For a year and a half i had been trying to find a good reputable, trustworthy, competent machine shop to do the machine work on my pond blocked FE power headed all aluminum 504cid FE. My long time machinist passed away, i had another guy that did work for me back in the early 90's that use to build alot of stock and super stock FE's in the early 80's so i reached out to him. He said sure, he would be glad to do it, BUT, hes semi retired, works alone, 74 years old and said he has 6 roundy round guys he builds engines for so he would have to do it in his spare time so maybe 6 months or so.. oh well, scratch that idea.
So i started checking out some performance machine and speed shops around my area. Virginia speed, horsepower solutions, Wargo machine and race engines, Bunner engine development, abacus machine and quite a few others. It wasnt a pleasant experience. Some shops claimed they could do parts of the job but would have to farm out the rest.. Others didn't wanna touch it cause they had no clue what it was. Had one shop tell me they could "try" and balance the crank. WTF.. One shop had 2 whole walls of modern machine equipment but not a dam soul that could use any of it, all they could do was lap top tuning on the chassis dyno even though they advertise as a race engine builder. Another machinist/engine builder refused to just do the machine work, said he would have to build the engine as well.. That ain't happening lol. Finely i started getting somewhere with one of the shops, all state of the art equipment, bang up looking web site, guy on the phone seemed to know what he was talking about. Told me to bring my stuff in on a particular friday so i took off work, loaded all my stuff up, made the hour drive and when i get there the guy is friendly and all but kinda confused as to what hes looking at and suppose to be doing. He goes to get a cart and comes back with the owner/head machinist and this guy is a real piece of work, flat out jerk. I could tell he probably never even seen an FE before. Hes looking it over all quiet like then the asshole looks at me and tells me, "we don't work on junk like that, you just need to get rid of that junk and let me build you an LS.. I wanted to swing on him so fricking bad but i didn't, just shut the tail gate, told them to have a nice day and walked around to get in my truck. He tried to stop me, said they could take care of it, i told him no thank you, go back to your LS shit and i split.
As some of you know i frequent the PDRA events, got a few friends that run top sportsman and pro Nitrous and most live down in Carolina and a few of them had kept mentioning TKM performance to me, told me that's where i needed to take my "junk" . 4 and a half hours away from me down in Denton Nc but at this point i figured it was at least worth a call. I called them up and got a message straight away to leave my name and number and someone would get back to me. I did but honestly i was thinking "oh great, here we go again" . About an hour later though my phone rang, i got to talk to Jon boy and he took all the time i needed, talked a good 25 min or so and within an hour i had a work order e mailed to me with a full breakdown and pricing. I was impressed by the professionalism right off the bat. I took the 4 and a half hour drive down and before we ever unloaded my stuff Jon boy took me on a tour of the shop. It was awesome, cleanest, neatest shop i ever been in bar none. Everything was set up as stations and everyone had there own particular task. Everyone was super friendly and genuinely interested in what they would be doing. All top notch equipment, it was pretty awesome i must admit. So i dropped all my stuff off, got my paper work and got sent a link to this thing they have called "my shop assistant". Was told i could follow the progress of all the work with details and pictures of everything that got done so id know every day if it got worked on and what was done. Jon boy told me they would be done in about 2 weeks, im thinking to myself "yeah right" cause there had to be 30 engine blocks setting in the new work section plus i was getting a crankshaft balanced as well. I woulda been happy with a month or even more lol.
so i followed along on the "my shop assistant" got picts of the work being done and knew what was being done each day and sure enough after 8 working days everything was done and ready for pickup.
work completed by TKM performance.
Seat existing sleeves.
CNC Profile Deck. (square)
CNC Target Deck. 10.150
CNC Cylinder Bore.
Torque Plate Diamond Stone Hone.
CNC Bore lifters for .904 Bams.
Line Hone, check and record main journal clearances with customer supplied king main bearings. supply customer with figures.
Debur Block. Cylinder, cam, lifter, and main bores. Machined surfaces and edges.
Balance crankshaft at 52% over balance.
Jet wash, force dry and shrink wrap Block.
Clean and shrink wrap crankshaft.
Re Pack all parts back into original packaging.
I was super pleased with the quality of work and experience with TKM Performance and would highly recommend them. I will be making the 4 and a half hour trip back the first of the year to drop off my FE Power cylinder heads, adapter, and intake manifold for a full competition valve job, bowl blending and have the heads, intake and adapter port matched. may even let them do some port work if they feel there's a little something there to be gained.
