Heads being ported, polished and milled. Engines getting bored out. CNC machines whittling away. Gigantic drum cleaners polishing all sorts of items. Wash tanks, lathes, and more…if it wasn’t for the bright lights and the noticeably absent scent of “engine shop” you would have a hard time believing that you weren’t in a machine shop. This is the tool and machinery section of the 2016 PRI show, two aisles dedicated to the heavy-duty machines that make the magic happen. It’s cool enough to see these units on the floor, but seeing them at work all day long is something else altogether. No matter how many times we walked by, we had to stop and check out the poetry in motion, be in the six-cylinder engine that was getting punched out or watching the guy with the plasma torch make yet another surgical cut on a piece of sheetmetal just to demonstrate how well it works. Selling a product by demonstration is the oldest and best way of proving that every dollar you spend on an item is worth it, and while we can only dream of buying some of these units, we are more than happy to see them in action!
Click on a photo below to check out the goodness!
Serdi had one of their machines working on a single, really big four valve cylinder head. Apparently it was for a locomotive (which used a separate casting for each cylinder so you wouldn’t have to use a giant crane to remove the cylinder head), but I couldn’t help but think that you could build a really, really awesome lawnmower with that head.