Fri 4th Oct 2013
I dragged my friend and neighbour Stan along to Jaz Porsche at Wembley see what I hoped would be a reasonably complete, built-up bottom end .
Stan is a supposedly retired mechanic who worked on the old Routemaster Buses and on Whitbread beer wagons but he has a penchant for American and
German cars so I thought he might appreciate a look round Jaz and have a peek at my engine coming together. I previously took him to Sportwagen, near Southend when my 911 bodwork was getting sorted and he loved seeing the fundamental but extremely skillfull bodywork being carried out on a load of 356s and early 911s.
Anyhow – when we arrived Steve informed us of the latest complication – it turns out that the conrod bolts on a 2.2S engine are unique to that engine and having tried to check out various options the only one available was to source a new set from Porsche. These were ordered and were due to arrive later the same day. Steve was a bit flabbergasted as he’d not realised this before as a) 2.2S engines are pretty rare and b) when he had rebuilt the odd one previously he’d used carillo rods which came with their own matching bolts.
Nice to know (I think) that even Steve with 30 years experience of working on Porsche’s can still hit surprises.
Steve also updated me on the fibre glass engine shroud. Although the original cracked shroud could be saved to would arguably retain a bit of patina – it would look very out of place with all of the fully refurbished engine components. The complication in replacing it however is that you cannot buy a new replacement red 2.2S engine shroud. There are new shoruds available for other models but the 2.2S has ducting that is unique to that engine. After Steve had trawled the internet and checked out a number of supposed replica shroud manufactures – he came up wiht the plan of buying a new SC or 3.2 Carrera item and modifying it with bits transferred from the old 2.2S shroud..
Anyway Stan and I had a very good look at one half of the crank case on the engine stand with the new 3.2 Carrera oil pump fitted. Dave (the engine builder) was raring to progress the bottom-end build-up as soon as the rod bolts arrived.
Pausing only to have a good look at a beautifully restored 1964 2.0L SWB 811 race car and a fantastic barn-find and unrestored Italian 2.4S we left Dave and Steve to it. Looking forward to seeing the engine in a more advanced stage of rebuild during the next visit in a week or so’s time.