356

Cleaned out the third piece of brass bits today. Discovered that the distributor drive gear had jumped enough that the shim had come out of place and was sitting in the bottom of the case. Good that I found that. If it weren’t for dumb luck, I don’t think I would have any with this […]

Inspecting my heads today I noticed that the valves, which had been stamped long ago, no longer match the number next to the chamber the head. The machinist is telling me they are confident they’re in the right spot. Got me a little worried.

Doing things the first time, it’s not always obvious why things are the way they are. When it comes to Porsche engines, there certainly seems a reason for everything. Case and point, the head bolts It would appear at first glance that I can use any of the head bolts in any position to secure

After a trip through the mail, our heads returned home. They got very similar measurements of the head angles as I did. They also mentioned that my original machinist may have surfaced the head, but did not adjust for decking off the top. Which I believe would explain my issue with getting 1 – 1.5

I had removed the pistons from the engine, thinking my machinist might be reworking them. Having abandoned that idea, the pistons were put back on the connecting rods today. Ring gaps reset. I’m back to the single 1mm copper cylinder base gasket.

After a lot of consternation, I shipped the head off to a well known Porsche machine shop for a second machinist opinion if you will. Unlike my original machinist, they indicated they wouldn’t consider machining the pistons. They did think they could improve the head squish angle. They might get into the valve seat, but

The results of measuring my heads, clearances, and compression has given me a lot of anxiety. In consulting with my machinist, his advice has been to use thick shims to avoid interference and run with it. Uncomfortable with some conflicting info and not knowing how to proceed, I used a metal contour gauge to try

I guess measuring the squish angles in the head was not something our machinist normally does. After much hand wringing, and some emails with our him, I took the head back to him for review. In short he wasn’t comfortable modding the combustion chamber any more, for fear of getting into the valve seats. The

I have hit a wall in my assembly. The concern being that I’m seeing geometry between the head and pistons that I don’t believe is intended. In short, I think the conical part of the piston dome be parallel to the angle of the head. I think the discussion on the 356 Registry Forum confirms

Given the results from the 1.0 mm cylinder base gasket were not really desirable, I took another run using 3 x .25 mm (.75 mm total) gaskets. Results were, well, different. Deck height is still quite high (1.67mm average), compared to the 1mm ideal. Compression ratio at 9.31 average is pretty much at the upper

Scroll to Top
Scroll to Top