ramius665

I put together a series of articles for our local PCA region's newsletter but I wanted to share them here for the larger audience. If there's an appetite, I'll keep doing these until I run out of material (not likely with an old Porsche!)


Project 944S: Part 2 - More Than Meets the Eye

In my previous article, I detailed the search for our new 944S and the exhilaration of finding and buying it. Generally, the process went quickly and smoothly with the seller delivering the car to our friend for storage until we could make arrangements to come and collect it. We named her Red Sonja and she was every bit the fiery little fighter we had hoped. With Red Sonja finally under the care of our close friend, the wrinkles under the makeup could be evaluated further. The biggest concern noted was a leaking oil pan gasket which on the 944-series cars requires engine removal to guarantee a "do it right, do it once" repair. Our close friend Darwin was chomping at the bit for a winter project and helpfully offered to pull the motor and get to work. His enthusiasm was equally matched by a bit of procrastination and as we slipped from 2014 to 2015, new parts were stacking up. We set a date in mid-March for me to fly out to Salt Lake City and collect Red Sonja. As the date approached, Darwin got started in earnest before a family emergency divided his attention and put Red Sonja on the back burner. We discussed pushing the date to the right but based on our schedules, it would have moved to June giving us a scant few days to prepare Red Sonja for Parade. The final decision to continue forward with our original date wasn't an easy decision to make but ultimately it was the one we felt was the right answer.

On a cold and blustery day in March I departed from BWI and arrived at bright and sunny Salt Lake City. A short drive later I arrived at Darwin’s house and could finally see Red Sonja firsthand. She was beautiful! Unfortunately, her engine, front suspension and transaxle were sitting peacefully next to the chassis, waiting on her new owner to roll up his sleeves and dive in. A flurry of activity ensued, with new rod bearings, gaskets and seals going in and culminated a little after midnight with the engine and front suspension back in the car. A brief break for a few hours sleep had us back in the garage, fully prepared to finish the task at hand. As we removed the valve cover to replace the gaskets, disaster struck in a way neither of us would have anticipated.





We knew from the previous owner’s admission Red Sonja had suffered a timing belt failure and had received a full top-end rebuild from a “reputable German shop” but had little supporting documentation. The DOHC 944 motors utilize a metal chain and oil-fed tensioner to keep the camshafts in-time. Imagine our surprise and horror when we looked down into the head and saw the tensioner held in place by gravity and friction! One of the mounting bolts was clearly visible laying in the head but the second bolt was nowhere to be found. Since we had already removed the oil pan and inspected the oil galleys with a magnet probe we were confident the second bolt was not located within the engine. Our concern grew once we noticed the metal oil pipe feeding the tensioner had sheared from the stress. A frantic phone call to the local Porsche dealership filled me with dread when I was informed a replacement part still available, albeit in Germany. With a new option not feasible based on our timeline, we had to come up with other options. In a stroke of lucky fate, Minta’s decision to remain at home became the lifeline we needed to get Red Sonja into a safe, drivable state. We had recently disassembled our spare S2 motor and through Minta’s meticulous organizational skills we knew exactly where to find our spare oil pipe. She dropped the oil pipe into an overnight package and by Thursday morning we were back on track. Unfortunately, we weren’t finished with the discovery process. At some point in the past, a mouse had decided to declare Red Sonja it’s home and crowned itself lord of the 944. We continued to find the remnants of infestation in the form of scat and torn insulation. Our search culminated in the discovery of a mouse tomb in the insulation surrounding the shift lever.



We continued our assault on the drivetrain in earnest, fixing issues as they were discovered and slowly returning Red Sonja to a drivable state. My confidence in “fly out, drive home” was eroding but I was still optimistic I would make it to Maryland in our new car. Late Thursday night we finally hit pay dirt and accomplished what we had set out to do from the start, return Red Sonja to a running state. She coughed to life and quickly set in to a high idle. Oil pressure was strong and steady, we didn’t hear any sounds of impending doom and the test drive reaffirmed the taught handling and impressive power delivery compared to our 944 NA. With no red flags detected, we started to pack her up for the drive home starting early the next morning. My confidence in our decision restored, I quickly fell asleep.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the herculean efforts of my dear friend Darwin in the efforts to fix all of the small issues with Red Sonja and help ensure a safe running car. Late on Thursday evening, after we had finished buttoning up Red Sonja, Darwin managed to whack his forehead on a shelf and immediately paid for the misstep by bleeding profusely. He managed to keep his good humor despite the injury but was none to pleased when I made him pose for a photo. His friendship and support perfectly embodies the PCA motto, “It’s not the cars, it’s the people!” and there is absolutely no way we could have done this without him.



Tune in for the next installment, the riveting tale of driving our newly re-sealed 944S on a 2500 mile road trip!

Project 944S: Part 1 – Acquisition

I'm unashamedly a massive fan of the 944 series, having owned nearly every variant offered. These cars offer incredible performance for less than a used Camry and are cheap enough that owning multiple is almost a given. It's like Pringles, you can't have just one. Our most recent acquisition started out innocently enough. We had recently sold our 1988 944 NA and wanted to find one of the rare DOHC 16V variants. Searching the Mid-Atlantic area didn't turn up any suitable candidates, owing mostly to rust problems or maintenance histories that did not inspire confidence. We knew we were going to immediately press this car into daily driver status so reliability was a key requirement. Our new car would also see about a dozen autocrosses and one or two DEs a year so a fully sorted suspension was a must. As we were ticking off blocks on our wish list, the final two were in the "too much to hope for" category; Sport Seats and a Limited Slip Differential.

We began our search in earnest on all of the usual suspects, Craiglist, Autotrader, eBay and the various forums. Two major categories quickly became apparent to us, either they were in terrible shape and overpriced or they were in decent shape but still overpriced. Unfortunately, by 1988 Porsche's entry model had started to price itself out of the market and the lack of options reflected the rise in base price. It was easy enough to find a car that met even 3/4 of our requirements but with a price reflecting a car in much better trim. Finally, and almost by accident, we stumbled on seemingly a diamond in the rough on eBay. For those of you who have never purchased a car on eBay, it's somewhere in between a wholesale auto auction and Craigslist. While the highest bid wins the auction, plenty of shenanigans go on behind the scenes. And don't kid yourself about protection from eBay in the case of a less than complete or truthful description, it's As-Is, Where-Is, Buyer Beware.

We found a suitable candidate located just a few miles south of Salt Lake City, Utah and only about 2500 miles away from our house. Fortune would smile on us as we had a close friend only a short drive away from the seller. Messages and emails were sent, phone calls made and our friend got to spend an afternoon with the "prospect" to get an idea of what we were looking at. His assessment wasn't sparkling, but neither did it show any immediate red flags. The pluses were sport seats and sport suspension options, recent repaint in factory Guards Red, brand new tires and a motivated seller. Even better, he had elicited from the seller the amount he hoped to get for the car which is always difficult to discern when searching on the internet. My lovelier half and I mulled over the deluge of pictures and term paper length write up we received from our friend before we made our decision. Rather than try our hand at bidding on the car and let it get away, I called the seller to plead our case. This is where the shenanigans of online auctions come in. The seller initially balked at not receiving the "eBay Protection" for selling his vehicle through them but when I offered to send him the total agreed amount that evening through a wire transfer or PayPal he started to change his mind. He inquired about our plans for the car. I told him my wife missed our previous 944 and desperately wanted to replace it with another. He seemed impressed and told me he had already received two cash offers higher than ours. I was disappointed, I was sure this car would get away from us! The seller told me he would accept our offer because he wanted the car to go to someone who would drive it and he had a feeling the other two offers were junkyards or parts warehouses.

With a deal struck we were the happy owners of a 1987 944S but were left with the unanswered question of exactly how we were going to get it home. Luckily, our friend didn't mind holding on to the car while we made some decisions and got some answers. We were left with essentially two options, ship the car door-to-door or fly out and drive it back. Driving an unproven car 2500 miles is a bold choice, so it went on the back burner. After wading into the seedy world of vehicle shipping, it became quickly apparent we would wind up spending almost half of what we paid for the car with the only guarantee that our car should arrive eventually, hopefully in the same condition it departed. With shipping now off the table, we turned to option B, fly out and drive back. A trip through the Rocky Mountains during winter was not advisable and with the holidays sapping our time and resources we resolved to wait until the thaw of Spring.

We've named all of our cars, and especially as it applies to our Porsches it's a direct reflection of the cars' character. It didn't take long before the name came to us, Red Sonja. We named her after the 80s fantasy movie where Bridgette Nielsen played a warrior princess with fiery red hair who punched above her weight. That description perfectly matched our little "S" with the diminutive looks of the base 944 but packed an additional 30 horsepower.

Our friend was itching for a winter project and declared he would right the myriad of small issues so we would fall-in on a completely sorted car, ready to give us years of trouble free service. We agreed, as much for his pleasure as our piece of mind. Immediately an ever-growing list of required parts appeared and we dutifully paid the bill. Surely there was something on the Red Sonja that didn't need to be replaced? On our end, a vision started to come together. Red Sonja would feature brakes from a 944 Turbo which would necessitate larger 16" wheels. Through a stroke of luck we found some 16" 968 wheels in need of a complete refinishing. Excellent candidates for powder coating and we selected vintage gold. Red Sonja would be retrofitted with svelte European bumpers with a complimentary red and gold color scheme. Parts were ordered and our local dealership's parts manager learned to recognize my number on his caller ID. I think he enjoyed checking to see which of these odd-ball requests could still be supported by Porsche's parts system. He also gave us a tidbit of information that radically changed our planned usage of Red Sonja. Red Sonja featured all of the highly desirable options one could tick on the option sheet in 1987; sport seats, sport suspension and a limited slip differential. The last one was so rare I had never encountered another 944S with factory LSD.

Now that we had an appreciation of how rare our little car was, it was time to head out to beautiful Salt Lake City and retrieve her. Tune in for the next installment of “Project 944S” to hear about good (or bad?) preparing for a cross-country trek can be.

mazdaverx7

I gotta say man...I'm a fan! Eager to see how this goes!

Arominus

Great cars and the most underrated of all the 944's IMO, i loved my S. lock in at 80-85 and cruise it home, you'll get 27ish mpg and it will be awesome.

cruise98

Keep the stories coming.

ramius665

Updated with part 2.

Arominus

Be careful with anything that threads into the intake, its magnesium and is super easy to strip.

As for your j-pipe/tensioner problem... My 88S came with a plastic pipe originally and it had completely disintegrated when i got to it, the car had likely been being driven like that for a little while too. I put the new metal j-pipe in and was off and running. Rod bearings is also a great idea, how did yours look? The S spins up higher than any of the other motors and as such i feel like its probably a little harder on them.

ramius665

I'll drop a quick spoiler and say the 944S intake system won't be on the car for much longer. Currently rebuilding my replacement throttle body, I'll have a full 968 top end installed before the Porsche Parade this year.

As far as the rod bearings, they had very little wear for 100k miles but at a cost of $85, it was cheap insurance. In the interest of not making this too picture heavy I didn't post a picture of the oil line to the tensioner but it wasn't pretty. Luckily we caught it before it could cause any damage.

Arominus

Are you retuning the dme for it? The s2 and 968 intakes have different resonances than the S intake and the dme tuning reflects that. If you have the access and will to do it, Dyno it before and after. No one has ever quantified the difference to show it makes more power swapping to one of the other intakes. The S intake manifold is setup to build a lot of velocity, the s2 is setup for ramair at speed and the 968 has huge runners to match its heads increased port size. I'd really love to see if it helps or hurts the 2.5 16v to change to a different intake. It's been the "thing" to change to an s2 intake on an S for a while, but no Dyno plots to prove its effectiveness.

Which airbox are you going to use? The s one pulls from the header panel already, but it doesn't get a lot of ramair vs the s2 box in a turbo nose. The s2 box does mate up nicely with the 968 tb/Maf though.

ramius665

I've amassed a small horde of 16V parts over the years, so I'll be dropping an S2 DME into Red Sonja. Also using an S2 air box under the header panel to free up some space. Once I finish building our turbo S2 motor and install it into our 951, I'll swap my SciVision MAF into Red Sonja which should free up some additional horsepower.

Unfortunately our timeline for getting Red Sonja ready for the road didn't leave enough time to pull the head and send it off to get port matched to the 968 intake. I'll probably pull the head to get it worked on when I do the headgasket in another 25k miles or so. I've managed to acquire nearly all of the 16V special tools so most of the engine work is much easier than working on the 8V cars. I especially like how easy it is to remove the headers with the engine still in the car.

SloMo228

I'll be watching this one, looks like it'll be a good story. I have an '87 S myself, coming from an '84 8V the S is wonderful. I love how willing that engine is to just keep on revving. Loads of fun over 4,000 RPM.

I did an S2 intake swap on my S recently and I couldn't honestly say if it helped. It definitely feels quicker and the throttle response is much improved, but the S intake had several vacuum leaks so it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. I do really like how much simpler the S2 intake is and how much room it frees up in the engine bay.

Good luck with your build!

odurandina

you guys are far braver than i'll ever be.

but, as the saying goes... 'all's well that ends up in a hot tub.'

wait. wrong forum *(that goes on the hookers and blow debauchery forum).

make that; 'as long as she gets a V8 in the end.'

ramius665

And our resident V8 ***** comes in for a comment.

ramius665

Updated with Part 3. I'll add the photos later.

Arominus

Didn't know you were stopping through the springs, i live there! I do agree that the S dies up at altitude, i had to use 4th a bit in my many trips up to the tunnel on 70 in the winter.

ramius665

I had seriously considered putting out a call on RL to try and get together with some folks I've only met through the interwebz but decided against it because of the ultra-aggressive schedule I was trying to keep. Really enjoyed Ft. Carson though, might try to make it back there!