THE MAESTRO; Pellow helped Porsche faithful keep the faith.(News)(Harry C. Pellow)

Byline: GEORGE P. BLUMBERG

Imagine how much Jerry Seinfeld paid to have a 1957 Porsche Speedster engine rebuilt by a Beverly Hills shop. Imagine his disgust when it quit after 47 miles. Imagine the joy Harry C. Pellow experienced when Seinfeld called to ship him the car to make it right. Pellow, who died in 2003, was the acknowledged 356 pushrod engine guru. MIT-trained, "The Maestro'' built nuclear power plants for GE before moving on to something more complex-diagnosing 356 engine failures and finding the remedies.

"You had to understand Harry was operating on two levels,'' said Garrick Huey, his friend and first Porsche engine rebuild customer-a '63 356B coupe done in 1976. "He was a businessman, but also a curious scientist. He wanted to get inside your engine to see what had failed, and why.''

In a repair guide Pellow wrote, he referred to "Forensic Porsche Pathology,'' in which he assessed the "terrible tales of tragedy'' behind broken parts he discovered. "Those failures caused by Nature, those failures caused by Man, and those unmitigated disasters caused by Ignorant/Stupid Turkeys,'' his term for butcher mechanics whose work he would often correct.

Disassembling Seinfeld's engine, Pellow discovered bad workmanship and incorrect parts, and that it wasn't the original motor. He later wrote "Jerry's rebuild was about par for the Turkey Overhaul Course.

"The main case halves are from a 1959,'' Pellow told Seinfeld. "The third piece is a '57. It averages out to a '58, but it's not kosher to do it that way.'' Since Seinfeld wanted this-his favorite car-to be a "driver,'' he agreed to have installed a later-model Maestro-massaged 356 engine, based on the Porsche Military-Industrial unit (used as an auxiliary power unit for F104 fighter aircraft), a stock of which Pellow had corralled.

The Maestro's signature rebuild was a 1720-cc big-bore engine with special cam grind, and gold-plated dipstick, generator stand, carburetor cable and linkage, clamps, valve covers and sheetmetal screws. Like the cars he was devoted to for almost 30 years, Pellow was complex, odd and precise.