Hello,
Please forgive my typing in advance I suck at it. So I am new to this forum and just as new to porsches. I am a mopar guy at heart but have always loved the body lines of the 944. Which brings me to your forum, I found a very nice looking 944 on craigslist, the guy was hurtin and I picked it up for 1200 bucks. The car was a very sharp looking black (single stage ugh). Interior was good and it ran, wasnt the turbo model like I wanted but I figured what the hell. After looking around and trying to learn from you guys reading your posts I noticed a few things and wanted some insight as to what if anything they may mean. First off on Mopars there is build sheets in several locations and a fender tag but I do not know where that is on the 944.

Here are some things I noticed, the wheels are BBS and they have a plastic black large center piece that says porsche so they appear to be a factory rim, I have looked at the RS, RA and RM on your site and while the wheel looks like an RM or RS the center piece is way different, as a mater of fact I cant find a pic of these wheels anywhere on the net. Then a local supposid porsche gyru said that rims were rare, and the seats were super rare and offered me what I paid for the car for the set of seats. They are IMO ugly brown and have like a purpleish center section with porsche script all over. Also it had the rear plastics of a turbo or s model under the bumper. Lastley the body seems excesively wide, wider than any 944 I have sean around here, but it does not look like any aftermarket panels are on it. I have it at my buds shop doing a complete restore on it found out that the origional color was like a champaign color and the rims are black with machined lip. The reason for me asking about this is with the old mopars sometimes you can find diamonds in the rough, is this car something special?

My plan was to go Black, with red interior, keep the rims cause they have a heavy ofset and look sweet, but now that it is all apart and I am thinking, I want to make sure I am not messing up. If this car turned out to be something I will put it back to its origional state.

Any help is appriciated, I can give pics of anything needed and numbers if you tell me where to look for any special codes and such. Thanks in advance...

 

Post some pic's. I'm sure someone here can tell you.

 

Will do, I'll take the camera over to the shop tomorrow. Also forgot to mention it has a thermostat deal with a bunch of plugged off water hoses, looks like the turbos model, I have no idea. This car is having an identity crisis. I sit here and wonder could someone have swapped some things around. Is there a vin number search I can use to determine if this was origionally an N/A car or a 951? One or the other, either someone changed the front of the car to an N/A or the back turbo spioler thing, and added this water outlet, or took off a turbo lol...

 

The spot where Porsche put the option code is in the hatch area where the spare tire is. You will see a sticker in between the tail lights on the inside. This sticker will tell you the options code #'s
This is a pitcher of my sticker


And here is a link to the option code

http://www.clarks-garage.com/shop-manual/body-01.htm

http://www.clarks-garage.com will also give you a lot of good info on your new car. Good luck and would love to see pitchers of the car!!!

 

What year is your 944?

 

1986

 

the naturally aspirated 944 and the 951 share the same water pump. only difference is on the naturally aspirated application, you put a plug on the outlet port that would go to he 951's turbo water jacket.

real simple to tell if it's a 951. if there 's an exhaust pipe that goes from passenger side to driver side right behind the crossmember, it's a turbo.

 

Ok so I answered a few questions myself I think, if anything you guys will get a good laugh from this newbie. The Porsche I was comparing mine to stating that it had excessively wide rear quarters wasn't a 944, upon closer inspection I found that my dumb a$$ was looking at a 924 so it made my 944 look really wide. So I believe my 944 to be normal. Looking at the wheels again today I think they are RA's but they still have this Porsche center cap that's pretty unique. There is no turbo cross over pipe if that's what you meant. I am gonna try to post some pics hopefully that works. The big question here is, is this car something that should be restored to stock or can I go buck wild without worrying about messing up the value of a valueless car?

 

 

your cost for a "restoration" is going to exceed the value of the car. pretty much guaranteed.

 

Ok great, I just wanted to make sure the car wasn't something I shouldnt stray from stock form. Thanks for everyones help, now on to the next. What color should I go with, choices are Black, chameleon, or charcoal grey.

Rims, was thinking BBS 18's or DRAG 18s in the mesch pattern.

was thinking about buying one of these drop outs from an s2 3.0l, going through it, and turbocharging that, or mitsu 4g63t swap, dont want to do the ls1-2 everyone does, I like a challenge.

What do you guys think?