Venice Auto Marine

09/02/2026

So we had to fix another shops work today on 6.7 Cummins head. This head was remanufactured in Ohio, shipped down here because the head that came off the truck was cracked and unusable. Now this replacement cost the diesel shop around $3000, $2300 for the machine work and $800 for the core since the original was no good. The shop installed the head with new ARP head studs and a Hamilton high performance head gasket. Within 500 miles the truck was pressurizing the coolant system, which can only be a few things. Warped head, cracked head, or bad head gasket are the most common. The remanufacturer denied letting us a professional machine shop to touch it in anyway other than straight edge and a feeler gauge. The surface showed signs of not being flat and feeler gauges proved it. Company said ANYTHING BELOW .006 FLATNESS IS ACCEPTABLE. To who we ask? A 6.7 with extra boost ABSOLUTELY NEEDS TO BE FLAT!! Company wanted the shop to ship it back on his dime to Ohio, they would assess the situation and ship it back to him on his dime! Talk about customer service. The decision was made just to cut it here and eat the loss. At the pictures show it took a total of .008 to make it flat, the first cut at .002 showed a significant twist. Quality control is out the window!!!! IT'S FLAT NOW! But we do have a machine that costs 150k to do the job right!

09/01/2026

After the oven bake and before the shot peen pics. 1-5. After shot peen cleaning pics 6-8. What a difference it makes going through this process. All the organics are cooked out. Water jackets got rid of years of coolant sludge. Oil galleys are clear of coked oil that has built up. 6 hours 750 degrees cleans everything! This is the only way to get these old engines prepped for their new life!

08/31/2026

Just came in! Kubota V2607

08/31/2026

Norman's 4B11 Mitsubishi block is surface decked, bored and honed to size. When setting up the piston to wall clearance we were informed that the amount of boost will be between 40 to 50 lbs. So with that in mind we added .003 of clearance to the .003 for naturally aspirated application for a total of .006 on a 2618 alloy Wiseco piston. This will give plenty of room for expansion when Norman sticks his foot in it!!!!

08/31/2026

Yeah sometimes we even do single cylinder lawn tractor engines when we have the correct sized tooling! This Kohler K341 was pretty worn out but the bore cleaned up at .010 oversize. These little cast iron beasts are quite robust and have the ability to be machined over and over again. This was made back when quality was priority in this nation and Kohler at one time led the way in the small engine dept! Bored, honed, surfaced, valve job, crank polish and connecting rod oil clearance adjustment was performed. It's fun to get these jobs sometimes, breaks up the everyday V8 builds. Variety is the spice of life they say!

08/31/2026

08/26/2026

Norman's Mitsubishi 4B11 block has it's sleeves installed!!!!! LA Sleeve amphibious sleeve set has a .004 pressfit. Plenty tight to keep water from seeping through. Next step is to bore it within a few thou then hone to size. This is gonna be one serious 4 cylinder!!!

08/25/2026

Like to give a shout out to Brian McNeil at Southwest Hydraulics for rebuilding the cylinder on our DCM Surfacing Mill today. The 5 ft long ram that drives the slide table has been increasing getting worse with a stutter. The shaft seal had given up, allowing air to seep in while hydraulic fluid leaked out. Travel control was begin very difficult to control and creating a surface finish that was no longer acceptable. Dropped it off to Brian around 10:30 and by 12:30 it was ready. We are now back in action and the machine has never run better! Southwest Hydraulics has a huge inventory of parts, we never thought the turn around would be so quick. If your in Sarasota, Charlotte or Manatee county and are in need of hydraulic cylinder repair services, give them a call at 941-786-8530.

08/25/2026

Out with Old and in with the New! Our Kwik-way valve grinder was pretty long in the tooth, so we put in a call to Ralph Nettles at RPM Equipment Sales out of Jupiter Florida to hook us up with a brand new machine! Ralph is a dealer for Kwik-way and in less than 2 weeks the new one was ready to deliver. This design is tried and true, pretty much unchanged over the last 40 years with one major exception. The valve grinding angle protractor goes all the way to 62 degrees, the old machine would only go to 45 degrees, which was a limiting factor when working on high performance heads like Dart Big Block Chevys that often use a 55 degree valve to seat angle!!! Always reinvesting in new equipment to produce a better outcome for our customers. Ralph is also our Rottler sales representative, he has sold us the last 3 Rottler machines in the last 5 years. If you're looking to buy or upgrade your equipment give him a call at 561-906-2827. He also deals in good used equipment.

08/22/2026

It has come to our attention in the last couple of weeks that a former customer of ours has been trying to damage our reputation because we refuse to conduct business with said individual! WE RETAIN THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICES TO ANYONE WE DEEM DISHONEST!!! The back story is this individual recently opened a new shop at his residence since he was forcibly removed under threat of legal action from his prior business in Venice. He apparently sold controlling interest in his business to a partner and alledgely embezzled 10s of thousands of dollars in customer deposits like it was a personal bank account. His story in his own words is obviously different. Our own experience with this individual was that when jobs were completed it was like pulling hens teeth to get paid. Then we started getting phone calls from his customers asking what was taking so long for us to complete the engines all while they had in many cases been ready for weeks but had yet been paid for. Repeatedly told his customers the machine shop was dragging their ass when in reality he had spent the customers deposit on god knows what? Can we say Ponzi scheme? At one point we informed him that we were getting ready to sell his customers numbers matching 1963 split window Corvette 327 due to him owing on a 400 Pontiac that he previously took possession of without payment. 8 weeks of promising to come satisfy the bill and repeated no show all while the Pontiac job was completed, paid for and back in the customers hands. At that point he owed for 2 full rebuilds and wasn't paying up. Fast forward to starting his new venture we were approached to do more work for him, at this point we kindly refused noting the past failure to timely pay the invoices and worse, placing the blame of extended time frames at our feet. WE WORK EXTREMELY HARD FOR OUR REPUTATION AND WILL NOT COMPROMISE! THE JUICE AIN'T WORTH THE SQUEEZE WITH THIS FOOL! With this being said if you are looking to have your pride and joy worked on, motified or restored, please do your due diligence! Check the status of the business you're potentially looking to deal with. Make sure they are properly licensed with the Florida Dept. of Agriculture, without this, recourse against a shop is nearly impossible. Rumor is he's already digging another hole that soon he won't be able to get out of!!!!!! Happy motoring everyone!