Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

Actually I would double check the price for belts too as his website lists belts for an S at £275 + vat

http://www.jmgarage.com/Service-944.htm

Did your quote include a full service as well?

I find that quote for belts & pump really shocking. It's not a big job to change a water pump. Lindsey racing have them for £150 (+VAT tax shipping say £200) £600 should cover it.
The S is a much under rated engine & tunes well. A half decent performance exhaust & a remap will give you 200 flywheel for a fraction of the cost of an engine swap (£500) If you want loads sell it & buy a turbo.

Firstly, sorry Jim. The Rover lump just seems weedy to me only getting a little over 200bhp when tuned out of 3.5 litres. Not worth the effort in this application when as Paul has said you can buy a 944 off the shelf with more power than that. I'd really suggest the OP buy a Turbo actually as it will have the air-con as well as more oomph and a nice one will always be worth top of the 944 money where as a bastardised V8 will always be worth next to nothing. There seems little point modifying any 944 other than a Turbo in my eyes, and you can get low-mid 300s with decent torque out of them with cost-effective bolt-ons, which most people are happy with.

In terms of sticking with a Porsche engine, lots of people said that to me. Truth is I am not precious about the Porsche aspect of my car - I got over that a loooooooong time ago - so it doesn't bother me personally and I actually would take a perverse satisfaction in upsetting the purists. I doubt the 928 engine would fit anyway as the 944 one is effectively half the 928 one and there is precious little room with half of the 928 engine in there. Regardless the point for me is to get big power both reliably and relatively cheaply, and I wanted bigger power than any of the 2.5 engines are delivering. I also looked very seriously at a JMG 3.2, but they are expensive as well and I'm not in all honesty much of a fan of the uncharismatic 4 banger in the 924S/944/968. I do wonder what they can really do when allowed to pop, bang, hiss and growl rather than stay polite and civilised like Mr. Smith's has to however

Not bad for 1950's designed pushrod V8 & very cheap to boot. But I agree transplanting it wouldn't be worth the effort.

Just defending Jon M the 944T he's put together for me included about £1200 worth of work on the engine but this included front engine oil seal, water pump, tensioners, rollers, belts, engine mounts, 48k service. Seemed good value for me with the peace of mind someone's done it right. He'd also be able to advise on how to modify any 944 seeing as he specialise's a bit in them wouldn't he? I'm new to Porsche motoring too but Jon's knowledge and enthusiasm has impressed me.

i was toying with the idea of dropping a gto engine in sarahs along with the loom now that would be interesting. 300bhp with 430ft/lbs torque

You don't need to defend Jon from me, nor tell me what he's capable of. Is it confirmed that the £1,200 quote came from him and that it is really just for belts and water pump?

Agreed. Anyway it was you that put me onto the Chevy bloke!

Oh you mean Mike at Boosted

Heh heh heh.

Don't worry though. I believe the 2nd one (Bens old car) is going to emerge with a 3" exhaust system so I am waiting to hear how civilised that one is before I make any decisions The 3rd one has been taken away to fit the same plus custom exhaust manifold, crossover pipes, intake and a stand alone EMS. I hope he has enough budget left to rebuild the gearbox at the same time

Its official, from me, £1200 is NOT just a cam belt and water pump

Off the top of my head, we charge £275+VAT to change the cam belt, balance belt, power steering belt and alternator/aircon belt.

This is a fixed menu price including parts and labour.

If when performing this job we found a host of nasties waiting to cause future problems we contact the cars owner and give options.

Typical nasties include.... oil seals leaking, water pump worn out, tensioners worn out, or anything else which is likely to become a problem in the next 4 years and 40,000 miles.

When nasties are found, or a customer knows the waterpump, tensioners, rollers, oil seals, etc have not been changed in known history, there is then a big problem and a lot of "what if's?" that can raise their ugly heads, and customers do not tend to like opening a blank cheque book for car repairs. Likewise, a specialist has a duty of care to do the right thing and make the right recommendations for the car and the customer.

If a customer gives us the go ahead to change the water pump along with the belts, there is going to be the price of the water pump and the price of the additional labour to remove the crank pulleys, the balance shaft pulleys, the tensioners, the rollers and the rear belt cover... Which, if everything goes smoothly will pan out as follows in an ideal world.

Fixed price belt replacement £275+VAT
Additional labour to remove items to access water pump (see above), remove water pump, remove traces of gasket, replace water pump and thermostat and refit all parts.. 2 hours @ £54.95 per hour plus VAT = £109.90
Water pump (approx) £200 for a non genuine item + VAT
Non genuine waterpumps tend not to include thermostat, gaskets, elbow and sealing ring... all extras.

We tend to use genuine water pumps though..

So, in an ideal world, all 4 belts, with water pump etc.. would cost £584.90+VAT not to mention coolant, time to bleed the coolant, hose clamps and sundry items to remove the gaskets and clean things up.

In an ideal world..

However, 9 times out of 10, the water pump has not been changed in years, possibly since the car was new. In which case, broken thin (m6) water pump studs and bolts are likely. often already non existant due to corrosion and require the remaining parts to be drilled out, possibly requiring hellicoils or at very least the threads chasing. To do this accurately, may also require the radiator to be removed, or in some cases even the engine to be removed in really extreme cases. So as you can imagine, if the customer elects to pay by the hour to "replace the water pump" at the same time as the belts, their bill could end up being REALLY large.

Then, while changing the water pump, its a good idea to replace the front engine oil seals, typically they have a lifespan a bit like the water pump, every 8 years and 80,000 miles..

These oil seals cost around £75 for a cheap non genuine parts as a set. and it takes about an hour to replace them all (there is more than you think, 8 of them!) with a bit of extra time for cleaning up mess where they have been leaking... again, in an ideal world.

In a non ideal world, I am yet to see an engine where we have replaced the oil seals and not found that the oil pump drive sleeve is worn out, the balance shaft top hats are not worn out, and the camshaft top hat isnt worn out... Which all cost more money and are not cheap.

Back a few years ago, it was not uncommon for me to dive into a job like this, having warned the customer that the expected cost would be a little like a length of string and hard to predict. Customers who loved their cars did not mind, they just wanted the job done correctly and so they could forget about the front of their engine for the next 8 years apart from a routine cam belt change in 4 years time.

Often, the final bill, even in the days when I charged only £35 per hour, would be in excess of £1200, sometimes as much as £1500 or more! Whenever this happened I did not have the heart to charge the customer the full amount, and elected to be a bad business man instead and cap their bill at £1200. They were always greatfull for this.

But about 3 years ago, I found that I would explain all the above to customers, and the look of horror on their face was often enough to tell me they didnt want to enter into such a gamble and to be honest I always prefer a customer to know what they are in for before I start work on their car. I am not into confrontations!

So, I decided to introduce what I call a "front engine overhaul" with zero risk to the customer. and yes, this costs £1200

Included for this is the following parts replaced with new items.

Cam belt
Power steering belt
Alternator/aircon belt
balance belt
water pump
water pump gasket
water pump elbow o-ring
water pump elbow
thermostat
thermostat seal
thermostat shims
thermostat circlip
camshaft drive sleeve top hat
upper balance shaft sleeve top hat
lower balance shaft sleeve top hat
crankshaft oil pump drive sleeve
camshaft oil seal
camshaft sleeve seal
upper balance shaft sleeve seal
upper balance shaft oil seal
lower balance shaft sleeve seal
lower balance shaft oil seal
crankshaft oil seal
crankshaft drive sleeve o-ring
camshaft belt tensioner
camshaft belt idler roller
camshaft belt guide rail
camshaft belt guide rail nuts x 2
balance belt tensioner
Balance belt idler pulley
Water pump to radiator hose clamp
water pump to heater rail hose clamp
water pump elbow to hose clamp
water pump studs
water pump bolts
water pump nuts
tensioner, idler and roller bolts and washers
replacement of coolant

Also included as part of the service is included....

the front of the engine is cleaned back to bare clean aluminium.
If a stud breaks, its our problem!
The shafts of the camshaft, crankshaft and balance shaft where the pulleys mount are dressed (to remove gunk and corrosion)
We chase the threads of every hole, and if it needs a helicoil its our problem.
And if any hose is removed to do the job, it gets a new hose clamp.
The cooling system is put through pressure and vacuum testing

The only time the customer gets a call, or the price goes up is if we find something completely unrelated such as the radiator not passing pressure and vacuum testing.

Also included in this job, just like our cam belt replacement, is a FREE retension and checkup of the job we have performed after 1500 to 2000 miles

AND we stand by our work.. read on...

All the genuine parts have a warranty of 2 years

if you get the parts from a factor, euro car parts or GSF your parts have maybe a year garauntee.

If something goes wrong with either of the above suppliers, your pretty much out of luck apart from maybe a new part they supplied if it went wrong.

If we perform the job we garauntee the job for the life expentancy of the job, 4 years/40,000 miles for the belts, 8 years/80,000 miles for the water pump, oil seals and tensioners. If any part fails and causes any other damage we fix that as well!! That means, if your engine is destroyed by a failed cam belt, we fix your engine as well!

This is the job that costs £1200, sometimes things go smoothly and possibly we end up on the winning end of the deal by a small margin (but the car still gets all the above attention anyway)... Sometimes it goes bad and we spend 40 hours and a fortune on parts to complete the job... in either case the price is the same, £1200

The £1200 price was set some time ago, when our hourly rate was much lower and unlikely to go up in price, any time soon.. If someone is a regular or existing customer we often charge less or work it into some kind of a deal.

So there you go... not me defending my prices, but rather explaining them, because I think you will all agree what we do for £1200 in this particular task, isnt a simple belt and pump job

On a side note, if anyone wants a job doing by itemised billing rather than as a fixed price job, we can do that as well, some people like a gamble

you also have to think about the additional weight and handling implications...

how about a wankel?

Wankel engines are voodoo, witchcraft I tell you!

How about the audi 5cylinder 2.3L Turbo. Start out fairly reasonable and miles of headroom for hotting up.

Bolt pattern should be a match for the existing bellhousing. Lumps not much differnet in size to the original.

The nutcase VW Golf running one of these was putting out 800BHP. Sure not really practical for day to day use, but just shows what they can be made to do.

Well done Jon. I'll be down next week to show you the finished respray results of the "Blue Rocket" and the engine is running sweeeeeeeet Big Thanks to you and the team at J M G's