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finally bought a 944! It's a 2.5 base model from 1985; finished in red with only one side mirror!
It's a restoration project with both aesthetic and mechanical work to be done; I'm focusing on the mechanical part as the car has some serious oil leaks around the engine but no mayonnaise or weird smoke coming out of the exhaust. Already bought all the gaskets and seals that I was able to find (around 600$ worth) and will start to rebuild everything in September.
Wish me luck!
Welcome to the forum and congratulations on your new 944! The car looks great and I would love to see more pictures of the car! Do you know any of the car's history?
Actually I still trying to collect all the informations about it but I'm more than happy to share what I was able to retreive until now:
So the car has been registered for the first time in April, 1985. on its sticker it appears the famous option "715", meaning it is probably one of the few 1985 MK1 used as a pre-production test run for the MK2 models (or this is what i was able to find out after an extensive internet search).
It has been with the same owner till 1996, when the second one bought it. The second owner kept this car till last July (2024), when for health realted reson he was forced to get rid of it in favour of a minivan. I was able to speak with this second owner and he basically kept the car in running conditions but never worried about reparing details that stopped working trough the years.
As a result this 944 needs a lot of love to come back as the car it should be; It has some problem on the interiors like:
-cracked dash
-driver's seat to be rebuild
-odometer not working
-clock not working
-econometer not working
-one of the two rear headrests latch it's not working properly
... and other things that i will surely discover as the work will proceed
The exterior is quite nice actually for a 40years old car; it has abolutely no rust and the paint held nicely over the years (80% of those panels are still with the original color). Obviously it has some chips, little dents and some previous repairs that needs to be redone properly!
Mechanically it has something that needs to be done:
-pretty big oil leaks from the front / lower portion of the engine (already bought 600$ worth of gasket and seals)
-the gear lever has an ENORMOUS play even when in gear (ordered a new set of ext. levers from only944.com)
-the rear silencer needs to be replaced
-shocks should be replaced soon
-driving the car an exhaust/gasoline smell tends to fill the cabin
-when cold the idle is so low that the car tends to die and when hot it idles at around 1200rpm (I'm thinking of the auxiliary air valve that maybe failed)
The point is that with all these problem to solve at the end of the day the engine seems to be running just fine and it does not smoke of any weird color from the exhaust... so I still think it could be worth saving! It should have around 180.000km (ca 110.000 miles)