Called three places today, all reccommendations from friends and on the hotgemini forums - Bryant Engineering (Brisbane), Donnelly Engineering(Gold coast) and Precise Engine Rebuilds(Gold coast).
I was looking to get the engine bored, hot tanked and crack tested and decked. The crank needs to be ground to the next bearing size, crack tested and cleaned up, the rods checked for cracks, straightness and then resized if need be. After all that was done, I wanted the entire engine balanced as a unit, to make sure I’m not going to have issues on that front.
Bryant were first, the guy I talked to was really friendly, asked me what I wanted to do and so forth, and told me what they would reccommend and then do etc, giving tips on what would make for a better job. He then passed me through to someone that worked out the quote - their price for the whole job worked out to be about $650 (I rounded up to the next fifty, it was about $620, but I always allow for extra labour)
Donnelly were next, asked for what I wanted, got the prices, the guy didn’t seem too interested in offering advice or explaining what they would be doing, and I don’t think they do much in-house - the crank would have to go away to somewhere in brisbane, the rods would have to go to another place in brisbane, and then when that was all done, the whole engine assembly would have to go to brisbane again. Seemed like there was going to be a lot of extra time involved, since the parts would spend half their time going from the coast to brisbane and back. Donnelly’s price was about $700, of which, $310 was for the engine balance, and that price was a guesstimate since he wasn’t going to be doing it himself.
Precise seemed not to be terribly interested in getting my business - I guess as a consumer I’m used to having things offered to me rather than asking for them - tradies not being used to having to do it won’t do it. They were basically the same as Donnelly, only they didn’t seem to have to send things away as often - the quote ended up being about $750 from them.
As usual, it could just be my experience with the above mentioned companies, but I’m going to go with Bryant. Not only are they a 15 min drive from my house rather than about an hour, they were 50-100 cheaper, and seemed friendlier. Now all I have to do is save up the money to buy the parts that I need before they can do the work and the balancing. At the moment I’m looking at ACL duralite pistons with chrome moly rings, duraglide bearings and I don’t know what clutch yet - probably a daikin because I’ve heard good things about their heavy duty ones.