Fred R. C4S

If I were to "sell" my core to an independent rebuilder, is it so that he can then rebuild my engine for me or have I scrapped the car and moved on?

What is his cost and my price for the rebuild?
Aren't both Porsche and the independent adding value going from a core to a fully running engine?
Are you assuming the final product from both sources is equal?
Are both offered with the same warranty?
Are both delivered in the same timeframe?
Are you assuming that Porsche is out buying cores from dismantlers to corner the market on cores?
If Porsche dropped the core to $100, are you saying the price of the reman would drop accordingly?

I worked the last 15 years in the mining division of the big yellow tractor company. During the economic life of a mining truck it will need several engine replacements. Both the company and the large dealers are on the reman business, competing with each other. You would not believe the junk some customers send in as a core, after they have already received and installed their reman engine. When an a 16 or 24 cylinder reman engine can cost well over $125k, the useability and value of the core is quite high. When we ran short of cores, we would deliver a new engine to the customer at the price of a reman in order to get his truck back in service ASAP.

So as I sit a core next to a complete reman engine I see the high value of the core. Hell just weigh the parts alone and compare them.

Interesting discussion....

utkinpol

http://arp-bolts.com/images/releases/pdfs/204-6301.pdf

those are 'torque to yield' bolts so i guess it was only my assumption that they are cast. i probably heard it from somebody who was talking about plastic deformation, as regular unforced bolts like ARP offers are indeed different.

anyway, correct term to use is TTY, not cast. not if it would change anything or prevented those bolts from been torn apart.

Fred R. C4S

TTY bolts are the standard of the industry for con rod bolts. That said, the material from which they are made can have a great deal to due with their fatigue life. The purpose of a TTY bolt is to ensure the bolt has the necessary and defined tensile load to provide the clamping force needed by the design of the bolted joint.

As for con rod bolts, their highest loads come from the high g's experienced when that piston races upward to top dead center then has to immediately reverse direction as the crank pulls the piston and rod downward. The single biggest contributing factor to these high loads is the speed of the crank. What kind of rpm did your engine see in its life leading up to the ultimate failure of the rod bolt?

Here's an interesting read http://www.pureluckdesign.com/ferrar...lumn/index.htm

Suns_PSD

What's relevent is what does a block actually cost to have cast in Brazil or wherever? A small fraction of the final core charge.

Those other precision engine parts have a more typical 100-150% mark up. The blocks get closer to a 2000% mark up.( fully refundable in the form of a core of course)

Why should be the question you should be asking. Hell Cummins will pay good money for an unusable block because they know some rebuilder will weld some plate steel on it, sleeve it, rebuild it, and warranty it, for a fraction of their costs. And based on the statement about accepting broken cores, it sounds like the guys in Peoria do the same. But as long as the aftermarket rebuilder is paying $14K for a damaged block it becomes not feasible for him to offer cheap rebuilds. I've been to the Cummins factory (along w/ every other heavy duty engine manufacturer in the USA) and asked these questions and that was straight from the horse's mouth.

BTW, Porsche has a higher core charge than most Cummins, Cat, and all of the others standard heavy duty engine products. That's silly from a production, cost, or volume stand point.

The manufacturer of Power stroke injectors, melts down the returned cores and starts over. Which begs the question, why pay $175 * 8 for some scrap metal?

Fred R. C4S

Who said anything about accepting failed blocks as cores? I merely stated that customers try to slide one by you. If it arrives and is junk, he does not get core credit ie no refund of his core charge. I'd be surprised if Cummins actually operated as you imply.

Iceter

Frankly I'm surprised that a manufacturer like Porsche would rebuild or reman an engine in the first place. I would have thought the hot-tanking, machining, labor and other processes (all at very low volume) would make this process much more expensive than simply manufacturing new blocks or engines in an assembly plant engineered for just this purpose.

Also, even at the relatively low production volumes they have for the 997 engine, I can't imagine there can be an apples to apples comparison between their volumes/prices and that of six-figure engines in mining trucks.

I can say with surety that at 997 production volumes, there is no reason that a bare block should cost five figures. Perhaps there IS a scarcity of those blocks, since it seems that on the few times that they have problems, they seem to turn into grenades. Either way, it is not outside the realm of possibliity that Porsche is pricing their cores exorbitantly to keep rebuildable blocks out of the hands of indies.

Macster

The block is a precision machined part, or collection of parts, and requires substantial infrastructure to produce. One just doesn't cast high quality aluminum engine blocks in his back yard.

And the machining required to bring the block to a fully finished state capable or serving as a sound foundation for a fully functioning high performance engine is not cheap or easy to do either.

Sincerely,

Macster.

Macster

Uh, no.

The hot tanking and so on is relatively cheap. It is the block and it being in good condition, absence any cracks, exposure to overheating, loss of oil or oil pressure, free of contamination on the high pressure oil/clean oil side of the engine, and so on, that represents the cost of the block.

Even if one has a rough casting or castings to start from the work and the cost of the work to bring these castings together in a finished engine block -- ready to accept bearing inserts, crank, rods, pistons and so on is huge.

A engine suitable to serve as a core represents considerable savings over having to make the engine from scratch.

Porsche -- and this is true of any engine maker -- can afford to build/warehouse a large number of complete/tested/ready to use engines. For one thing how many engines should Porsche (in this case) build/warehouse?

And after a while the engines become less viable due to inactivity.

It would be even more expensive to simply warehouse the rough castings/forgings and then run some through the engine line to make new engines.

For one thing the engine line used to make the older model engines is long gone. Porsche can't afford to duplicate engine lines and keep lines up and running for engines for discontinued cars.

When a new engine arrives the old engine line is transformed into the new line.

Sincerely,

Macster.

utkinpol

no way in hell M96 may and should cost more than any modern comparable motor like LS9, LSA, etc. prices porsche sets are not driven by their manufacturing costs, and speaking of remanufactured engines specifically that are getting sold to people who lost their M96/M97 engines due to design flaws, you know, it is a whole different game.

Spokane5150

I've actually been in many GM engine plants and foundries over the years. It's very impressive to see. Wouldn't mind watching Porsche motor built from scratch. You guys might find these video's interesting:

http://youtu.be/jL8muMYEVOQ

USMC_DS1

Very cool video. Thanks for sharing.

KNS

In the aviation world, you can buy a reman engine directly from Continental or Lycoming for much less than a brand new engine. It's quite common, with an exchange engine or not.

Iceter

I know the cost to rebuild a single engine is less than the cost of manufacturing a single engine, but what we're talking about here is the idea that a major manufacturer is not normally set up to remanufacture engines--only to manufacture them--which is why I am surprised that Porsche does it.

When a manufacturer sets up a line, that line can churn out engines at a unit cost much less than that multi-national corporation can take in filthy cores, dismantle them, clean them, inspect them, hot tank them, magnaflux them, machine them, clean them (again) and assemble them. We're talking specialized work that isn't done in the same factory or by the same guys that put new engines together. If this is what Porsche does, it's unusual, because few auto manufacturers run this kind of sideline.

The OEMs do manufacture crate engines, but those are assembled from new parts. With major manufacturers, the rebuilding happens at the dealership or is farmed out.

This is true, which is why nobody does it this way. The bare blocks that manufacturers keep for parts were machined on the line and then put into stock for sale as parts. No major manufacturer that I know of sells bare and unmachined block or head castings.

The big makers keep gobs of parts as stock but once they're sold out, that's it. Rebuilding was alwayas an aftermarket event. It's my experience with the American manufacturers that forms my understanding of the process. This is why the idea that Porsche remanufactures engines at a factory facility is unusual.

At any rate, I've still got alot to learn about P-cars and I learn more every time I log on. Discussions like this reinforce my decision to stick with the 997.2. Hopefully, I'll increase the chance that I'll never need to find out how much an engine core costs.

Bijan

A few years ago I toured the Stuttgart and Leipzig factories. Porsche had a seperate facility to rebuild old Porsches for (well to do ?) customers from around the world, who shipped them there. The various vintage cars and their engines looked like new when finished. If some parts were no longer available then they were individually remanufactured by thr technicians.
In this context I can imagine Porsche remanufacturing these engines.

Spokane5150

Engines have certainly changed for the better over the years. There is definitely more precision components in these overhead cam motors than the old the push rod motors. Going from 5,500 red line motors that exceed 7k - 9K red line takes much more precision and more exotic materials

I recently rebuilt my Honda 450cc dirt bike motor. It's around a 12k red line motor with 56 hp stock and 67 hp for pro built motors. It has 4 Titanium valves and utilizes a single cam. The piston is flat like a pancake and very light weight with a very shot stroke. I was amazed that this motor could produce so much power. However, the piston & rings and cylinder head should be replaced / rebuilt after 22 hours.

Typical Cost 450cc motor = Piston, Rings, wrist pin & gaskets $250 machine the head and 4-New Ti Valves $500. Split the cases with new bearings $150 for gasket & bearings (not Typical). Probably $500-600 est. in labor if you had to pay. Obviously, if things went catastrophic then the cost would be a lot more. This cost is just to maintain the motor.

I guess I understand why a Porsche Motor is in the realm of $15k rebuilt. The core charge may be a little high.