Category Archives: my car

Recommended 911 Specialists

Body work repairs nearing completion at Sportwagen
Body work repairs nearing completion at Sportwagen

Here are some details of the specialists who’ve worked on my 911 or who’ve provided replacement parts.

I strongly recommend them to them anyone needing high quality work carried out on their Porsche by real experts or anyone needing difficult to find period parts.

Engine rebuild at Jaz Porsche
Engine rebuild at Jaz Porsche

 

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911 2.2S Engine Rebuild – Part 6: The Bits Are Back In Town!

New valve guides and valves
New valve guides and valves
Rebuilt cylinder heads
New valve guides and valves

Wed 25th September 2013

At last I called Jaz to be informed by Claire (Steve’s Mrs) that enough bits had been returned to allow engine reassembly to soon commence. Fantastic news so I went up to Jaz a couple of days later to have a look at the component parts before they became embedded in the built-up engine.

Continue reading 911 2.2S Engine Rebuild – Part 6: The Bits Are Back In Town!

911 2.2S Engine Rebuild – Part 5: International Crankshaft Rescue (Thanks Steve)

Beautiful re-ground and polished short stroke crankshaft

Tue 17th September 2013

A pretty depressing 24 hours after Steve called to relay the news that my crankshaft was cream-crackered (knackered, kaputt) he called again with a novel solution to the problem which essentially saw him donating his just reground and polished 2.0 short stroke crankshaft to replace my duff one.

Continue reading 911 2.2S Engine Rebuild – Part 5: International Crankshaft Rescue (Thanks Steve)

911 2.2S Engine Rebuild – Part 4: Cream-Crackered Crank!!!

Beautiful re-ground and polished short stroke crankshaft
Beautiful re-ground and polished short stroke crankshaft

Mon 16th September 2013

I’d had a call the previous week from Steve at Jaz to let me know that he’d had a blazing row with the company sorting out the cylinder heads. They’d had the heads since mid-July but still hadn’t started any work on them so Steve is going to have to take them back and give them to another company.

Continue reading 911 2.2S Engine Rebuild – Part 4: Cream-Crackered Crank!!!

911 2.2S Engine Rebuild – Part 3: Where’s My Bloody Engine?

Chromated turbo lower cam cover

Thu 12th September 2013

Answer: Scattered over various parts of the UK and Germany.

From my previous blog – you’ll know that once the engine was fully dismantled and the component parts of the engine were cleaned and dispatched to various specialists for “fettling” (i.e. machining, refinishing, re-plating and rebuilding).

One slight problem that we’d not allowed for was that from a timing perspective – this coincided with peak holiday time for a number of the engineering companies so through no fault of Steve or Jaz – progress was in certain instances painfully slow. Consequently the bits of my engine seemed to be liberally spread across England and mainland Europe for many weeks.

With true German efficiency and despite the “Summer Hols Effect” – the MFI Fuel Metering pump arrived back first with the other parts slowly trickling back with the exception of the cylinder heads and the crankshaft.

Newly plated nuts, bolts and clips looked great in as-new golden coloured finish. Chromated engine cam and timing chain covers also looked fantastic as did the black powder coated engine tinware.

Despite Steve regularly chasing the engineering companies and shouting at them – a lot, progress was effectively halted by lack of progress on some key components.

Steve was most frustrated by the lack of progress on the cylinder heads.

911 2.2S Engine Rebuild – Part 2: Let The Strip-Down Commence

 

 

Dead pistons
Dead pistons

After dropping the car off at Jaz Porsche in Wembley on 3rd July the engine was quickly whipped out and the strip-down commenced.

Steve and Dave (his engine man) let me know subsequently that it was the dirtiest 911 engine they’d ever encountered both internally and externally.

Externally the cylinder cooling fins were completely blocked with dirt and assorted crap. Internally it was the same story with some very horrible gloop clogging up the MFI fuel metering pump and the guts of the engine. Not good and a clear sign of issues to come.

Continue reading 911 2.2S Engine Rebuild – Part 2: Let The Strip-Down Commence

911 2.2S Engine Rebuild – Part 1: Taking The Plunge

Wed 3rd July 2013

Leaving the 911 at Jaz Porsche
Leaving the 911 at Jaz Porsche
It had an engine when I brought it in - honest!
It had an engine when I brought it in – honest!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having had the bodywork and particularly the underside of the car sorted out by Bruce Cooper and his team at Sportwagen it was clear that the next and most expensive priority was the engine.

Continue reading 911 2.2S Engine Rebuild – Part 1: Taking The Plunge

911 saga

DSC_0166DSC_0171DSC_0178

My 911 saga began actually began with a dream of owning an earlier Porsche model – the 356, but much research and inspection of cars led me to the conclusion that:-

a) Buying a decent 356 at that time was beyond my means and

b) Using a 356 as a daily driver wasn’t really terribly practical.

The 356 engined 912 became toy next Porsche target and I looked at a few cars until Porsche expert Andy Prill pointed out that the cost of fully restoring a 912 are pretty well the same as for a 911 but with two cylinders less than a 911 the resulting value of the car would be significantly lower and thereby represent a less compelling long-term investment.

Continue reading 911 saga