whats the 'book' say on the number of hours required to swap out a turbo in an 87?

Rod bearings?

Motor mounts?

doing all 3 together should yield a net savings of how much time ?

crossmember and other stuff would be out of the way.

THanks
D

 

the "book" times consider well trained, informed mechanics that work on 944's. The times you will, in actuality, experience will depend on who works on the car. If it's you, and you have amassed all the parts needed in advance and have the proper tools and equipment to do the job will be different if you find daily surprises as you go through the project, i.e., an additional broken part, additional repairs added to the list because you are in there (WYIT), etc.

I'd suggest research on the WYIT (while you're in there) list of parts needed and procedures for each repair, so you are familiar with the process in advance. In this case, Supporting the engine from above (if you're leaving it in the car) and pulling the front suspension, steering rack, fans, crossmember, intake manifold and heat shields is the starting point. That will give you access to almost all the parts you'll want to replace in the process. Without doing this you'll be constantly fighting for access to hard to get to hardware.

Have fun.

 

It took me like a week to change the turbo the first time around... Now its around 6hrs of hell pure hell lol I think book time is around 10hr for the turbocharger

 

Took me a week to do my first turbo and took 2 days to do my first motor mounts. Haven't done the rod bearings yet (on the to do list).

If you have not done these things before (which I am assuming you haven't since you are asking for times on them) I would set aside 2 weeks to be safe, assuming you are working as well. Do your research, plan it all out, have all the parts ready for your project and the WYIT stuff, and have fun.

To answer your other question, definitely better to do all those at once, as you will have to remove a lot of the same stuff anyway.

 

I can't give you accurate times to expect from from a shop, but I added up all the hours I spent changing my rod bearings earlier this year. I kept track of this time accurately because I did the work at a DIY garage so I was billed for this time. The car was in there for about 2 weeks (working evenings and both weekends), and I spent 47.5 hours on it in total. That included a lot of wasted time - such as 3 hours to figure out how to remove the crossover pipe (I could do it in 1 hour now I think) and about 7 hours tinkering around with the pickup tube because I thought I had damaged the threads (I didn't). I went over every part of the job afterwards and estimated that I could probably cut it down to 30 hours if I didn't make those silly mistakes, and a bit less if I didn't have an aftermarket exhaust. I was probably no more than 1/2 an hour away from removing the turbo as well but that wasn't on my list. According to Clark's Garage, it's a 12-14 hour job. Since I work very slowly (or "methodically" as I like to think of it ) that sounds about right to me The most surprising part is the oil pan. Running thread chasers over 22 bolts, 22 holes, and then going through a 3-step torquing sequence (I actually did it in 5 steps) takes quite a long time.

As regards overlap between those jobs:

The engine mounts are labor free if you're doing the rod bearings. The cross member has to come off and there is literally no extra work in using new mounts.

Also, for the rod bearings, the intake/crossover pipe must come off (crossover pipe is one of the hardest parts of removing the turbo) and the crossmember/steering rack being out should make it easier to get to the turbo mounting bolts. So there should be a significant saving there too!

 

I personally did not remove the crossover pipe when I just did my turbo replacement...my swap took a LOT longer than a stock-stock turbo swap because I went up in size, which meant I had to figure out some other issues and struggle with some fab/customization (not hard, just time consuming). I also didn't have all of my parts ready to go, but I'd say that it took me probably 40 (+ or -) hours of actual labor to do my turbo, but a big part of that was fab work.

On another note, if you are looking for a stock K26-6 I have a fully rebuilt one with a build sheet (upgraded bearings, all new seals, new compressor wheel, balanced etc) that will be going up for sale shortly.

Good luck!
Ethan