinders and seized pistons. Heck, even in iron-bores, those coatings didn't last long.

I've got set of JE 106mm telfon-coated pistons for cheap if you want to try them yourself.

About $1.5-2k is ballpark figure for stock rebuild. Depending if you're just re-ringing, bearings & seals or if you need to replace valves & pistons.