Catorce

Hawkpilot6060

Nice work! Love to see the updates. Rick

Rleog

Coming to life. You have to be feeling great about now. Well done!

Tbone425

This is one of the most fascinating automotive things I have ever watched unfold. I look forward to these hitting the streets and watching guys build them. So much of the services for the aircooled cars have been built around a culture of garaged queening and number worshipping that it is pushing out the guys who want reliable engines that give them what they pay for. Paying nearly what one of your cases cost for machine work... then ending up with a case that is nearly as prone to failure as the day you sent it out is insane.

I hope you film a build and test, that would get a million views. I would put it on my list of highest anticipated videos right along side the time-lapse video of the 959 rebuild that Simo is working on.

take a victory lap!

r911

The culture of garaged queening and number worshipping is new - once upon a time, people drove these cars...

The price increases by "collectors" only started in the 1990s. OTOH, the confector interest means more cars were saved instead of rotting away. Now, we just need a depression to lower prices again so people will drive them, and people who actually like the CARS will get their hands on them.

cobalt

I would argue it started a bit earlier. I knew someone who purchased 3 new 1979 930 turbos when Porsche announced they would no longer import them to the US. He had them sealed in custom bubbles filled with Argon until 1986 when they brought them back and he sold them off. Many of the cars I brought over during the 80's grey market went to collectors who drove them occasionally. Prices skyrocketed back in the mid to late 80's and fell again in the early 90's when people had little interest in sports cars and were buying up SUV's. It was a slow rise from the late 90's till around 2011 when prices started to climb to where they are today. I knew many collectors back then but in those days the focus was primarily on 356's.

sithot

When you get done "testing".
https://www.xtremecylinderheads.com/

l02turner

This may be something you already addressed (haven't read all the posts on this thread) but are you sure Porsche doesn't own the rights to the engine design? Don't want you to produce a bunch then find out they're paperweights.

LarryT

sithot

Cannot believe there is any enforceable patent at this juncture in time.

Catorce

Really good point, thanks Sithot for chiming in on my defense.

I get this question a lot. The bottom line is, as explained by my patent attorney, that there are international laws on the books including here in the US which defend manufacturers who make reproduction parts when that part is out of production and the manufacturer does not make any more.

For a great example look at URO, they make a metric crap ton of Porsche repro parts that Porsche doesn't make anymore. Lots and lots of repro parts manufacturers out there and as I said, protected by anti-trust and monopoly laws so that consumers have choices when purchasing repair parts.

I was told it's actually illegal for a manufacturer to bar someone from making a repro part when they do not offer that same part for sale themselves, because it is illegal to prevent a consumer from fixing their own vehicle.

So yeah been through this with the lawyers years ago.

sithot

That's the ticket.

cobalt

How true.

I had an issue back in the 1980's I started casting aluminum door handles and other bits including crested metal center caps for 914-4's similar to the ones used in 914-6's and painted 911 center caps before anyone else. I was contacted by Porsche attorneys to cease and desist. I started to fight it but about that time others came out with machined parts for less and the only thing they could stop me from doing was make anything with a crest or Porsche name on it so long as the part varied from original. I still have some of the original parts I cast on my cars but never got back into it.

Spyerx

I suspect Porsche cares more about their crest than a 30yr old case design....

cobalt

One less thing for Porsche Classic to concern themselves with, for now.

Catorce

So after two weeks of chasing gremlins in the car, I finally started her however briefly to make sure it at least cranks and starts before putting it all back together.

This test mule platform really was not the right platform for testing, because the 3.6 install that the previous owner did was so poorly done and the car needed so much ancillary work just to get it to start.

Here's what was done just in the last 3 days:
- replaced bad crankshaft reference sensor (no spark)
- replaced bad DME relay (no spark!)
- Replaced all fuel lines in car (pissed fuel everywhere including onto the headers!)
- Ran new throttle cable (was almost severed inside the tunnel)
- Replaced probably 4-5 AMP connector ends (crumbled like old bread when touched)
- New spark plugs (old ones arced and burned)

You guys honestly wouldn't believe all the shyte I had to go through to get to this point. Car needed so many things that had NOTHING to do with the case.

You'll note the small oil drop under the car. This is from the connector where we put a manual oil pressure gauge on one of the ports (you can see the gauge on the deck lid opening). I wanted to manually verify oil pressure and not trust the car's gauges. Oil pressure is excellent! But the fitting wasn't exactly M18x1.5 like the port and so it leaked a bit.

In the video below you will see the FIRST start up of a cast 964 repro case EVER. This is it.

Now I need to put it all back together and run it. Lots of little things still need to be hooked up but hey, MILESTONE REACHED!