Yep I remember the story about Carter. I was back behind the bathrooms next to the garage.

How was the temps on the engine when you came in?

I did check the engine temps when I realized I was low on power, as I pitted in, and right when I turned it off - everything was normal, except the oil pressure light and the "you're a big idiot" light both began flickering as I pulled it up on the trailer and just before I shut it off.

I believe your bearings on the rod ends got starved for oil and you turned a bearing.

When I track my 944 on high speed, long sweeping turn tracks, I overfill the oil about 1/2 quart of Mobil 1 15/50. If you ever notice your oil pressure gauge showing a bit of 'wiggle' on the hand, this is your warning sign. If the oil light ever flickers during this time, you are on very borrowed time. It is telling you low oil pressure is starving your bottom end.

When you pull it apart, my guess will be #2 and #4 will show the bearing shelling out on the rod ends.... and hopefully with no scoring on the crank.

Sorry about the issue and best wishes with the resolution.

Any time! The hardest part is catching me at an event...

Don't know if you have another engine yet but John Grimes of "Just Joshin 944 Parts" a 944 recycler near Hagerstown is a good source of parts. Honest gentleman with a good reputation. 301-992 1912, tell him Joe sent you :)

Saw this one near sinking springs.... It s out of an '83.

http://reading.craigslist.org/pts/5703462527.html

Good luck!
F.

I read through your build thread on grassroots. I noticed that you said the car heat soaks sometimes and boils over the coolant and that you once found the radiator cap off. This has happened to us at Daytona - we found the cap off at a pit stop and all of the coolant boiled over and came out. I am not sure if the cap worked its way free or if the overpressurization caused it to release but there seems to be a pattern of it happening. Im not the only 944 team to have seen it either.

Our car heat soaked 3 times at Daytona to varying degrees (pun not intended) and we decided we needed to upgrade to the separate turbo oil cooler. That really brought water temps down and stopped the car from blowing all of its coolant when it would come into the pits. Definitely something to consider long term.

I've got John on my speed dial! Ha! He's great.

The transaxle he sold me is still going strong.

I'm picking up a lump from an '88 with the high-compression pistons (like mine) from him on Sunday.

Thanks for sharing your experience!

I think the cap simply worked its way free for me. Now that I know which orientation it should be in when it's properly tightened, I give it a glance and a tweak every time I open the hood. It hasn't loosened on me since.

After I tightened it down at Shenandoah three events ago, it NEVER gave me a problem ever again. The water temp has been rock solid. And that included the hottest weekend in July on a race school weekend at Dominion Raceway. Air temps were 100+ all three days. And the car was out there for 40 minutes at a time.

I do think an oil cooler would be a good thing for optimum longevity in a race car, though. I'll probably do that either with a turbo one or by fabbing something up with a universal one.

When we ran our car with the stock setup, the temp was mostly okay even for long (1.5 hour) sessions. Where we had issues was coming in to the pits with the engine hot and shutting the car off for fuel. Unfortunately in endurance racing we don't have the opportunity to drive the car around a little and let it cool with the water circulating. So the time to check for issues is when you're coming off the track, not out on the track.

We decided to go the oil cooler route to get the extra heat out of the water system, but I've heard that some Lemons 944 teams went to an all aluminum radiator (using the stock oil-water cooler) and that has kept their temps down as well.

Regarding the OEM one vs the universal one - if you go with the universal one (and keep the oil/water interface), you may still be dumping heat from the oil into the coolant, I'm not sure. I never figured out if the hot oil went through the filter/sandwich plate before or after going through the oil/water interface. If it goes through the oil/water cooler first, you're still going to be putting too much heat into the water cooling system. We scored a deal on an OEM setup from Dimitri here on rennlist and that made our decision easy for us, otherwise I would check the oil flow diagram before fitting a sandwich plate.

Also, when you say the water temp has been rock solid - are you running an unbuffered gauge?

Oh, one last thing - in order to install our turbo oil system housing, we had to remove the headers. It wasn't terrible but it was a bit of a pain. If you plan on putting one on in the future, you should do it when/if you have the engine out of the car for the spun rod bearing.

I believe the oil cooler upgrade is the single most important thing to keep these engines alive under racing conditions. Next is very good oil like Amsoil. I don't have oil baffles or pickup tube ring and never loose oil pressure. I don't overfill either. Just keep oil cool and it will do its job.
Good luck with the new engine! And John Graves is a great guy to deal with ;)

i got the engine. Now what?

does anyone have an engine hoist they won't be using in the DC/md area for a few weeks? This engine isn't coming off my pickup bed until I can sort one out.

thanks!

I find this interesting. I do sometimes see my oil pressure gauge flicker when driving straight on a motorway at constant 130 km/h. Oil pressure is around 4 bars and it flickers a little, say +-0.25 bars.

My engine has less than 10000 miles on it, has a pan baffle, ring on the pick up tube and an external oil cooler together with the oil-water heat exchanger.

Are you saying I should be worried?

I made a frame with C-clamps, 10 foot and 8 foot 4x4s. Clamped the 10 footer parallel to a joist in the garage with one end supported by the garage wall and the other end supported with the eight footer. Backed my truck thru the frame and used a come-along to lift it from the truck bed. Bolted the engine stand to the hanging engine and lowered it to the floor. :) This system works for pulling and dropping an engine too. I have since acquired an ancient hoist, a "Ruger Industries" ( not the firearm maker) rated at 1 ton with 50% safety margin (3000 lb.) for free. With all the seals and hoses replaced and a fresh coat of paint it's as good as new :) I'm 30 minutes from John, near Brunswick/Harpers Ferry. You will need a trailer and friends to haul it, it's big, all steel and heavy as hell since it will lift a whole 944 off the ground. In your case a cheap no deposit no return Harbor Freight hoist might be your best bet, use it and sell it when you are done.