TAREK

One can never say for sure, because I bought the tranny from someone parting out an '88. i also have another tranny laying around, from an '89. They all look the same sise when laid next to each other

TAREK

Well I for one am never happy with acceleration on any 928 I've driven. Best way to diagnoze the problem is to get familiar with someone else's 928. New components are good, but tuning is key. I'm no expert at that, but I can tell you that there is a reason why Captain Earl's car always scores highest of all other 928's on dyno day...sometimes 50 hp or more. It's bone stock and he knows how to tune it. Therefore may be possibly dyno tuning by a knowledgeable person would give you a reliable baseline and then take it from there if you still want more hp. It pays to exploit the potential of existing setup before meddling with mods...I suppose you can always raise the stall speed on the converter if you absolutely must have tire burning starts everytime you step on it

Podguy

I agree. My 86 is never in the right gear. The 85 I set the cam timing and set up the kick down cable to have a light throttle response. The 85 is far more responsive, shifting almost immediately to first off the line in drive and kicking down at the lightest touch on the freeway. Mileage suffers - like average 13-14 MPG - but the car is far more fun to drive than the 86. Still all and all neither car is ever in the right gear when you really need it. Shifing and using the electric kick down by pass does not do it either. You can hold the car in gear longer, but again it is rarely the right gear.

A friend has a 90 with the lower final drive and it is smoother on the road. If you can pick up an 89 differntial they will fit on the older transmissions and improve drivability quite a bit.

Still give me the 78 five speed with the CIS injection any time. That is the car Porsche intended to build. Very well balanced with the right amount of power for most all situations. Light on the road too.

Dan the Pod Guy

heinrich

I have an '85 with 200k miles. It starts and shifts down to 1st gear easily and promptly, and as i press the accelerator it shifts very promptly to drop a gear. there are IMHO differences in boxes. but maybe it's all about tuning.

heinrich

I have an '84 4spd box sitting here. Complete. 500 bucks.

anonymousagain

FWIW - it is normal that the US 4.5L auto is a slow starter. Just the way it is. Get to ~40mph in 1st and you've hit the sweet spot of the torque curve when it will really begin to take off. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you should notice the HP drop off at ~5800rpm, even though it'll rev-out to 6200.

Initial health of existing components should always be the first place to look when addressing engine performance. Make sure you have a solid and correctly running foundation before looking to make modifications.

For bottom end - slight bump in timing advance will improve the doggish offline performance, but make sure to not go too far and introduce detonation. IF you don't mind upping gas to plus/super to offset for detonation, you could add a bit more timing lead and get quite a noticeable improvement... albeit at a higher cost for higher octane. Stuck with regular and slight timing bump on The Blue Car due to DD cost of gas and it is at least a nice improvement over stock.

For top end - opening up the exhaust for more flow is said to really wake up the upper rev's (reports from other's only). Entire stock exhaust from manifolds to muffler are known to be restrictive. Lot's of options available.

Personally, the 3sp rocks above 40mph and is really responsive at higher speeds. True, mpg is lower at freeway cruising than a 4sp should be, but once you learn the shift points, you should find performance enjoyable and have no problem playing with the over population of WRX/3-series crowd.

Good luck!!