Engine Services

Vintage and Classic BMW Engines Repair, Rebuilding, Restoration 

Services

Cylinder bore and piston inspection. 

Scottie's will inspect to determine if pistons will be reused or renewed. Rings, bore and hone, etc.  We also offer nikasil plating which is a good way to reuse expensive undersized pistons which are still in good condition. 

If the bores are worn or damaged (undersized, worn into a taper or barrel, or damaged by scratching), there are typically three options for repair/renewal of cylinders and bores: 

1. Buy new, larger diameter pistons;  bore and hone cylinders to fit new pistons.
2. If pistons are good, we can apply a thick Nikasil plating which is diamond honed to fit the pistons. This results in a very durable cylinder bore that will last a very long time. 
3. For 1970 and newer BMWs, it often makes sense to consider upgrading to a Siebenrock "Power Kit" which includes new cylinders and pistons as a matched set. 

Send us your complete engine, or  your cylinders and pistons for an evaluation and free estimate. 

Cylinder Head Repair and Restoration

Head inspection: Scottie's will disassemble cylinder heads, inspect and report back to you with an estimate. All R50/60 "butterheads" are checked for tower height and tower heights are corrected if necessary by depth boring on the milling machine and by inserting hardened steel shims. 
Services we provide: 

• New valves (BMW or Kibblewhite), 
• Valves refacing - if  your valves have enough meat left on them, we will reface them in our precision valve grinder
• Seats Replacement - hardened for unleaded fuels
• Guide Replacement - We make guides from bronze 
• New Springs  - all our springs are sourced from BMW or Kibblewhite
• Exhaust threads - we repair exhaust threads by turning off the old threads (on the lathe), TIG welding new material (8087 aluminium alloy), and then single-point cutting new threads on on our metric lathe
• fin repair - New aluminum fins are repaired or fabricated by TIG welding and then hand shaped by grinding and filing
• Crack and corrosion repair - we repair damaged combustion chambers by grinding, TIG welding and machining. In almost all cases, crack and corrosion repair will be accompanyed by seat and guide replacement, and new spark plug threads. 

Performance upgrades, such as lightweight valves, thicker springs, grinding/lightening of rocker arms, lightweight titanium valve adjustment hardware, porting and polishing, etc. 

Be sure to send us your valve covers and will clean them at no additional charge - when you get everything back it will look better than new. 

Carburetor Repair and Restoration

We specialize in rebuilding and repairing damaged or cracked carburetor bodies, repairing worn threads, fitting/honing slide bores, boring larger throats, replacing worn or cosmetically damaged hardware, flycutting flange faces and more. We are BING specialists but we also work on other brands  such as Dellorto and Mikuni.  We are dealers for Bing and Dellorto. 

Engine block Repair and Restoration

We are experts are engine block and aluminum case repair.  We can often repair crash damage, and damage caused by broken rods. 

Our Inspect and measure block (to determine squareness of cylinder faces, compression of timing gear spacing, condition of gasket sealing surfaces, oil galley cleaning, crash damage assessment, etc.

• Block repair, such as repairing broken studs and stripped threads to repairing severe crash damage. 

Press-Fit Crankshaft Repairs and Rebuilding

Measuring crank for run out, worn rod bearings, undersized or damaged journals, worn or damaged tapers or sealing surfaces, worn or damaged wrist pin bushings, damaged internal threads, etc.  Crank rebuild/repair, balancing. Rods, bearings, journals, chroming, precision grinding.  We rebuild crankshafts in house. If crank is repaired or ground, spacing of crank fore/aft will need to be recalculated and spacers machined or replaced. 

• Slingers, crank bearings, camshaft bearings and retaining screws.  
• Measure rear bearing mount in case and replace if required
• Inspect cam followers to determine if they need to be renewed or refaced, oversized cam followers
• Inspect cam to determine if it needs to be renewed or refurbished
• RHS Oil galley drilling of early blocks
• Solvent cleaning of block and other castings to remove all sludge
• Vapor blasting cases (cases are sealed to eliminate media contamination, then blasted and cleaned again with high pressure soap and water)

• Gasket kit, Viton seal upgrades, Rubber grommets and other bits
• Refreshing engine electrics, bench testing magneto/coil,  bench testing generator and voltage regulator and adjusting output voltage, if necessary, renewing brushes, points 
• Testing magneto and advance mechanism on truing stand for run out, and correcting or renewing, if necessary
• Cleaning all internal hardware, ignition parts, timing and oil pump gears, etc in solvent
• Replacing advance cam grease felt and spring 
• Replace all woodruff keys, checking for damage to woodruff key slots, and repairing if necessary 
• Replace nut locking tabs on oil pump and flywheel
• Replace missing wavy washer springs on rear main seal oil retainer and oil breather timing plate (if missing)
• Reassembly, installation of crank, timing gears, flywheel, engine electrics, etc.
• Bench-running fresh engine installations when it is not possible to test the motor in-situ

• Instructions for shipping your engine and transmission to Scottie's Workshop (We do offer free rental with deposit for crates for shipping engines and transmissions.)
• Drain Oil
• Clean Exterior cases free of loose dirt and oil
• Wrap all parts in oil tight plastic bags 
• Box each item separately - or ensure that items will not bang into one another
• Ensure exterior of box is clean and not oil stained
• Double box with 2" of padding between interior and exterior box - you can put many small boxes inside a larger box, for example