I got started building engines after getting screwed over by a shop on the first 440 I put in my cuda in 1998. After that, it was all me b/c I wanted to know exactly what I was getting. It's too easy for someone to give you a completely built engine and lie about what's in it.
I never understood why someone tells you a week and then it ends up being 2 months for no apparent reason.
I ran a small machine shop for about 6 years and loved doing it. Always stuck to the price quoted and stuck w/ the time frame religiously. If it had to be adjusted, I let the customer know ahead of time. Always treated people like I wanted to be treated b/c I knew all too well how bad it is to be screwed around w/ on an expensive and important piece of your pride and joy. We didn't assemble engines there for liability reasons, but I'd do them at home on my own time.
I found out real quick how expensive the equipment is and how cheap customers are...especially in this area. When you have a $45k head surfacing machine (cheaper floor demo model), charge $30-$50 per head, and people complain about that...it gets frustrating.
Had to send cranks out to 2 other shops to get turned b/c we didn't have a crank grinder. Talk about an expensive piece of equipment right there.
Most of our bread and butter was rebuilding stock heads off anything and everything for local garages and dealerships. A lot of newer stuff can't be rebuilt, it's all just replaced w/ new. Pretty soon all of your business will be people rebuilding older vehicles and, of course, race engines. Here there isn't enough of either to keep a shop going (10-15 years ago anyway), so I went back to school and changed careers. The shop I was at closed 6 months after I left. Of course now there are more and more shops closing so it would seem a GOOD shop could do pretty well. I'll run into some of my old customers and they'll ask when I'm gonna open my own shop. I say as soon as I win the lottery and have money to burn. Even had a fellow racer and business owner offer to buy the equipment and set up a shop for me to run, but that never worked out.
There are only 2 good local shops around here now and I'm fortunate to be friends w/ them. My stuff usually gets done quick and I try hard not to be the nightmare customer that used to do that kind of work.
I have bought stuff here and there so I only have to have minimal work sent to the machine shop. The best thing is to have your own dial bore gauge and micrometers so you can check what your shop machined for you.
So true. Most people think building engines is a money maker. It's a money loser. Most of the customers are whined little babies, who are so cheap it's not funny. Everybody is a winner and wants a sponsorship, because of course, they will drive so much business your way you'll get wealthy. Yep.
The cost of equipment is horrendous. Tooling is just as bad or worse. I can't tell you how many times I've sat on completed work that wasn't picked up. And certainly wasn't paid for. Since companies like Jegs and Summit will sell parts cheaper than most engine builders, the little profit there was in parts is gone. Can't have the shop make any money. Of course, when the [censored] doesn't fit, or isn't what it's said to be, the customer wants ME to call THEM and deal with it. How does that work? Now I'm taking money out of my pocket to build your engine.
Then you have the good old Internet. Obviously the customer is the smartest dude on the planet. They never make a mistake. Your junk converter can make my engine look slow, but the customer has no problem walking through the pits bitching about how [censored] my engine is. And then they go on the web and tell everyone how slow your engine is. Of course, when the truth comes out, there is no repeat ions made. No walking through the pits and telling everyone it was a junk converter that was killing ET and not the engine. No web posting doing the same.
There is no such thing as a loyal customer, especially in this game. You have the customer who thinks slamming an engine together takes an hour or two, and a competent engine builder who charges 1k (or more) is still making barely above poverty wages for that money. Of course, the home hobby engine assembler doesn't know how to degree a cam, fit cam bearings, check piston to valve clearance or even own a set of micrometers, let alone a set of standards. So they have no way of knowing anything about what they do.
And when said assembler has issues, like the engine is an underachiever, the same old, same old happens again. It had to be the [censored] machinist who is stupid and can't do anything. Doesn't matter that the valves are hitting the Pistons because the cam wasn't degreed correctly, or the file fit rings are butting or a dozen other issues.
It gets old listening to guys bitching about not being able to find a machinist. If you are so smart, and so good, open your own shop. Like the guy above, when you get tired of picking [censored] with the chickens, you'll get smart and walk away. It's silly that grown men actually thinks it's a privilege to build their engine and we should be thankful we get to do it, and we should just do it because it's so damn fun. Like anything else, it's a job. That's it.
Just my .02 from personal experience. Glad I'm done with it.
