928man

Rob: I just saw your car, so it is a 5spd with the stroker, beautiful car! Bill

EspritS4s

Bill,
You are an interesting mix of experienced 928 owner, but RL newbie. We don't see many of your type these days. Have you considered formally introducing yourself, describing your 928 history, and maybe posting some pictures of your current or former 928s?

928man

Gary: i will be sending some pictures of my cars with a little history about myself as soon as I can clean & wax my cars up for the pictures. thanks, Bill

GregBBRD

I sent a 425rwhp stroker to Belgium. I think this is the limit of the 5 speed and 928 clutch. Haven't talked to the owner, lately, but he had yet to loose a race with any other "European" uber cars, last time we communicated. He'd raced all his friends with Mercedes, BMW, and Ferrari "super" cars and beat every single one.

My "strokers" start at about 35K. That's for a very basic engine. By the time you make 450-475 horsepower, they are at 50-60K. To add another 100hp on to that, is exponentially more expensive. I'm sure by the time I put my first engine with a billet block together, we will be building engines that cost over 100K. That seems silly, but I've installed $100,000+ Porsche Cup Car Engines....and they are made in multiples...not individually hand crafted.

Add in the costs of "freshing" a car to accept increased horsepower and the cars get expensive very quickly.

However, it is really hard to find something that compares with the looks of a 928. Additionally, seems like all the "new" cars that make this kind of horsepower are pretty heavy....and they seem to all be all "loaded" with many, many computers.

I'm not sure about you, but I have a hell of a time getting a laptop to last more than 3-4 years. And my laptop sits on a desk...it's not bouncing down the road, hitting potholes, and sitting in the sun. Putting a car together with 64 separate computers (Mercedes) just doesn't seem like a good idea, to me. These cars seem like they are going to be like "used condoms"...no one really wants one.

James Bailey

OK ..." The durability of the 928 motor was always the biggest thing for me about the motor. i guess you know all about that, it must take a lot to blow one up.bill ....." Actually no it is quite easy to have one fail if it is tracked with sticky tires by a fast driver. Look up 2/6 rod bearing failure. There are some basic design issues which must be addressed if you wish to track a 928 at high RPM and not have rod bearing failure. Some who researched it have stated that you get 10-12 hours of tracking on long high speed courses before the failure USUALLY happens. What has been very durable is the cylinder bores and piston ring wear. Normal driving they easily go 200,000-300,000 miles.

IcemanG17

Bill
Okay you are building a "street" 928.....which means a full weight car with street tires...okay that is good to know.

#1 Don't get hung up on "dyno" numbers....they only tell a small part of the story....for example, many years ago I got a ride in a Doc Brown street stroker automatic....its dyno # was similar to Rob's....however its performance was IMPRESSIVE due to mountains of torque down low that just never let up..... Granted you live in PA..but a trip to sunny Socal to visit Doc and his shop and get a ride with Rob is a great idea......
#2 The 928 engine is quite reliable, especially on the street.....the weaknesses only show up on the track (road course).....Even Open Road Racing with extended times at full throttle, above 180mph (150 for stock cars) they hold up quite well. Many brand new sports cars (Ferrari-Lambo-Vette-Porsche) have problems doing this in ORR....Vipers tend to blow up on a regular basis.... There are many 928 owners with well over 200K miles on their cars and they still perform like they were new!

Quality work is never cheap...sure $40k sounds wild to invest in a 928...but it will take its performance from "good" to true supercar status where it belongs.... & it will be turn key reliable for years to come....

hacker-pschorr

7 liters was mentioned in the first post - if someone wanted to go that route there is Mike Simard or Todd's sleeved engines.
I don't know if Louie Ott is actively doing 928 engines anymore.

The great thing about the current stroker market is guys like Mike, Greg, Todd, and Louie have all worked together on various projects already.
That is quite the brain trust the 928 community is lucky to have.

4 (or is it 5) seasons on Jean-Louis 10.4:1 compression EuroS with a Murf928 Supercharger installed.
Same engine in two different cars due to an accident that took out the silver one at Road America.
It's a low boost setup making just shy of 400rwhp.

Mark, Joe and some of the other 928 racers can attest to how hard he drives.

I'll be supercharging my 79 track car as soon as I ditch CIS. I'm only shooting for 400-450rwhp.

blown 87

I read a few months back the the new front line F22 fighter that was entering service had around ten MILLION lines of computer code, by contrast the new S600 MB has one hundred million lines of code.

BC

The thing is that those cars would still run without all of those computers - but they would actually feel as heavy as they are.

Take the GT-R - or any other multiple-computer car. These machines are essentially driven by the driver AND the computers controlling clutches, brakes, suspension, torque vectoring, and keeping an eye on wheel spin, yaw rate, attitude, grip levels, etc.

I cannot say that I have driven alot of the newer cars. I'd like to see what they feel like, as the amount of bits of info that needs to be gone through before the computers let you "step on it" is quite a bit.

I know its a bad example for performance, but I did drive a prius.

Every time I put any input into the car, it seemed like something was determining whether:

1) I was supposed to
2) How I was supposed to
3) What it though the outcome should be
4) How much I was supposed to

I got out of the car and told the owner I felt like the car was thinking about whether it was a good idea to stop or go before letting me do so. She said "Yeah, you get used to that"

I might have said something about what I felt she would get used to in my car, but I let it go after that.

Mike Simard

That's why I came back to 928s after a brief BMW 850 affair. When those cars came out I drooled over the idea of a V12 and 6 speed and it made my 928 seem less desireable.
Well I finally got one and then realised they weigh 4100 lbs and are so ingrained with 'stuff' that I lost all interest.
All of those features and complexity really do make the car a used condom a few years down the road. Who wants to deal with maintaining all that miscellaneous crap? The car is going to go downhill with no Rob Edwards' to create prime examples. There are not going to be any 2011 600s 10 years from now that are drooled over, they're all going to have a bunch of impossible to fix issues and even if they didn't the perception will be there.

So yeah, the 928 is a pretty good car. They are a timeless good design and can compare against anything in the things that really matter in a car. To spend massive amounts of effort developing parts for them is worthy time. A well executed 928 project can be more interesting and exciting than anything out there.

BTW, Greg dropped an interesting word, I wonder if anyone will pick up on it?

BC

BILLET!

JWise

Interesting, the part I caught was "cost over $100K"!

Might as well be made out of unobtanium for me, but for those with the means to drop $100K on an engine it will no doubt be awesome.

IcemanG17

I caught that too......want to know whats really scary...............a certain 928 racer has the ability to MAKE billet blocks... 5 axis CNC machines are pretty cool..... However he did say it will take 3+ attempts to make 1...which brings the cost up quite a bit.... For example billet chebby LSX clones are $10k & can support 500 cubic inches there is NO way a 928 block would be anywhere near that price.... Even a C6R block is near $7k... I'd guess $30k for a billet 928 block

I do think really high HP 928's will develop new issues...maybe cracked blocks from all the extra hp.... Which will expose the next weakness...which my guess will be airflow through the heads, limited by cams.....want 800hp normally aspirated.....better plan on near 400cfm heads....but 108mm bores will allow bigger valves...so maybe it can keep up.....

Abby Normal

Good stuff there. Someday one of your signature strokers will be in my racer.

blown 87

Yep, I caught that, I have always figured that was in the cards once a certain HP level and displacement was reached.

I also felt it was given once you and Greg hooked up.