Boricua944

Keep the n/a and buy a turbo, personally the resale value on n/a's doesn't make so enthused as to sell and buy a turbo. I plan to keep mine and ad a 951 so they can keep each other company in the garage.

Skunk Workz

Hey Geo....do you see something here in what Danno said,about port sizes...that actually proves my point...?

my84-944

This is true.
But just open any aftermarket catalogue and I bet you could find like a 10 to 2 ratio over the 944 aftermarket parts in favor of the other Imports.
It could be I am crazy, but if not why can't I find more 944 stuff than Toyota, Sion, Honda, Acura, and even yes Nissan?

Danno

Compare the production volumes of Porsches to all the other makes....

Charlotte944

Actually there are several reasons.

First off, the aftermarket industry is driven by sales. If there is no real market for an item, manufacturers won't make it, so the aftermarket can't sell it.

Secondly there is timing. Most of these "tuner" companies are fairly new as compared to companies like Holly, Edlebrock, Isky Cams, and Lakewood (to name a few "American Iron" performance companies) and these companies are focused on the Asian import market.

Third, demographics. There are vastly more Asian imports on the street because the cars are fairly inexpensive to own and drive, which automatically appeals to a younger market with less "disposeable income".

Fourth is OEM production numbers. If Honda made only a few cars of a particular model, and thousands of cars of a different model, aftermarket parts manufacturers will focus on where they can make the most money. Parts may be available for the lower production number models, but the prices will be proportionally higher to offset R&D and production costs.

Geo

That is not totally true. There is a real conundrum here - chicken/egg sort of thing. No statement one way of the other is completely true.

They are??

Not hardly. Some of the traditional American hot rodding companies have dabbled in the foreign car stuff, but they generally don't make good products for that market and they damned sure don't understand it. That's OK because the market doesn't understand them either.

Generally true, but you would be amazed at how much is being spent. Some of those doing the spending I think have a different idea of how to spend their income than your or I. There are people spending as much as we might on a current model Bimmer and that's no joke. Certainly there are plenty of people spending sums of money large enough that I would rather have a stock Bimmer.

Couldn't agree more. It's mostly a numbers game, but not totally. There is a cottage industry within the Japanese car and lower end German car crowd. There are a lot of people who have knowledge and resources in sufficient quantity to fill niche needs and some grow their businesses into full-time booming companies. I remember 25 years ago when Neuspeed was producing a handful of their own parts for VWs for instance. In my case, I have two partners and together we have tapped into a market that is small, but we've developed products that either people needed but didn't really demand, or products people didn't even know they wanted until they saw ours. It's an interesting market.

I'm surprised the 944 market isn't populated with more small business catering to these cars. There are some really good ones though. Sure the breadth of offerings aren't like that of a Honduh Civic, but no other cars have such offerings except the Mustang and Camaro generally. There is still a strong market for the 944 for aftermarket parts, but there needs to be people doing serious development programs and I don't see that happening outside of the 951.

Danno

"Fourth is OEM production numbers. If Honda made only a few cars of a particular model, and thousands of cars of a different model, aftermarket parts manufacturers will focus on where they can make the most money. Parts may be available for the lower production number models, but the prices will be proportionally higher to offset R&D and production costs."

I don't have the exact figures, but I remember looking up the numbers and I think in two months, Honda made more Civics than the entire 9-year production run of the 944 series... including the Turbos....

And Geo's right on about the demographics. As a percentage, a larger portion of the other import market (Asian cars and BMWs, VW) are willing to spend bucks on the upgrades for their cars. Honda and BMW guys won't bat an eyelash at spending $5000-10,000 to ugprade their cars. Combined with a larger number of those cars, we may be looking at a market-size that's 100x larger than the Porsche 944 market... It's a tough catch-22, amortizing a $100k R&D expense across 1-million Civics is going to end up with a lot lower cost upgrade parts than spreading it over 10,000 944s... . and I don't even think there are that many 944 owners interested in upgrades anyway...

my84-944

True.
And thus I stand by my comment before:
2. Sadly, the above also keeps tuners and aftermarket companies that make the parts for the ricers from producing the parts in a volume that would make them affordable/or cost effective for the 944.

eman930

Well, alot of the aftermarket stuff for pther cars will work on a 944/951, Look at the Apex S-afc, it was never intended to be used on a 944 but it works, Alot of other cars AFTERMARKET can be made to work with the 944/951 with minor mods

mavfan

does anybody run this? i think i've seen one on a 944 turbo, but what about a n/a?

L8 APEKS

Apex-i makes a new version of this item (came out last spring) called the S-AFC II Select. The Select is specially meant for use with european cars, as it matches the voltage output from the AMM/MAF sensor (on Japanese cars, the voltage moves the opposite direction as throttle is applied, so it takes some jimmy rigging to make the standard S-AFC I or II work on a european car...I think japanese cars' voltage goes DOWN, and euros go UP with more throttle...but it could be vice/versa).

It's a very useful tool, but not so much on a stock car. It can really optimize the A/F ratio if you can manage the dyno time once you have a few worthwhile mods. It's basically like having an infinitely-adjustable chip in terms of A/F ratio, so you can tune for each and every mod you add.

The other time you'd want it is when you replace the AMM with a MAF sensor.

I'd say once you have headwork and/or a cam, plus exhaust...you could benefit from optimization. If you don't have that work done (or an AMM to MAF swap), it probably wouldn't do that much on an N/A car.

Mongo

If you want more power out of an 8 valve car:

1) Bore to 104mm (2.7L if you want reliability, 3.1L if you want insanity)
2) Shave head .030"
3) Use a more aggressive camshaft from Milledge or WebCam to compensate for the head shave and compression increase.
4) 944 S2 crank. Don't forget to drill it for better oil pickup.
5) 104mm pistons with 10.9:1 (1989 motor pistons)
6) MINIMUM 91 OCTANE. To be safe, run 94.