Porsche 356

Restoration of a 1960 Porsche 356 Super 90 sunroof coupe.

Now that we have all of the mainline spinning components, I’ve dropped them back with Soren to be balanced as a unit. Crankshaft, flywheel, pressure plate, and the crankshaft pulley. Hopefully keep this a tight, vibration-free engine.

Our crankshaft came home from Soren’s today. It is super clean and nicely bagged. He was able to lay claim to the 912 (counterweighted) crank we looked at before. Including rework, it will ultimately cost the same as a new AA crank, but is a Porsche original part. The numbers appearing on the lobes are

Rods. Originally this post was to be titled “rods”, but then I thought I might mislead a bunch of porn searches and I’d hate for that to end in disappointment. So I thought it better to be more explicit and title it “connecting rods”. Soren pulled together a nice set of used connecting rods. These

Received our rebuilt distributor from John Jenkins, the distributor part of 356 carburetor rescue, today. It’s (cast iron) heavy, looks like new, and was very well packaged. The distributor I found on the engine was a Bosch 0 231 129 010, and appears to have been original equipment on 1959-1960 VW Type 2 (Bus). In

As I am learning is par for the Porsche 356 course, there are details for even bumper guards if you want to buy something original and correct. The A used a single-piece guards, and supported overrider tubes. The B / C cars had two-piece guards, and no more overriders . The rears had a hole

The car was found with no bumpers. The search for these hasn’t been too terrible. The 356 B and C had the same bumpers, which makes a much larger pool of parts to source from. Chrome was an uncommon option. There are couple easy ways to distinguished the B / C bumpers from the A.

If you’re looking for an authentic handle there is, or at least used to be, an easy telltale. The underside of the fat end should have Huf and 6569 embossed into it. It does appear that reproductions are now showing up with “Huff” and “6569” markings. I’ve seen at least one “OEM version” from Sierra Madre.

I think we’ve found a good path forward on the crankshaft. Unfortunately, new Super 90 crankshafts are not to be had anymore. There were more legitimate choices than I would have guessed: Keep the SPG roller crank that we found in the engine Buy a SCAT crank for just shy of $2500 Buy an “economical”

Here are the heads after Soren has run them through his spray washer. Quite a bit of pitting. He didn’t seem too concerned though. The factory black coating for a Super 90 head is not in great shape. We will retain as much of it as possible. It is not just an aesthetic identifier of

The pistons and cylinders on the car were clearly not stock. The pistons were not looking bad, but an MC racing type. The cylinders were rusted, scored, and in at least one case had a broken cooling fin. Time to replace. Orders of business: Find something that will fit the Super 90 head, which has

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