Engine works at RPM

We are currently going through a few engines. I did a post a few months ago regarding a tear down of a Ferrari 250GTE engine and we are in the process of assembling it. We had a set of new forged pistons made, cleaned and repainted all the castings and drilled and cleaned the crankshaft. I finished the wrinkle finish and it came out perfectly, now I have to run the ignition wires through the tubes.

Since we are assembling a Ferrari V-12, we decided that now is the time to break down two Porsche engines. One is a 1975 Porsche 911 engine that has a blown piston. Someone installed a very crude turbocharger system with no provision to retard the timing or increase the fuel pressure upon boost so this damage came as no surprise. It seems to me that major automotive companies dedicate millions of dollars to develop a reliable and powerful turbo-charged engine so why should a shop think that they can provide a working system for short money?

The other engine is a 1964 Porsche 356C engine. This engine had a few bad valves that were not sealing and when we popped the heads off we found broken rings on a few pistons. We often do not like to "split the case" but not knowing the history of this engine we decided to see how the bearings looked. Boy, I am glad that we did. The bearings were down to copper and the end float was .010 instead of the .002-5 that the book calls for. We are going to install brand new 86mm pistons and cylinders, lighten the flywheel, port the heads and turn the crank to first under size. Since the engine already had Weber carburetors we feel that we can get away with some performance modifications as jets and venturis are available for them.

We have overhauled 4-5 of these engines with 86mm bores and lightened flywheel and it really perks these engine up. I am so amazed at how well designed these things are to where they are so docile and easy to run while having tons (relatively speaking) of low end torque.