Originally Posted by EchoSixMike
I'm in the process of opening a machine shop, south central Wisconsin. Trying to capture some of that knowledge before the old geezers all die off wink More or less directly instigated by nobody being able to grind a crank for **** unless you want to ship it to Moldex/Crankshaft Specialists/Marine crank/Winberg/etc. I'm 46 and pretty much the "young guy."

Unfortunately a lot of these old shops have equipment just as used up and tired as the people operating them. It's hard to justify spending $50k+ on new machines, and especially tooling and fixturing when the break even on the investment is going to be years and years. And that was when it was available, with the Brandon/COVID shutdown of everything, everyone is monthes and years to delivery. Sunnen flat out tells you it'll be a year before you can get a honing machine from them. All this for a hobby industry. S/F....Ken M


This what I see in the industry also. Most of the "old time" shops have worn out equipment. There isn't enough money in the business for shops to buy new equipment every 10 years so the equipment just wears out. The owner's plan is to retire when the equipment all wears out since he can't afford to replace it all. It would cost $1M to set up a new engine shop with all new equipment and it would take forever to pay it off.

Crate motors make more sense economically since they can be produced in a factory setting with lower prices, but cheaper crate motors killed off a lot of "mom and pop" machine shops since they couldn't compete.