FLYVMO

Hi Åke,

I am stubborn for sure

I think any car sitting outside in Florida sun will heat up to an unbearable level. Having lived here for nearly 20 years I have had mostly black (or dark colored) cars. But every car has been tinted with high quality tint. It makes a huge difference. But to be honest I never leave my cars outside, they are garaged. Now there is a very efficient heat/sunblock tint that is almost clear from 3M, called Crystalline. Check out this link and click on literature on the bottom of the page to get the PDF: http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3...omotive-Films/

It should be legal in Europe too as I seem to remember you can't have any dark tint on the driver's side window. Is that still correct? This tint comes in near clear with UV/heat reducing cabability. Here in Florida at least, it is even legal on the windshield as the near clear one lets enough light in to remain legal.

As far as the engine goes, this specific '90GT body shell came with no engine. I would never put a SBC in it as I think it is several steps backwards, but the modern LS engines are completely different animals.When I decided to start on this project, my goal was to make a 928 with modern drivetrain, better reliability and cheaper and easier access to engine and transmission parts.
And the LS engine is much smaller than the 928 engine too.

My criteria also called for less weight (especially up front), ease of maintenance, readily available parts supply and less money to get the horsepower that I wanted. Since I was building a 928 from an empty shell, I definitely did not want to put an original engine in there that had not at least been rebuilt. When one starts researching what it actually costs just to rebuild it and end up with the same horsepower, the decision became clear to me. As pretty much everything is new/rebuilt on this car, it made sense to me to go this route.

It is very true that you can get the same horsepower by building a 928 stroker, but it will also cost you around $40-$60K from a reputable builder here in the USA. I was not willing to spend that money on a 25 year old engine.

The 6-speed transmission can be used with a 928 engine, at least the manual one. The auto transmission is electronic and right now there is no controller that I know of that can interface between the 928 computer and the transmission. But the 6-speed auto is a perfect match as it is paired with the LS3 in the Corvette, which is the same basic setup I will have.

The goal with this build was never to make a pure, original 928, but a car that I can enjoy every day, that handles better and goes faster than a stock 928. A car that I envision the 928 could have become if it stayed in production if you will. My personal, as I want it, 928

Cheers!
Carl

Strosek Ultra

Carl, I have never used that tint stuff but as you say it must be helpful keeping the heat of the sun out. Over here some cars with tinted windows can bee seen but the windscreen must remain untinted. I am thinking of how it would be driving in the dark with a tinted windscreen? It is very good to have the car garaged when it is not used. That is what I always do. In Florida it is the burning sun making the paint go bad over time. Over here it is the rain, dew at night, snow and ice and also the sun during the short summer months.

I fully understand your choice of engine. I am not that orthodox when it come to the choice of engines, even though I have started building a 7L stroker all on my own and also a 6,5L 2-valve stroker for the oldest car. Like you I am just doing it for fun.

If you happen do be in Sweden on June 27 we will have a Porsche get together at our place.

Åke

77tony

Looking forward to seeing her on the road T

FLYVMO

Thanks Tony, you and me both

Your buddy,
Carl

FLYVMO

Another small, yet important step, I powered up the digital dash after replacing all bulbs with LEDs, as per Ed's excellent PDF. Also replaced all the bulbs in the switches to red LEDs, after removing the integral color filter. The picture does not do justice to the full and vibrant colors. In the picture the red switch lights look orange or amber, but they are much more red in real life.

Power consumption for the digital dash alone (no switch lights illuminated) was 0.5 A at 13.2 V. With the switches illuminated it increased to just under 0.7 A. This is of course without any indicator pointers moving back and forth.

The pod switches all had colored filters in them to filter the correct color, but as I am using red LEDs, I removed them. They are glued in so I highly recommend being careful when prying them out.

Next step is to install the H3 "plasma" LED bulbs for the fog lights and auxlliary high-beams. When tested on the bench top power supply, they appear VERY bright. Manufacturer says they equal or surpass a stock H3 bulb in brightness but I have not seen an actual lumens number. Will post a picture when installed.

Small baby steps, but progress nevertheless.

Cheers!
Carl

Schocki

I fully agree, the interior led changeover catapults the car into the 21st century. I will never go back!

Strosek Ultra

Carl, a question, your digital dash say 94020 km but the speedometer goes only to 180, must be in mph. How come both are not in mph? The speedometer on my cars goes to 300 kph.
Åke

FLYVMO

Hi Åke,

The speedometer is in MPH, but right now the digital portion is stuck on metric (I don't mind it). I have not been able to "reset" it to imperial units, even by pulling the stalk twice within 1 second, which, on US market cars, should switch the units if I read it correctly. But 180MPH = 289 Km/h so your car is faster than mine (for now)

I was able to change the language (booted up in German) to English by using the diagnostic pins 5 and 13, which basically connects the two together, and pulling the stalk towards me for 3-4 seconds, which brings up the "Language" setting. On this cluster I had the choice of English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.

Cheers!
Carl

Strosek Ultra

Thanks Carl for the clarification. The language setting on all my cars is German. German cars speak only German. Only the red car (1991) has the digital dash. The speedometer of my cars may indicate they are faster but I have never been able to get the needle beyond 275 kph (172 mph) when driving. Hopefully the 7L stroker engine when completed and installed will change that but if the needle stops at 300 what to do?
Åke

MN

FLYVMO,

Have you considered a custom instrument panel setup. For example like the Ferrari F599 Gauges-inspired 928 race car cluster http://goo.gl/R8BTO9.

Yes, the integrated 928 instrument panel is functional but dated and somewhat boring.
(Something I am thinking of doing.)

MN

FLYVMO

Hi MN,

I have never been a fan of instrument clusters with individual bezels or instruments scattered all over the place. I do like the discrete and simple layout of the digital 928 cluster, although I thought about doing an LCD display like these below. I may still play with it after the car is done.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/digital...-clusters.html
http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2...ter-video.html

Cheers!
Carl

MN

With a custom setup you could have a more focused layout according to your needs and wants.

As classical as the 928 is, the instrument pod is very 80’s to me. (I am also not a fan of mixing analog instruments and digital readouts.)

I feel an LCD display would be more fitting to a Tesla than to an older Porsche - unless we are taking about a race car.

Good idea to get the car rolling first before starting another project on the car.

Thank you for the Nvidia digital-instrument-cluster link. Very interesting.

MN

Petza914

I dressed mine up a little with some Jager products - CF inlay, led wedge replacements, and some aluminum trim rings. Also split the plastic case and used a headlight restoration kit to polish out the cluster plastic front and back. Keeps with the classic analog look but updates it a bit.

Here's what the old cluster looked like (a different spare actually) next to the updated one.

bureau13

Love the trim rings...I've been seriously considering doing that. Not sure if I want to go the whole carbon fiber route, unless I add some of that stuff elsewhere around the cabin.

Petza914

As a stand alone piece, probably not, but it ties into the theme in the rest of the car. I've done CF wrapped speaker surrounds, firewall back to the trunk (it's a convertible), center console trim, pieces at the lead and tail edges of the aluminum sill plates, made a under dash cover for the driver's side under dash, etc.