I was talking to my crank specialist last night and we started thinking about the idea of making a manufacturing run of 3.0 cranks. This is still in the conceptual stage, so I thought I would see what the level of interest is. We would need to make a run of 100 for it to make sense. The retail would be $1250 to $1500 depending on interest. These would be custom made by one of the premiere US custom crank manufactures – pretty nice stuff.
Oh yeah – they would be cross drilled and have more aerodynamic counter weights.

Chris White

 

Interesting. I spoke with Scat a few years ago about this and they said they would be interested in a project like this if the demand was there as well.

 

Jeremy - I finally have to ask - what is RLHP? WBTQ?

 

Interest? Yes. Money? No.

 

A build of 100 would be very tough in my estimation. There might be 10 guys on here that would be interested plus some GT* PCA guys, but I don't know about 100. Where do you think you would find these people, Chris?

It sounds really cool though.

Max

 

Sorry Chris, that's rennlist HP and Web board torque. It's a pretty complex calculation.......

 

I like it. I actually know an enterprising fellow that cracked the dynojet files and could insert a multiplier in the file to get it to graph out any result he wanted.

 

Gee, I was hoping to get at least 50 orders by noon…
My initial guess was 20 units per year. I am not quite sure if that is pessimistic or optimistic?! The used cranks go for $1k to $1.75k regularly, the cross drilling and knife edging runs $750 and up so the price looks to be pretty reasonable, its just the demand end of it I am not sure about.

Chris White

 

If they were in the low $1000 range, there is about a 75% chance I could swing the cash to buy one sometime this year. I would really like to make a 2.8L turbo

Do you really need to cross-drill them? Couldn't you just move the location of the oiling hole, and correct the factory's oversight?

 

How much work is involved and what other parts are needed to get to 2.8L?

 

Chris, put me down for one.. I'm collecting 3L cranks
I think there is a US crank company that already made a 3L crank for the 944.. It was in the 80s for a racer... Very slick, where they used different journals to accept more common bearings...

 

This reminds me of an aspiration I had a while back. Our blocks have nearly the same Deck Height as the SBC Chevy. Also, the 3.0L Crank is within 10 thousandths of the SBC Chevy's Stroke. If you made the rod journal the standard 2.1" SBC Journal, we could easily use some of the commonly available High end aftermarket Chevy Rods, at about half of what we'd pay Pauter or Carillo. I'm Talking 6000fpm rods here too. Thats the only way I'd be interested. It would help Recoup some of the cost of the total stroker buildup to do it this way.

Hell, you could spec some Rods and Pistons and even sell kits!

 

If I did the stroker, I would be changing the pistons. And grinding the shoulders on my rods.
However, good point on modifying it to use different rods. That would be the optimal solution. Perhaps it would indeed be possible to fit some far less expensive rods. It would be nice to be able to buy the crank for $1250, and the rods for $400, and have your stroker done (mechanically).

Of course, it would also require different bearings, don't shoot me, but perhaps from the domestic market? (Providing they are made to last like ours should be).

 

20/year might be possible. I thought you were looking at an initial run of 100 over a relatively short period of time. 20/year would mean a hefty inventory of cranks that would take 5 years to exhaust.

I like BG's idea of making it a kit. Maybe an entire kit of sleeves, crank, pistons and rods. It would be the cheapest way to increase displacement. It might also be more reliable.

Max

 

I think it would be best if the kit was just the crank and rods if possible. People going all the way to 3.0L might want a different kit, but there seems to be 101 ways to do that. Everybody seems to want different sleeves, some use the 3.0/2.7L blocks, etc...