Porsche Makes New Mg Cases . . .

[LongRanger]

. . .

'. . . So, a flat engine is built super differently from other inline or v-style engines. Air-cooled flat engines are built even more differently. For example, on air-cooled Porsche 911s, the crankcase is actually two castings bolted together and contain the crankshaft, timing components, oil pump, and other bits. The individual cylinders and heads are bolted to it.

The problem with some early 911 crankcases is that they were cast from magnesium for a while. You’re probably thinking, “But magnesium is super light, right? Why is that a problem?” The issue is with the way that magnesium ages and its inherent brittleness. This leads to engine cases that crack and corrode and become unusable, but because Porsche loves keeping its classics on the road, it announced on Wednesday that it’s now making new production magnesium engine cases for 1968-1976 911s.

Yeah, I know it’s niche, but if you’re the owner of one of these cars with an unusable crankcase, and your previous option was to roll the dice on a sketchy repair (magnesium doesn’t weld especially well) or find a used engine case, these new parts could be a huge deal. This is especially true when considering the cost of an air-cooled 911 engine rebuild which can easily climb to nearly $20,000 on an engine where you’re not replacing non-wear items.

Porsche started the production process by sand casting blanks for the cases and then CNC machining them to hyper-exact tolerances well outside what was possible in the mid-1960s. That part is all pretty basic modern component production; the really hard part was getting the diagrams and drawings for the original parts to be able to reproduce them accurately.

Porsche claims much of the original documentation was in unreadable condition, so it used a combination of old documents, interviews with current and former staff and the work already done on the aluminum reproduction engine cases done for later cars, the measurements for which were partly taken from Porsche’s legendary 962C Le Mans prototypes.

We reached out to Porsche for pricing and availability but didn’t hear back in time for publication . . .'


https://jalopnik.com/porsche-will-se...our-1850205230





Begs the question, doesn't . . .

. . . what number will Porsche stamp on it?



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[Bullethead]

Hmmm... wonder if Tommy Olsen will continue his mag cases if the price is competitive. Would you want this or the repop? Regarding numbers, I'd think Porsche would treat them like they always did for replacement cases.

[blue72s]

Begs the question, doesn't . . .

. . . what number will Porsche stamp on it?


......................

Hopefully blank, or better yet the same number as what the kardex/CoA of your car says.

[NZVW]

Hmmm... wonder if Tommy Olsen will continue his mag cases if the price is competitive. .

About $9500 USD I believe

[rgupta250]

I read a post from a reputable early Porsche shop in LA that the Porsche Classic mag crankcases will retail for approx. $12,300 USD.

[911MRP]

I chatted to the man from Porsche AG who was project managing this at the Porsche display at Goodwood Revival back in September last year. This was 2.7 MFI spec prototype example. They had an example they started up in on an engine stand at certain intervals. I have photos I took that weekend:





There were some protocols he outlined to getting hold of a pair but we didn’t go into details as I don’t and hopefully won’t need. I would hope it doesn’t lead to mischief …

Steve

[911MRP]

Hopefully blank, or better yet the same number as what the kardex/CoA of your car says.

Blank is asking for misuse. As is stamping original number.

If Porsche Classics knows about it’s own history and procedures then surely it should be stamped AT xxxxxx under a controlled process but I wouldn’t hold my breath on it being anything so sensible and logical.

The one being demonstrated at the Goodwood Revival presumably a development example, had an incomplete mark not totally blank. This is a photo I took :



I have some period information (forms) on the exchange engine scheme from early 70s somewhere among my old reference information. AT short for “Austausch” maybe our native German speakers can confirm it is short for “Exchange”, the original serial number was kept but AT is applied as a prefix. Similar system used before around about 1970 but different abbreviation KD short for “Kundendienst” which I think means “customer-service”. Not sure why the abbreviation changed but may be contained in the reference papers I referred to.

While it is good to see Porsche do this for genuine cars that would benefit from new cases I would hope they are not naive in how the process is managed and controlled so as to not tempt less scrupulous types to play “silly buggers”.

Steve

[speedo]

Not clear why they are doing this...there are plenty of mag cases available, as the chassis are gone and the cases remain. I agree that offering up blank replacement cases is asking for "bad actors" to stamp. How will they prevent this?

[govols!]

Very concerning. Liability seems to outweigh benefits.

[Longballa]

3.0L cases they could sell all day if not too expensive. They could mark them as replacements in some way and no one would care. At least the hot rodders wouldn't.