The advent of easy-to-use video recording technology has been a boon to us here at EngineLabs; lately we’ve featured a couple of sweet videos covering everything from a Tony Schumacher Top Fuel teardown to a garage-built 4.1L Buick Grand National engine captured and edited using the time-lapse technology that previously existed only in the realm of high-end filmmaking.

Now we’ve uncovered the build of a 3.3L Porsche turbo engine assembly in time-lapse fashion – and it’s truly poetry in motion. In just over two minutes, a pair of technicians from Mashmotor Ltd. screw together one of the famous opposed sixers with precision. Each step of the process must happen in exact order, especially with regards to the bottom-end assembly. In order to assure the engine is bolted together properly, the components are laid out on the clean table seen to the bottom, and the technicians dance ’round and round the engine stand, sometimes working together and during other portions of the video they take on completely different sections of the engine alone.

This 3.3L flat six is built much differently from a traditional V8 you’re used to seeing on these pages. Its air-cooled design means that the crankcase houses only the crankshaft, then the cylinders are bolted to the crankcase to house the pistons, and finally, the cylinder heads are laid on top before the rest of the assembly is put together around the longblock.

The degree of accuracy required during these steps cannot be ignored; any carelessness will show up in the form of an engine that doesn’t perform up to spec, or worse, one that undergoes a spontaneous disassembly process all on its own.

The folks at Mashmotor specialize in the old-school 911 and 356 vehicles, performing complete restorations on the order of 6-8 per year, along with many other upgrade and maintenance tasks. From the careful attention they demonstrate during the assembly of this engine from start to finish, we can see why they are so successful.