New Engine Options
12-04-2008, 12:04 PM
#17
Rennlist Member
12-05-2008, 12:35 AM
#18
Three Wheelin'
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Lawrenceville, GA
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I had the good fortune and pleasure to visit Jake Rabys shop this week. Actually, calling it a shop does not do justice to the facility. He has an unbelievable working lab, as well as a fully functional machine shop with the ability to build anything automotive, and really anything you could think of related to motive transportation. Hell he could build a ship if he wanted to and had a customer who asked for it.
I have spent much of my life working at AT&T Labs, and while our facilities may look pristine, we have nothing on Jake, at least not since before 1984 when Bell Labs scientists were allowed to operate as independent thinkers. Much of his work is done the way engineers in the 50s, 60's, and 70s came up with new products and processes. He has an idea, and then works out the details until he makes it work. Then he makes it work better until you can't break it. To say I was impressed is a gross understatement. Companies simply don't work like that anymore, or very few anyway. For most of modern American industry there is way too much pressure for immediate results to spend time figuring out new ways to do something better than it's been done ever before, particularly if it already works pretty well, and turns a profit. Everyone just has to get it done and in the market as soon as possible. The term ASAP wasn't coined until American companies stopped doing the kind of work Jake Raby is doing in the N Ga mountains right now.
While I was there I saw several air cooled engines in various stages of build for customers from around the world, including a wild turbo for a VW bus, various M96 engines that had been shipped to him, from a 2.5 spec motor, to a 3.2 with an IMS failure, to an X51. There is development work in his lab measuring everything you can imagine in an engine on a dyno using probes and instruments Jake made himself. M96 work is at various stages of completion, and one of the things that blew me away, even though unrelated to the cars, was he had one of his mechanics in the machine shop making a support beam for the new section of the facility still under construction. Jake is too much of a perfectionist to leave anything to chance. He is even building his building.
Most companies I am familiar with have lost the ability to improvise, to come up with an idea, and see it through to a product. He has spent a lot of his own money developing just the tools required to put these engines together. While I don't disagree with Jake's concern about controlling everything possible in the beginning of his product rollout, I don't see any way he can miss. Just the difference in the IMS alone is enough to convince most anyone that his engines are superior to stock, and he has come up with some very ingenious ways to not only get around the Porsche stranglehold on parts, but to make them better, not to mention developing tools to assemble the engines, which is a real feat all by itself.
To top it off I got to see Jake's wifes VW Beetle with a 200 RWHP 1.7 Porsche engine. It is a work of art and should be on display somewhere. Seriously, if you like Porsches, at some point in your life you had to love VWs, and this is the grandaddy of all bugs. The engine looked better in that space behind the rear wheels than any factory engine I've ever seen in any car, and not one thing covered up with plastic. I've been pumped about this whole project since first hearing about it on Pelican right after the Excellence article came out. Mostly because I have been worried that Porsche would abandon us after a few more years. They don't have much of a history in supporting their products once they've move on to a new design, and they have moved on.
I am even more excited now than ever. I should be driving my Boxster with one of Jake's RAT motors by spring anyway. I have to make it look different too, just to do justice to the engine, so I'm planning on all the goodies I can put into and onto it between now and then, even if I have to sell a couple of cars to do it.. On second thought, I never can bring myself to part with a Porsche. I have regretted every one I ever sold. I'll just have to spend more money on something for the wifey and then ican do whatever I need to do. Hopefully it won't have to be dollar for dollar.
Here it is now, I can't wait to post the after pictures.
I have spent much of my life working at AT&T Labs, and while our facilities may look pristine, we have nothing on Jake, at least not since before 1984 when Bell Labs scientists were allowed to operate as independent thinkers. Much of his work is done the way engineers in the 50s, 60's, and 70s came up with new products and processes. He has an idea, and then works out the details until he makes it work. Then he makes it work better until you can't break it. To say I was impressed is a gross understatement. Companies simply don't work like that anymore, or very few anyway. For most of modern American industry there is way too much pressure for immediate results to spend time figuring out new ways to do something better than it's been done ever before, particularly if it already works pretty well, and turns a profit. Everyone just has to get it done and in the market as soon as possible. The term ASAP wasn't coined until American companies stopped doing the kind of work Jake Raby is doing in the N Ga mountains right now.
While I was there I saw several air cooled engines in various stages of build for customers from around the world, including a wild turbo for a VW bus, various M96 engines that had been shipped to him, from a 2.5 spec motor, to a 3.2 with an IMS failure, to an X51. There is development work in his lab measuring everything you can imagine in an engine on a dyno using probes and instruments Jake made himself. M96 work is at various stages of completion, and one of the things that blew me away, even though unrelated to the cars, was he had one of his mechanics in the machine shop making a support beam for the new section of the facility still under construction. Jake is too much of a perfectionist to leave anything to chance. He is even building his building.
Most companies I am familiar with have lost the ability to improvise, to come up with an idea, and see it through to a product. He has spent a lot of his own money developing just the tools required to put these engines together. While I don't disagree with Jake's concern about controlling everything possible in the beginning of his product rollout, I don't see any way he can miss. Just the difference in the IMS alone is enough to convince most anyone that his engines are superior to stock, and he has come up with some very ingenious ways to not only get around the Porsche stranglehold on parts, but to make them better, not to mention developing tools to assemble the engines, which is a real feat all by itself.
To top it off I got to see Jake's wifes VW Beetle with a 200 RWHP 1.7 Porsche engine. It is a work of art and should be on display somewhere. Seriously, if you like Porsches, at some point in your life you had to love VWs, and this is the grandaddy of all bugs. The engine looked better in that space behind the rear wheels than any factory engine I've ever seen in any car, and not one thing covered up with plastic. I've been pumped about this whole project since first hearing about it on Pelican right after the Excellence article came out. Mostly because I have been worried that Porsche would abandon us after a few more years. They don't have much of a history in supporting their products once they've move on to a new design, and they have moved on.
I am even more excited now than ever. I should be driving my Boxster with one of Jake's RAT motors by spring anyway. I have to make it look different too, just to do justice to the engine, so I'm planning on all the goodies I can put into and onto it between now and then, even if I have to sell a couple of cars to do it.. On second thought, I never can bring myself to part with a Porsche. I have regretted every one I ever sold. I'll just have to spend more money on something for the wifey and then ican do whatever I need to do. Hopefully it won't have to be dollar for dollar.
Here it is now, I can't wait to post the after pictures.
Last edited by smshirk; 12-05-2008 at 12:36 AM. Reason: sp
12-05-2008, 02:59 PM
#19
Rennlist Member
Wow.
Great post.
Jake sounds like the Patron Saint of the M96.
When/if he has Canadian partners at the time, I will definitely have my motor given the once over. If only for the IMS and other preventative fixes.... but methinks bigger is better....
Great post.
Jake sounds like the Patron Saint of the M96.
When/if he has Canadian partners at the time, I will definitely have my motor given the once over. If only for the IMS and other preventative fixes.... but methinks bigger is better....
12-06-2008, 11:35 PM
#20
Burning Brakes
We are getting a TON of Canadian contact... BUT to date none of the shops that have contacted us to be our Canadian Partner have been reputable enough to be associated with..
I had 3 Canadian calls yesterday, all 3 with cylinder failures...
I had 3 Canadian calls yesterday, all 3 with cylinder failures...
