Part of the problem racing an odd-ball car is you kind of get screwed when you break stuff.
Blew the M102 Cosworth engine in my Mercedes at last week's BMW CCA Club Race at NJMP-Thunderbolt. Found a replacement in California ... but I'm in New Jersey.
What's the quickest and most reliable way to ship an engine across the continent?
I used one of the shipping truck lines. Roadway, I believe it was.
Worked for me.
Edit... it was YRC. You can get a quote from their website.
Get it packaged it a crate and sent freight.
Also Southern California or Northern California, And are you in South Jersey or North Jersey?
Its going to be a LtL pallet shipment...usually takes about 5 days shipping time to make it across the country. Crating is obviously the safest way to ship it...but in reality, just strapping an engine to a pallet is perfectly sufficient most of the time as long as the engine fits within the standard 48x40 inch pallet footprint. Crating is safest because it provides extra protection from a careless forklift driver getting too close to the engine while carrying another pallet. The thing about LtL(less-than-truckload) freight shipments is that the pallets often makes stops at several hubs along the way whereas a FTL(full-truckload) freight shipment moves directly from origin to destination locations with no unloading or loading of the trailer at hubs along the way. As for cost...I usually see a single pallet weighing less than 1000lbs cost about $250 from one side of the country to the other....assuming a delivery to a business.
When I did this decades ago I was also told that crating would be cheaper than engine-on-a-pallet because it allowed the shipper to stack on top of your item. That may not be true/ relevant in your case. I also had enough scraps around to build one. With today's lumber prices the savings may no longer be there.
Check with Fastenal. I don't know that they go west to east, but they ship from store to store on the east coast.
I think the dividing line was along Tx.
Not sure if this will even fit on a pallet...
Pallet is what you make it. Pallets come in "standard" sizes but also come in whatever crate you want to make. The logistics is the freight company's job. If you say the crate is 12" x 12" x 512", they'll figure it out. (and charge accordingly)
3' x 6' is a common-ish pallet size. I have some 3' x 8' at the shop right now. I shipped a Pontiac 389 with a long-tail TH375 by freight many moons ago and I just made a pallet to fit the package. 2x4s with some scrap dogear pickets, then a panel of plywood that I put between the block and trans like a solid mount plate. I did a Yanmar engine once that I did a similar thing with plywood on the front of the pallet and I cut some spacers out of 1/2" iron pipe to bolt the front of the engine to the plywood.
Also, if you can wait.... GRM Express.
We just sent an 96x30x8 package from NC to CA. Plugged it into FreightQuote.com and picked the cheapest option. We've had good luck in the past but we're shipping large/light items.
If you do ship it, request to pick it up at the terminal rather than having it delivered to home or business. That will save on the cost.
Are you getting the trans and exhaust also? That will make your pallet / crate bigger which will cost more of course.
Crating is the SOMETIMES and usually the best option.
I worked for an air freight company that also trucked freight. Having a nice square box to load other freight onto is great for putting more stuff on top of it - BUT it has to be strong enough to hold the weight put on top of it. We've had crates of freight cave in from what was on top of them. Even if the crate has labels that say no top freight. Some of my guys would take that as a challenge.
Get a pro to build your crate. We had used Forward Air to build crates for us but there are other services that can build you a stout crate. They built good strong boxes that could / should hold up.
The good thing about open pallets is they are not conducive to having freight put on top of them.
If you really want to protect it - put it in a POD.
Uship has an LTL component now where you can enter dims and weight and get a quote from multiple carriers. Dropping off and picking up at a terminal is possible and cheaper than home delivery.
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