Where have all the machine shops gone

I remember when Terre Haute had two machine shops where you could take a mower engine or a car engine and have them bore out the cylinders, turn the crank, rebuild the cam, grind the valves and take care of a warped heads. Are there any machine shops left that work on engines?

I can also remember when I was lucky to get 100k on engine that used more oil than gas.
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(quoted from post at 08:50:52 03/04/21) I remember when Terre Haute had two machine shops where you could take a mower engine or a car engine and have them bore out the cylinders, turn the crank, rebuild the cam, grind the valves and take care of a warped heads. Are there any machine shops left that work on engines?

I can also remember when I was lucky to get 100k on engine that used more oil than gas.
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f you ask this question at your local auto parts store, you might get a good answer. In my home town, the answer was "napa". Where I live now there is a local chain of auto parts stores that has one central location that does typical machine shop services. You take your parts to the store in your town and they send it to the shop.

Engines last longer, cost to overhaul vs. replace is not in favor of the machine shop, old owners not passing the business on to the next generation... Whole bunch of factors in the decline.

The most obvious answer to the title of this one would be a single word: China.

But, on a more serious note, they are a dying trade.

Engines today are more of the throwaway design. Look at automotive engines. They mostly use overhead cams, multiple valves per cylinder, exotic timing chain configurations, and sleeved aluminum blocks. Gaskets and seals for these engines are expensive. Disassembly and re-assembly are complicated and require many special tools.

This all adds up to engines that are too expensive to repair for most repair shops and customers alike. So, there goes most of that work. Most repair work that involves engines ends up going to re-manufacturing facilities and engines are exchanged rather than repaired at the repair shop end of things. That basically eliminates the machine shop work that used to support them.

There are other things as well. Brake drums and brake rotors are another thing that mostly went away. In general, it costs less to replace a rotor than to resurface it. Labor rates went up and replacement costs went down. To make it worse, many rotors and drums simply do not have enough material on them to cut more than once.

The little bit of small engine work that comes in the door along with whatever restoration work comes in just isn't enough to keep the doors open or the lights on. So, as the work goes away, there is less for machine shops to do so they start going broke or just retiring. some of the younger guys find another line of work.

(quoted from post at 09:25:19 03/04/21) Engines last longer, cost to overhaul vs. replace is not in favor of the machine shop, old owners not passing the business on to the next generation... Whole bunch of factors in the decline.

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From working with some shops on repairs to industrial machinery, a common theme seemed to be the lack of "real" machinists. They were trying to find good candidates to train. They said most all coming out of trade schools are getting CNC trained, not how to set up the machines to manually recondition components. I see engine work a lot the same, it needs hands on, not just write a program, stick it in the machine and hit go.

There 5 that I know of within Reasonable distance and Im sure there are more . Just had an engine bored crank turned con rods gone over cam gone over and they ordered me an engine rebuild kit . Going to take the engine for my 420c and have it bored and gone over as well

As SV said you can find them for large engines but nearly no one does machining on mower engines any longer - you just replace the engine.

We still some good ones in Ohio, and I use use them , if I dont want them to go under

I live in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the US, DFW area.

Good luck finding a good automotive machine shop here!

About the only ones left are performance shops, where the circle track and drag racers go.

They stay so booked up with their regular customers it is near impossible to even get them to talk to you.

Show up with something out of the ordinary, they won't even look up, just point to the door!

Then there is the other end of the spectrum, some shops that have been in business since the 1920's. How they keep the doors open is a real mystery. They prey on desperate people that think maybe this time it will be different, but the end result is you're overcharged to turn your one of a kind engine block into scrap metal!

Not enough business for the most part. Dealerships for the most part do not want the hassle of backing a repair in terms of warranty whether it be a car or tractor. They give the customer the option of purchasing a reman component that may come from hundreds or thousands of miles away. If the reman component fails then it falls on that company to back the product. If there was demand for such a service around here then a Mennonite would have such a shop. No Mennonite to my knowledge around here does such work. Anybody that has such equipment uses it to back a larger part of their operation such as selling reconditioned parts of which they source their own stock. No walk ins off of the street "Hey, can you turn my crankshaft."

(quoted from post at 09:50:52 03/04/21) I remember when Terre Haute had two machine shops where you could take a mower engine or a car engine and have them bore out the cylinders, turn the crank, rebuild the cam, grind the valves and take care of a warped heads. Are there any machine shops left that work on engines?

I can also remember when I was lucky to get 100k on engine that used more oil than gas.
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Before I made the choice between small engine repair and farming I was looking for the equipment to do just what you're speaking of George. I located a cylinder reamer/hone, I don't recall the specific name of it. I couldn't cut a deal for love nor money. The owner later died and his stuff vanished into the night. I've looked since and what I can find find starts around $7K. Impossible to sink that kinda money into something to redo a small engine cylinder at $40 a shot. That's part of the problem. I still have the dream of finding the hole in the wall shop everyone forgot about, full of the equipment required, but it's just a dream.

Im sorry you live in such a h*** hole

I think most small engine machine work would be done by a full service small equipment dealer/repair shop. Parts to rebuild older small engines are getting pretty expensive . Napa in my area still has a machine shop , and there are a couple independent shops left as well as a shop that specializes in crankshaft turning and repair. The independent shops are mostly into race engines and custom engine such as street rods etc. I know one that has done work for a tractor club aquaintance. The shop I used the owner has pretty much retired and I believe sold out , I have not needed anything machined in a while. To my knowledge the independent machine shops around here that did car ,truck, tractor,race engines never bothered with small engine stuff, unless it was a favor for a real good customer.They were always too busy with bigger stuff.

George, when I started in the small engine business in the 1980's, you rebuilt everything. You ground cranks, valves and seats, replaced valve stem bushings, rebuilt carbs, the whole nine yards. By the time I quit the business 12 years ago, the cost of fixing much of anything had become so high that owners could buy a new unit for less money (especially in the case of push mowers) than fixing a unit. In many cases a new carb cost less than the parts and labor for fixing a blinky carb. Even the heavy equipment industry is moving away from fixing anything locally. They are all pushing remanufactured.I think the main reason is as mentioned below. Very few local shops can survive having to go good for a $13,000 engine rebuild if something goes bad. if you turn a set of brake rotors and a rotor should break and cause an accident, the lawsuit would ruin your life.

That said, we do have one good engine machinist in this area. There is one good independent repair shop for truck/tractor in the area. Small engine shops have pretty much gone the way of T-Rex.

Potterville, Mi has one. They build engines for the oval track racers.

There is nothing much prettier than newly machined parts.

Had to take my flathead V8 to an old guy that had a valve machine with a big enough throat for the block to fit in to cut reliefs and install new valve seats. He was an interesting guy to visit with.
There is only one machine shop left in our town. And their head machinist has been talking retirement for a couple years. Don't know if they'll keep it going after he's gone. The other parts store that used to have a machine shop now sends all that work to Des Moines. Like others have said, how often do we grind valves anymore?

Cost is the killer to get started then lack of work coming in , then the talent to do the work on a vast array of MFG"s . Just like around here there are only a couple left and those that are left are working with equipment that some of it is older then i am . At one time i had a close friend that i have known since 1959 that had a shop that he built from the ground up , had the newest equipment all state of the art . Dick worked like a dog day in and day out . He did this up till he had a heart attach then slowed down a bit . He tried to teach and get his kid into it BUT Jr. had no desire to work or learn . Dick had a new state of the art line bore set up that could handle up to a V 16 Diesel or a little two cylinder lawnmower engine . He had a stationary boring bar that would also deck the block or ya could use it for milling heads , Here again ya could do a 3 Hp Briggs and Strattion or a V16 diesel . totally computer controlled . once you made the set up put the operation in and pushed the big green button you walked away and did what ever . when it was done it would shut down and beep at ya . After he had his THIRD heart attach he offered it to me for a bargain basement price of a quarter mill for lock stock and barrel and i could work out of his shop for a year till i got a new shop built in a good location that would meet state and EPA requirements . It's those requirements that will kill you . The only thing he did not have was a crank grinder and to have one you need one guy that grinds cranks 8 hours a day five days a week to make it pay and here again ya have to be able to do from the little ones up to the monsters . I could run everything but i was not as fast on line bore set up . as doing a true line bore over a line hone like what most places do now days takes more set up time . Line boring you want to take more meat from the cap then the block , line honing takes it from both it is fast to set up but also sets the crank deeper into the block and this will cause timing gears to set deeper into the mating gear loose timing chains and raise pistons up in the bore . anybody can set them up , grind the caps , put the caps back on shove the bar thru and set the stones and grind away . Not so easy with a bar. So ya want ot do this you better have some spare chump change layen around as even with a friendly banker that has handed you money for other crazy idead before knowing you were crazy to start with would now know you really went off the deep end wanting a half mill. . And what dick offered his place to me for was what he gave for just the boring bar and it was only six years old at the time. . We had another shop close up here lately and his stuff was auctioned offbut was nowhere near what Dick had . So now that leave just three little shops . And if you are in a hurry to get something done it ain't ah happening .

You are very lucky. I miss my local machine shop. I need a valve job on a 20 hp Kohler command. I the past I can take to machine shop attached to Auto parts place, one was Napa. I miss those days.
I'll have to lap the valve with valve grinding compound. May go on line and find a better antique valve lapping tool
George

Engine longevity has had a lot to do with it. When I was a kid in the 1940's and 1950's, most car and pickup engines lasted about 50K miles before needing to be overhauled or rebuilt. Most every parts store had its own machine shop.

Then as engineering and metallurgy improved that figure moved to 100K. Nowadays, most engines outlive the vehicle they're in. All of that reduced the need for machine work, until now about the only need for it is racing and special applications, and now you can buy kits with either new parts or the machine work already done.

Some shops did themselves in. There was once a large NAPA shop in Lincoln, NE in the 1970's and 1980's that did most of the machine work around the area. After I obviously didn't get my own parts back a couple of times I figured out the guy was keeping all of the choice stuff for his buddies and giving junk back to the customers.

On one occasion I had a crankshaft ground for a 350 SBC. I had the engine built up to the point of installing the harmonic balancer when I found there was a bolt broke off in the end of the crankshaft. I'd personally disassembled the engine the crank came out of and there was no way that could have been my crankshaft. When I confronted the guy, he wouldn't back down; he had all sorts of stories of how that had to have been the crankshaft I brought in. I was finally able to remove the stub of the bolt, but it should never have come to that.

Same with a 350 block I had bored. When I torqued one of the main bearing caps the crankshaft locked up. Then I could see traces of heat by that journal. The engine had been running, although tired, when I tore it down, so that couldn't have been my block. He didn't back down on that one, either, and I wound up paying an extra $75 to have the block align bored. Since that was a racing engine, that may not have been all bad, actually.

It all finally caught up with the guy.

Frankly, the last block I had bored was a 3.0 Buick V6 about 20 years ago. I took it to a guy I knew who did machine work in his garage behind his house, and I don't know what became of him.

Reading all the replies I have just realised how lucky I am. I have a small agricultral engineering business working on Manitou telescopic handlers and I have a good friend of mine with a wonderfull machine shop who does all diesel engine machine work. He is 22 miles away but well worth the journey and if it is a panic job he will work at night to get me going for the next morning. MJ.

George call me might have a source

Engine re-manufacturers, crate engines and speed/racing shops fill most of that demand now. The local NAPA store closed its machine shop ten or fifteen years ago. Mower dealers will tune mower engines, or replace them. Fifty years ago you couldn't make a living overhauling small lawn mower engines anymore, they were disposable back then already.

Bingo, Jim.

Engines, transmissions, even automobiles are mostly throw away these days.

Dean

Bingo, Goose. Only once in my lifetime did I take an engine to a "performance" (or any) shop to have rebuilt (didn't have the time), and it turned out to be one of the worst experiences of my life.

Shop owner built my (hard to find) 4.2L Buick V6 using my Kenny Bell parts and sold it to someone else before giving me a 3.8 V6 using run of the mill parts, hoping that I would not notice. Engine had no oil pressure and was in and out of my car 5 times before I got it right.

Upon confronting him his story was "everyone does it."

A few years later the shop burned down (likely an insurance job) and the owner retired to FL.

Dean

My local NAPA store does those things. You couldn't take a gear and have them fabricate one but they do the engine work.

I guess they want the better things for their kids like the rest of us...

Multiple reasons for me.

1) It cost me to tie up a bay waiting on a machine shop to do their thing.

2) The lability, I had rather put it on someone else.

3) it is not cheap anymore : (

4) The trill is not in it anymore I can make more money using plug and play remanufactured parts.

5) Keeping up with the updates is too time consuming.

6) The public has been conditioned its gonna cost (the bad they don't read all the fine print) They see it has a "million mile multi year warranty" what they don't read is how the game is played.

I tell folks all the time the good old days for me was the 70's and 80's. If I got slow I could store labor, I stocked 3 starters, 3 alternators, 3 engines, three transmissions, 3 water pumps, 3 sets of spark plugs, 3 sets of brake pads etc. I kept those parts for GM, Ford and Chrysler.

I could look for the best deal in bulk on the parts if I got slow build engines, transmissions starters and alternators. When business picked up and someone came in I had labor stored ready to plug and play.

You cannot do that today you can try it but it better taste good...

We are down to 2 Napa stores and zero machine shops. Used to have 3 connect to parts stores.

We ahve an Amish machine shop that can do all sorts of stuff, but not boring engines, grinding cranks or stuff like that. There is still one place 50 miles away that does that kind of work, but not on small engines.

I have seen operations like those mentioned above. The summation of job wasnt how happy the customer was or how good it turned out or how much money was made It was how much they had screwed the customer

George, there is one in Rantoul, IL if that is not too far for you.

You know I had that same thing happen with a 350 out of a corvette, thought they fooled me, broken off bolt for power steering bracket, not the one I brought in. Bet it was because of the steel crank, people are so dishonest sometimes.

Ive become my own engine machine shop out of necessity.

Locally theres only a couple of shops. One guy is a hack and way overpriced, Ive had the pleasure of redoing a bunch of his work, one fellow is good and Ill take work to him and he sends stuff to me, but hes getting up there and I dont know how much longer hes going to keep at it. The last guy is not allowed to touch anything of mine after he butchered a set of pin bushings in a set of John Deere rods. I would have left them alone had I known what kind of terrible job he was going to do.

Shops out in PA out in Amish country are plentiful, again, you have to be cautious. The one shop Ive used it excellent and reasonably priced. And theyre not using antique equipment, they have modern equipment.

What got me started was a shop out in Carlisle, PA managed to screw up a 24 valve Cummins cylinder head 3 times. Turns out the first nitwit that did it didnt replace the guides that were completely shot and you couldnt possibly cut round concentric valve seats if your life depended on it. Put it on the engine 3 times, popping out the intake every time. They made good on it, but it left a bad taste.

I just watched an online auction in eastern Ohio for a bunch of shop equipment and by the prices it looks like things brought good money.

Have not had to rebuild since engines have been powered with unleaded and in particular after fuel injection .
Still those around who purchase diesel because they last longer . Most gassers now go 300,000 miles with filters ,
Plugs , a couple of starters and a couple of alternators and a coolant pump .
An entire new long block gas engine can be bought for less than changing injectors in a diesel .

Back in the day every kid was working on a hot rod and fixing them up. And you could get away with doing a lot of hot rodding around and not get hassled or busted. The engines were designed to be able to machine them. Want to put in a 3/4 cam, plenty of them around. Shave the heads to get a little more compression, no problem. Nowadays kids can't even name the parts under the hood and everything is aluminum.