Even though we have been busy with Ferrari repairs and the posts showcase this work, we are always digging into other classic and sports cars.

A guy bought a Porsche 356B T-6 from a private party and never had any luck making it run well. He took it to a number of different shops to remedy poor running and a host of other issues and out of pure luck the owner found us (isn’t he lucky) I reluctantly took the project on as I have a soft spot in my heart for these Porsches.

When it came in, the engine ran very poorly and is seemed as though it had no compression, even the 6 volt starter with ancient battery and starter cables whirled the engine over as though there were no spark plugs installed. There were a number of other issues like terrible brakes, horrible wiring harness and a transmission that didn’t shift, but I will focus this post on the engine.

The owner told me that the most recent shop performed a valve job but with the major oil leaks and strange noises Karl decided to pull the engine and set it up on the test stand.
Once running on the stand we thought that we may have to pull the heads and after a leak down test it became horribly obvious.

To start with the cylinder head castings were mis-matched and there were no two valves that matched. Not one valve was sealing properly and the guides and seats were shot. The last shop thought that a valve job was hand lapping valves without checking any other details including rinsing out the excessive amount of gritty valve lapping paste from the heads! What a mess.

Generally, a Porsche engine of this type burn a valve or a piston and you can repair it without “splitting the case” but with all of the valve lapping paste we had to dig further and we are glad we did. The oil pump was horrible and the crankshaft that was already at the 3rd under-size was down into the soft steel.

We searched high and low to find a good used front timing cover, crank and a matched pair of 912 heads to go with new 86mm pistons and sleeves from Shasta Design. We also lightened the flywheel and opened it up to accept a 200mm clutch. The engine runs like a champ and with the overhauled transmission and new wiring harness the owner should have a trouble free season of driving.

Here are some more photos from our recently discovered ‘71 LeMans archive. The photo of the “normal” looking Daytona is very interesting as I would have imagined racing ones to be all decked out like the other images. I wonder if this car is driven on the street today or is it still a competition car.

It would be great to talk to the mechanics in these photos to hear how the cars competed and held up in the 24 hours of abuse.

Sometimes we see the craziest things here at our shop.
We bought a 330 GTC last spring that had gone to a number of shops to correct some of the issues that plagued this car.

It was sold to us as having a recent valve job and was a sorted and good running car but we found this not to be the case. When I first drove the car I realized that the cam timing was off because after dialing in the ignition timing the engine still “spark knocked” at low speed. Many shops set the cam timing improperly but it is usually only off 4-6 degrees. The way this engine ran I knew that we were talking about close valve to piston clearances due to the cam timing being way off.

The engine also leaked lots of oil but I was not worried because we were going to remedy the leaks once we remove the cam covers for a valve adjustment and cam timing check. After removing the covers we found that the roller followers were beyond serviceable and the valve adjust screws were shot.

We buttoned up the engine and started to tune the ignition and carburetors only to find the pesky oil leak continued and the radiator seemed to boil over at low temperatures. Nate put the combustion gas tester on the radiator and we realized that the head gaskets were leaking so we decided to bite the bullet and pull the engine from the chassis.

Nate pulled the heads only to find a mushed up Pepsi can between the head and timing case and we noticed the problematic ELRING head gaskets uses. He inspected all of the valves and combustion chambers and put the engine back together in no time. Nate is fast becoming the 330 GT cam timing master!
Now the engine is back together and we are soon to overhaul the transmission in order to make this car perfect.