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Wow Anthony, that is a NICE casting. Incredible stuff.
The shot peening we do is a light blast after the case is heat treated and you can see it in the video. By then the casting seems to be so hard it doesn't absorb much. The three pre-production cases I am working on have not been shot peened.
Thanks,
I agree it is probably not a concern but you might consider an ultrasonic bath after they are peened.
So I'm going to try something new here; while we're putting the finishing touches on our first running engine case, we're going to have a little Labor Day Sale. How commercial! I am pretty much decided that I am going to do an actual Black Friday Sale - the cases will be shipping at that point, so lets call this a warmup.
Until September 3rd, use the following code at checkout to get 15% off anything in the store, INCLUDING a case slot.
3UDT4A8G
No, you still can't get a $5000 case anymore and you haven't been able to for a long time, and my first 40 people got in line a long time ago, but heck, this is a GOOD deal. What are you waiting for?
I want to apologize for the lame post with no pictures of updates. There actually are a ton of updates, but the thing is, we were finishing up and perfecting our line bore operation. I was fully committed to posting pics of how we do this as usual when some strange things happened.
I received a couple of phone calls from different outfits that flat out told me they were trying to make repro cases.
Now I am not really sure if these people truly had these intentions (the companies were definitely real!), but both of them started asking me the same questions. What did they both want to know?
HOW DO YOU LINE BORE THE CASES?
Of course, I said nothing. Alarm bells were going off. It took us the better part of 90 days to figure out how to do this, and I thought it was fairly easy to do ONCE but fairly hard to do OVER AND OVER (like everything we do).
Then it dawned on me.
Most line boring equipment like engine lathes and boring bar setups assumes you already had a rough bore. When you bring your case to Ollie's or whatever, your case already has a nice, straight hole in the middle which makes it easy to line bore back to spec.
In our case, we have to MAKE a straight hole that must be PERFECTLY STRAIGHT in 3 dimensions. This is the hard part!
And it was so hard, that two lazy *** bottom feeding companies who wanted a shortcut decided they needed to call me an pump me for info.
I told them nothing.
And I also called radio silence on the whole boring procedure. Like the Colonel's Secret Recipe, there will be no sharing. You'll see the results in the form of a perfect Porsche spec bore that is straight in the X, Y and Z axis, but there will be no pics of the custom fixture, the $5000 device that makes the hole, or how we managed to fit this all in our machine.
I am actually surprised you have shared as much as you have, good for us in the peanut gallery, maybe not so good for protecting your intellectual property.
Having just rebuilt a 3.2 I can appreciate the complexities of the undertaking. My cases were just fine, but I fully appreciate your undertaking and hope that it proves to be profitable.
I am actually surprised you have shared as much as you have, good for us in the peanut gallery, maybe not so good for protecting your intellectual property.
Having just rebuilt a 3.2 I can appreciate the complexities of the undertaking. My cases were just fine, but I fully appreciate your undertaking and hope that it proves to be profitable.
Meh, I am not so sure there is a ton of IP in the case. At the end of the day I did not invent the case and it's not my design. I love to share with people because everyone learns, but unfortunately there are some companies out there that want to take a quick shortcut rather than figuring out themselves...
For all those IP attorneys out there, would the original case still be protected or is that only for a limited time
Ha, did you think I would spend 600K of my own money on this little side hustle without checking all of this out with my own attorneys first?
The short answer is neither the case, nor any other Porsche part is truly protected from reproduction from the aftermarket industry to supply parts. In fact there is a law in the US that echoes similar laws in other countries that states that a manufacturer cannot deny another manufacturer from making reproduction parts so that the public can fix their cars. The public has a right to repair their vehicles even if the OEM refuses to continue making the original part.
This is the reason that catalogs like Stoddard are filled to the brim with repro parts, none of which Porsche makes. This is why URO is allowed to copy every single part on a Porsche motor with impunity. It's called competition and not only is it legal, it benefits vehicle owners by giving them a choice in the marketplace.
If you want to see what life would be like if you ONLY could buy from the OEM, go buy a McLaren. No aftermarket parts out there. No one is making them. If you need the smallest of parts you're going to the dealer to bend over and fork over whatever they ask.
This is officially the WORLD'S FIRST Cast reproduction 964 short block, and let me tell you, everything fits beautifully and the crank turns like butter.
Harman the machinist and I celebrated a little today. It took 3 years to get to this point, and we are very very proud of the case. It has exceeded my expectations.
We had some hiccups in final assembly, and adjusted a few things, but overall, I think it is safe to say WE. ARE. DONE.
Monday, we will begin the rest of the long block. Everything is taking longer to assemble than a normal short block because we checked everything a million times.
But yeah I am a proud daddy here today!
Something you don't see every day on a Porsche case!
After all this time, and the rest of my assembly was stymied by the lack of head studs. Not sure what the heck is going on in the Porsche world, but all major wholesale suppliers were out of head studs for at least 10 days. Had I known, I'd have ordered sooner.
A big shout out to Sean at Autobahn who stepped up with a good used set! And so the adventure continues!!!!
You're using used head studs? Too bad I had a like new set I could have sent you. I never reuse them.
Looks nice so far though. Looks like you are using some 964 and some 993 bits. Is that machined for the 993 oil filter?
So this build simulates what many owners will do - put good used parts in one of my cases. I tore down the 3.6 that came out of my 73T and used all the parts from it. I expect this motor to run for a month or two and then be torn down again, who knows, maybe sooner. At this point the test really is academic because every single critical dimension meets the Porsche spec in every way.
Plus later this month we have some crazy customer builds which will REALLY test the case.
Good eye on the filter side. We have the filter ports open; they will come that way and have plugs in case they want to use my billet oil filter console.
just curious if this case weighs more than the stock one?
Yes, something like 2.8 pounds per case half heavier, a little under 6 pounds more in total.
We did not pursue the same weight savings as the factory. As an example if you look at the depressions in the air guide bosses, they are very deep on the factory case. On ours they are flush. Probably 10 other places where we chose to not remove material where the factory did in the effort to beef it up.
08-25-2019, 01:08 PM
