Engine builder / Machinist

[hoodeng]

Master juggler.

[gunt]

so to put it another way , and this comes from learing th hard way , paying hard cash for someone elses mistakes , and you learn fast , now i have lost 13yrs of my life with a complete fk fest , other than that i would have learnt some machening , and have a fair bit of equipment for someone that knows nothing , and cannot currently find some one to work them ,

i will make a statment and i think you may all agree , while i cannot machine , an engine builder [ by engine builder , it must be someone who decides combination specs the build not just assembles , from known combos but some one who brakes ground ] that person must be well able to measure and pull up a machinest on this and even spec tolorances .

what i do feel may be more important and this is my secnd biggest beef , engine builder , serious at measurements and tuner , as i have far to may time pushed the boundery only ffor my tuner to have a prefixed notion as to what he has previouslly done and blows my engine ,

i side with Knights engines , i have to be all on the shop floor , and we do alot of diagnostics ,

don't want to name names , but a pretty internet hot tech educational business , [ in my opinion ] stuffed up pretty bad as they drive it home every time to check after the machinest but had engine failures from just that in an endurance engine which they pretty much build live on screen yet missed some simple items .

its very hard for a shop to invest in all the eqipment and all the machinest stuff too , especially from the start up and if one man does every thing you might get 2 -3 egines done a year

[In-Tech]

Hiya,
There are some very good comments here and well deserved.

My experience started with my first 454 BBC back when I was 14 or so in '81. I had to rent a ridge reamer on the std block and it barely cleaned up at .060" overbore. The machine shop did its' work and I assembled.

I am glad it happended this way, better than later, thinking I knew something. It lasted 2 days and killed the mains. I took it apart and took it back to the machine shop willing to pay figuring I am a dumb kid(which I was).

The machine shop dude asks me what the clearances were. Fack, I'm 14, I figured you take it to get machined and then follow the manual and assemble. Wrong. After a bit of questions big machine shop dude picked up my block
and threw it out into the parking lot. My dad grabbed me by the collar and told me to pack up and we went to the machine shop he recommeded in the beginning. Little did I know my dad was about to kill people, lol.

The next shop dude showed me a dial bore guage and how it worked and we checked the rod and main clearances along with the housing bore sizes before hand. Turns out I had .0008" on the mains and over .004" on the rods on the ones
that weren't hurt yet. Of course I want one of those guages so he told me how much those cost, oy. That was gonna be a lot of lawns mowed and I already had 3 paper routes so he showed me the BS plastiguage and how it will ball-park
but nothing close to a real dial bore and you want to change the spring.

Anyway, from there I was a pretty good assembler. That elusive camshaft stuff was the heart so a few years later, I was lucky to get a job at Mallory/Erson thanks to Brian Clark and Bob Wyman Jr. Talking with the best of the best
and quietly asking lot's of questions, I was learning at an exponential rate and level.

I would keep a notepad next to me all week and write down questions. On Saturday's I would go to my cubicle, on my day off, and wait for a few minutes with Gregg Koechline, most times it would take all day. He used to work at General Kinetics, and now head engineer, head lawyer,
CEO of Mallory/Erson and SuperShops...pretty smart guy.

He helped me understand the "dynamics" of the ICE and truly the limitations of the numbers, cross sectional area and mass flow, blah blah blah. Plenty of times I left his office like "Bvvvvtttt"(say it out loud only grasping a small amount. I always took notes and things would make sense after.

One Saturday I brought up why we are still using normal BBC cam events on these new OLDS and Pontiac heads with the small chambers, scavenging with flat tops vs domes and yada yada. He's a true gearhead at heart and it stopped him from thinking about all the BS business things he is used to.
We spent a bit of time talking about cam events that I was thinking and how lit up his face thinking about it too. We overnighted a bunch of cams Monday morn and it was the Pontiac and OLDS dude's killin' it for a long time.

I worked at a great engine machine shop for quite a while. I found I am better paying to have that done with trusted peeps, then I check every single thing before and during assembly.

I make better money, per time spent, doing my fuel injection work.

Good times