I've been building high-performance VW based engines since the late 1970s, and began building Porsche, Denzel, and Okrasa engines in the mid 1980s. I began building them for others starting in 1990. My engines are famous here in California and in various other places and I've served clients from as far afield as Germany and Britian. I am now offering completed engines and sometimes the associated parts. This page shows some of these engines, discusses what I can do for you, and shows what parts I'm providing today.
I have experience rebuilding a wide variety of air-cooled engines, ranging from the so-called "25hp" Volkswagen engine from 1950, to the Porsche 911 2.0l engine of 1969, but I really preferr building Porsche, Okrasa and Denzel engines. My focus on rebuilding any engine is on reliability and authenticity. If you wanted the ultimate, you'd buy a modern Porsche or an exotic of some kind, but you, like me, are interested in the vintage machine. You want the engine to be as it was "back in the day," though a few unseen improvements for reliability are fine. You want it to look great and run well, and never have to worry about it. My philosophy is that they should be ready to be "run hard and put away wet." So, I do all my work presuming that the throttle will be either at idle or wide open most all the time.
The old saying is: Reliability, Performance, and Economy - pick any two! And this saying is true regarding our engines. My focus is on the first two: Reliability and Performance. If you want a cheap engine, go somewhere else - you'll do us both a favor. But if you want a vintage engine that's authentic, runs great and is reliable at reasonable cost, you've come to the right place.
...The following section is still "Under Construction." Please pardon the mess...
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Way back in 1986 I bought a 1959 Karmann Ghia Montage Suisse, made by Automontage AG in Switzerland, and it came with its original Okrasa engine.
Back at that time, little was known in the U.S. - or anywhere in the world for that matter - about Okrasa.the internet wasn't useful for finding information as it is today and so it was exceptionally difficult to learn anything about them.
Okrasa was a supplier of speed equipment for the Volkswagen engine very soon after it inception. Through the years there were lots of various "kits" offered, all of which were intended to be installed using the customer supplied engine. In the early years, VW used a short crankcase in its 25hp and later 35hp engines. Then in 1960, the "40hp" engine was introduced. With it came a new, longer crankcase, thus making obsolete the older designed parts. Okrasa followed suit with "40hp" versions of their parts, but by that time, other vendors such as Gene Berg were beginning to take market share from Okrasa, and they ceased development of new products for this engine. (Interestingly, they later re-surfaced in the late 70s with a dual overhead camshaft offering for the VW Rabbit, which was sold to VW and became the GTI.)
4200 Park Blvd. #151, Oakland, CA, 94601, USA.
Workshop address: 613 85th Ave, Oakland, CA, 94621, USA.