| Moderated by: Greg Fletcher | ||
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Dan Eiland Member
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Is it possible to keep a dynamic list of the machine shop work most commonly done on a Jensen Healey engine during the rebuild process with associated costs? It would be helpful to have some kind of resource to go to as a guideline to determine the cost of modifications and rebuilding our engines. I have read just about everything I could get my hands on about rebuilding and modifying our engines. The only costs I have really seen are from Greg's great write up about his car and the costs associated with his restoration. My problem is trying to determine the cost of things before they are done or in using cost information to decide if it is worth doing. I'm finding that the costs I'm being quoted are two to three times what Greg paid. I don't know if this is due to the area I am in or if prices have just gone up or if I'm being ripped off. I really have nothing to judge the prices against. In many cases in my area there is only one place or person who can do the things I need done. It would be helpful to have some prior knowledge to negotiate from. Is there anyone who is a member who could help us out and keep up some kind of list and associated prices having to do with engine rebuilding and just submit it to Greg so he could possibly set up one more page under TECH stuff. If I can help I would be happy to. Just need some input. |
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Jim Ketcham Member
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I too would be interested in seeing costs for various upgrades. Unfortunately, I believe a direct comparison will be very difficult. Low cost poor quality cannot be compared to properly done work. One off jobs at a quality machinist will tend to be expensive. A good machinist should be able to give you an estimate ahead of time so that you can better do a cost benefit analysis and decide if a particular mod is personally worth doing. Obviously, if there is only a single machinist in your area your prices will reflect that. I have been a bit successful in lowering costs by having my preferred machinist do the work as "fill in" work. That is, with no time constraint. Unfortunately, it sometimes takes months to get things back and occasional visits to his shop to shoot the breeze and remind him I'm still waiting. I do learn alot hanging around his shop. I also found that batching some work lowers the unit cost considerably as it minimizes the machinists setup cost. Obviously, batching only works if you have more than one engine you are doing or you can get together with some others. I think that compiling a list of "high quality" machine shops that are good at doing the performance type of work on the 907 that we are interested in would be a great thing to have, even if it required shipping things out for machine work. From what I have seen on this message board, "West Coast Cylinder Head" is a good example and would be first on the list. Jim |
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Jensen Healey Super Moderator 
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Hi Dan, In one of your other posts you said that the shop that did the dowels was using CNC. There's your cost problem right there. CNC saves money on multiple or complex items but why pay for the programming and the expensive equipment for installing some dowels? Jensen didn't need CNC to locate and drill for the original 2 dowels and neither does a good old fashioned automotive machine shop. I paid $300 to have my balancing work done which included the pistons, rods, wrist pins, crank, flywheel and pressure plate. They also polished the crank. Spencer Motorsports charged me $300 to pull and bore the liners to .030 over but what do you expect from a Lotus shop? Another local shop did my valve job and installed the guides I provided for $275. Kurt |
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Dan Eiland Member
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Kurt, you make a good point about the factory job aligning and installing the two existing dowels. I tried to get my regular machine shop to do the work and they said they could not do it and it would take a CNC machine to align them correctly. So, I ended up using two different machine shops since my regular shop didn't have a CNC machine. Now I have to take all my engine parts to my regular machine shop that has the equipment to line hone the block, hone my liners (they are already bored .030 but have7500 miles on them. You can still see the original hone marks and they look new but don't want to take a chance) and finally have them do a precision balance. I already modified the oil galley feed tube to the head. The head has already been modified with new larger SS exhaust valves, lightly ported and polished, new seats and new guides. Have purchased a set of the newer style cam carriers but they have not arrived yet. Also waiting on my aluminum flywheel so the balance will have to wait. |
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