cobalt

It has been a long time since I started the other thread. The car as finished was not to my liking and was a bear to drive fast. In fact with all the added power my times were no better than in a relatively stock C2. I trusted people to do the right thing and found if I want it done properly I have to do it myself. The car as setup was just all wrong. It handled poorly due to a bad alignment and the suspension components were antiquated with springs swapped out on me without me knowing till later. The engine had issues. I will leave it at that but everything is being rebuilt properly this time. The brakes were not working properly. Despite being told repeatedly the ABS system was functioning I found it not only had 993 and 964 parts mixed but the ABS brain was toast. So I have been spending these last 2+ years rebuilding everything. I feel a little like Hansel and Gretel leaving crumbs of info all over the place in different threads like my Slick top work being done on my C2 or the latest acquisition which will be my next project. I actually have been spending my time at a local shop Apex Autowerks here in Clifton, NJ. They have asked me to partner with them but I have no interest in giving up retired life although I seem to spend 6 days a week at either Apex or RSR Autobody In Wyckoff working on my C2. I spent 30 years in the foundry business manufacturing aluminum and magnesium sand castings for the DoD, Aerospace, commercial and artistic markets. A lot of people were butt hurt when I was forced out of business by family to sell off property that today would be worth 10 times what they sold it for. Sadly nobody seems to be able to replicate the quality parts I was able to make and I still all these years later get calls from my old buyers asking when I am starting up again. But I have no interest. The business was great dealing with the government was more hassle than it was worth. So I need to keep busy or I will wither up and die. I need to work with my hands and what better way but to spend my days either doing body work on mine or others 911's and working on the mechanical end at Apex building my track car and helping with engine builds and other aspects of these cars. I have learned so much these past few years working on everything from early 911's to the latest RS's from reconstruction/ restoration or stock to extreme build mechanicals, suspension and more.

You probably heard of me talking about my friend Pino at RSR. He is young blood and IMO on par with some of the best in the business, and I am comparing him to my friend John Paterek who is the national PCA paint expert and the originator of Tech Tactics. Two very different approaches to the work but both the top of their field. It is a wonderful experience working with an experienced pro like this and I have learned so much about body work, prep and paint yet will take me a life time to learn it all. There are so many mistakes made by even some of the best shops I have witnessed first hand and I am learning what not to do which is critical and something many well known shops seem to have forgotten in lieu of making a buck.

So I have decided I will finally make a thread dedicated to the track engine build and misc upgrades I have been working on.

My wife dubbed the car the Blue Meanie. I think not only because of the violent nature of the engine build but combined with no brakes and the poor handling. Or maybe it was just the looks and it was blue. LOL who knows.

So the engine was not properly built and it dropped a valve guide causing failure of the valve and retainer. This happened at idle speed so I was lucky the damage was minimal considering how bad it could have been on track.

John and George at Apex are two 30 somethings. Some of the most knowledgeable guys I have come across. With over 20 years combined experience graduating top in class for mechanical engineering at the renowned Steven's Institute in Hoboken, if one doesn't have the answer the other will. If not that is where I step in with the air cooled bits. I have been working on 911's since the late 1970's. I started restoring 911's, 914's, 944's and other Porsche's since but finally have a shop I can work out of on my projects with out the burden of ownership. My son however has recently graduated from College and was a perfect fit so he is running the front office. I find most highly talented people are good at what they do but that doesn't necessarily make them good businessmen. So I have been mentoring them and my son has been cleaning up the business side of what has IMO the potential of being the next great performance shop. You might see some videos of their mustang dyno in action as they have helped the guys at SOUL performance exhausts with testing some of the their latest designs.
https://apexautowerks.com/

Pino has many cars he works on featured in Excellence magazine and works on some significant cars but I can't post those as the owners don't want pictures posted. He is also the east coast approved McLaren shop and works on their Sena's for them.
He does not have a website and needs to populate his facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/rsrrestoration/

So I will stop with the long winded comments and move on to getting this thread started. You will notice I will be slowly populating it with pictures and info on the build. I have stepped back from posting as much as I did before. I am out of the house at one of the two shops from 10 AM till later in the day so I only post early mornings.

For those of you who didn't follow the initial build or other posts here is some reading in the mean time.

https://rennlist.com/forums/964-foru...read-long.html

https://rennlist.com/forums/964-foru...at-is-the.html

https://rennlist.com/forums/964-foru...onal-help.html

Meanwhile here is what the engine work looks like at this time. You will see I will be repeating some of my posts from these other threads. I am moving onto the construction of the Inter cooler. I will be using 2 of the latest Garett I/C units. These are now considered the best of the best for heat transference. With the latest Borg warner turbos customized to the compression ratio we selected should easily yield a safe 375 wheel HP per turbo on pump gas so we could see as much as 750 whp out of this but my goal is to start off at a lower power setting and build up to it over time. This will be tuned on the mustang dyno at Apex. Using a Haltech 2500 Elite. I like Motec but for my purposes the Haltech will do the same thing at fraction of the cost. I will have multiple power settings as well with adjustable boost and ignition programs.

Fingers crossed this all goes to plan but it is still a long way off before we fire her up. Plumbing the turbos for cooling and oiling will take a lot of time as well and then there is sorting and adding the motorsport ABS. Meanwhile my new to me C2 will act as a track car until the Blue Meanie is ready for action.




PS: I thought this would be of interest. Funny how we have influence on people we don't know. A friend of mine loved my SC back in the early 80's. He had to have one so I helped him find a ROW SC. He wanted a wide body conversion so I set him up with a friend who built them back then. Well my friend had a daughter and he would drop her off at HS in his red wide body Porsche 911. John from Apex was a classmate and dated his daughter always admiring the 911. He became interested in Porsche's and cars because of that build. Now all these years later we meet and he is in the business indirectly due to me. If I never helped my friend source the SC and have it built I am not so sure John and I would be working on projects like this together. I always say the Porsche world is only 2 or 3 degrees of separation.

I will post more soon.

Bloose993TT

Subscribed

cobalt

So I had to go back and read what I had written. It has been a long time and I have some catching up to do.

I guess let's go back to the engine failure. The engine was sourced by a shop that purchased it from a well known dismantling source. I learned years later I tried to buy the same engine months before but they said one of the cylinders had a problem and they couldn't sell it to me. So it would appear they tried to fix the engine and sold it. The engine was never inspected as IMO it should have been for a turbo application but I wasn't the end user at the time. That owner crashed the car after 4 races and the engine and trans were sold to me. At the time it was all the money today I wish I could buy a dozen more like it at the price. The plan was to eventually rebuild it anyhow but that came sooner than later. At slightly over idle speed this is the mess I was so happy to see.





Needless to say time for some expensive parts. I might have forgotten to mention this is a 993 engine in a 964 so heads aren't cheap.

The cylinder had clearly been reworked and as far as I can tell the stem clearance wasn't set right but who knows. No video proof of anything juts know it failed. This one cylinder was giving me problems prior to failure and was the only cylinder that had these weird what looks like a hand attempt to honing the cylinder and the rings were different from the rest. This is additional damage that could not be repaired and this now makes a nice paperweight. So enough of the problem now the fix.

cobalt

So the damage did make its way to all cylinders so after sourcing replacement parts the cylinders were sent out for chemical stripping and nikasil plating and honing.

They did a great job but one cylinder got lost so another had to be sourced. Oh well this just drags stuff out as always.

The workmanship was worth the wait.


The case was fine. I sent everything to my machinist who IMO is worth his weight in gold. Inspected everything and reworked the heads at a fraction of what it would have cost me to do. He also welded the base of the heads which are known to crack under high heat load scenarios and balanced the crank and flywheel together for me.

Case looked like new and had no need to line bore. I see no need in shuffle pin, IMO a huge waste of money and the same with knife edging or boat tailing all nice in theory, but?



Then the parts started to arrive and my retirement funds depleted LOL not really but it sure adds up quickly.

Carrillo custom pistons, Pauter rods, ARP everything, GT3 bearings, Ti spring retainers and upgraded springs, upgraded valve stems










So we are just getting started with so much more to come. I hope I remember it all this part is going back 2 years now.

cobalt

I Seem to be repeating earlier posts but let me get through this and will get to the current stuff shortly.

I did mention that any wearable part was replaced with new. Including timing chains, valves, chain rails etc.

Although I use Loctite 574 on most of the engine builds I do. On mine i chose to use a threebond product on the outer case half and 574 internally following the RS build specs. We had just torn down a 996 Cup car engine that was factory sealed and found that they did not use 574 as they do on the factory engines but a silicone product that everyone says is a no no.

I will fast forward through the engine assembly since this has been shown before.


I had just completed another 993 engine and the Apex was going through a transformation. The old facility was a bit of a mess so I chose to hold off while the entire shop was rejuvenated. All new flooring epoxy coating and new rooms built one specifically for engine building. A clean room so to speak. This took a lot of effort but it got done finally.

While this was going on I had my machinist modify the 993 hydraulic rockers to manual. I chose to do this over the hydraulic units since it is a track car and I prefer the sound the mechanical units make over the quiet hydraulic ones. Each rocker was machined to accept a threaded insert so the standard tappets could be used. The 993 forged rockers actually weigh 3/4 of a pound less than the standard cast units over all 12. That is good for a higher revving engine I never weighed them after but I am assuming that the material removed is close to the weight of the inserts added. If anything a slight bit more savings maybe a full pound. The cost of aftermarket units by Pauter or sold by Patrick would have been another $2k+ over what it cost me to modify mine. Again a boosted engine and not supper high revving.



I decided to ditch the heavy Varioram intake for the 996GT3 intakes. Since it is a boosted engine I did not see the need to go any fancier and trying to keep on budget. I found a new set on ebay for $250. The casting quality is not the best but do what I need. I spend some time later on removing added bosses not used in my application and polishing the surface. There were many imperfections and what we call chew in from insufficient gating and feed material but they do the job. Just starting the process of cleaning them.


All Stomski racing tools were used to set timing. They do make the process much easier and accuracy is HP. The engine room was coming along slowly and I seemed to get involved with other engine builds instead of mine. Another 993 engine to the left



Meanwhile the new EFR series Borg warner turbos came in. Stainless housings, Ti impellers, dual ceramic bearings, Integrated Blow off valves but chose to use external Waste gates since this is a low boost engine and need maximum flow. The integrated WG's are not meant to dump that much. I also added turbine speed sensors which will be discussed later.



Engine room at the time was still work in progress but timing was done using Stomski tools. Since it is a 993 engine which does not use a harmonic balancer and I had my crank and LWF/Clutch assembly balanced I went with the Clewett single pulley. I do not recommend this on a 964 engine without considerable work.



We decided on Injector Dynamics ID 1050 injectors. Equally matched and a close but not perfect fit. I had to purchase some additional clips from ID to secure the injector to the fuel rail.



So I need to get back to working on the IC build so this is it for now.

One last shot as it looks more like an engine. The distributor will be going as I will be using coil packs instead for better control. But that will be discussed later.

Carrera51

Looking forward to following your progress.

jpoint

Anthony - it's funny - you retired from the foundry business and are dancing on the edge of coming out of retirement due to your love of cars. I got into a foundry based business as a result of my love for cars and retired from teaching. I can't say I'm in the foundry business because I don't operate a foundry, but I've spent lots of time in the foundries that make my product. To me it seems as much art as science so you're probably right at home with what you're doing with the cars - part art, part science. I enjoy the jack stand business but I wouldn't mind being retired - again. I'll watch your progress with an eye toward how successful you are at staying "retired". Good luck.

cobalt

Tomorrow never knows. I actually put in 40 or more hours a week at one of the two shops. It is funny you say that as there is a bit of art and science in both the body/paint end and the mechanical . Although making the mechanicals esthetically pleasing is a bit more challenging. I do miss the challenges of the foundry and making the parts. I was what my customers called a sliced bread shop; the old term was wheelbarrow foundry. We made one off's of the most complicated castings you can dream of to smaller quantities of under 1000 units at a time. Far harder and more challenging than the Job shops that produced 10's of thousands of the same part consistently each day. Each part one off or not had to exceed what most foundries I see produce today. Being flight safety and critical parts they had to measure up to some stringent standards and criteria. It was always nice years later to hear that my customers scoured the world and could not find another foundry that was able to match the quality I produced. I guess being the third generation and having some of the best in the business mentor me early on was the key. I think that is why staying at arms length and mentoring is far better than me taking over. Sometimes you have to learn things on your own terms. Meanwhile I am keeping busy and having fun fabricating. Although if I only had the foundry still. I was about to start making parts for vintage Porsche race cars like the 935 and 962 I have been helping a friend restore. I was then going to move on to 911 engine cases. If I had the ability to cast end tanks for my IC right now that would be better than fabricating them out of billet plate aluminum. Oh well.

Keep up he good work, clearly technology has changed a lot these past number of years.

cobalt

I will bounce around a little. The suspension I was initially using was H&R Supercup. This is an old NLA setup they produced back in the day. What I did not realize was the tender springs were switched out on me with Eibach units that weren't correct for the application. So I decided I was going to upgrade the suspension to MCS 3WR units.

Here were the original Supercups which were quite harsh especially over the turtles.



I had already setup the suspension using the 993 longitudinal which pushes the front end out 12.5mm. At the time I was using the standard 993 uprights and tie rod setup. I was able to put a deposit down on factory 993 evo/rs style uprights. The price was so good I should have purchased several sets. At under $1000 in for both shipped I couldn't say no.


As is with most of these high priced suspensions the quality is exceptional and I appreciate the work that goes into them. Custom shaft lengths and valving adjusted to work with the spring rates is a plus. Shhh not say spring rates yet they might change once the car is driven. I did not want to go crazy stiff as my wife will also drive this and I wanted it to be a bit more forgiving. I am trying a slightly different approach with the installation. I was never a fan of cutting the shock towers so I took a different approach and will see how it works out.





The rear window is being swapped out with one without a wiper hole plug that just kills the look for me.



The tub is already drilled for the hoses to be fed from underneath. I don't see any downside to this approach but only time will tell.



Electric power steering pump has long since been installed and I will be installing a custom reservoir canister for the water that will be cooling the turbos via a repurposed 964 tip oil cooler piggy backed off the left side second oil cooler. ABS system will be swapped out later.

cobalt

I wanted to use the 993 front hubs as they are much stronger than the 964 units. I run either a 9 or 9.5" front wheel with a min of 245 tires in 18"s so I wanted the strength. Although the fikse's or E88's are quite light I did not want to risk it as I have seen the 964 units fail.

You can see the extra material at the bosses where the studs sit on the 993 units. I do find it interesting that all the raised cast lettering on either unit is incorrect. For some reason they are marked 605 vs 650.




I plan to one day increase the dia of the front rotor but stock RS/Evo will do for now.





The issue I came across was the 964 front hub is different than all the others. The 964 C4 front or the 993 C2/C4 fronts use the approach of the hub mates with the ABS ring to center it and lock it in place. The 964 C2 fronts use the bearing ID to center the ABS ring and do not engage the hub but just mate up of it. I could have pressed off the ABS ring and swapped them to the 993 part but I decided to make a unit similar to what the RS uses. Since this was initially a C4 I converted to RWD I had a pair of C4 front axles left over. I decided to sacrifice these to the cause. After stripping the CV joint out of the unit. I cut the housing to remove the rest of the CV. This made a stub axle quite similar to what the RS used. It made it easy to install added no weight and eliminated the need to use two wrenches to torque down the nut. Now you use the brakes to hold it while torquing.

Here is the ABS ring 993 to the left, 964 to the upper right and the stub axle I made.

cobalt

So as for now the fit is tight but with the rolled lips shouldn't be a problem. I had hopefully resolved that earlier.






I am not loving the E88's with the gold centers on the WB maritime. I am considering swapping out the silver centers or just having these coated black.

CBA

Great Thread again Anthony. You are a wealth of knowledge and I'm sure have forgotten more than I know by a long shot. Agree the gold BSS color get's lost on the blue car. Silver, Black, or maybe a Titanium Metallic would look nice.

cobalt

This might be my last post for a few days. All those wonderful chemicals I dealt with back in my foundry days has me laid up every 3-5 months for a while.

So back to the exhaust. We pondered over what is best. As with any custom build there are great ideas all of which usually are confronted by a compromise or lack of funds. The factory uses a W style collector which is less than optimal. The best approach is a Y or triple Y in this case which makes it even more complicated to get the measurements correct. BTW we are using all V-band clamps on everything for ease of adjustment and disassembly. Adds cost but worth it IMO. All the added plumbing to do a twin turbo setup on a 964 means most maintenance will require either the I/C or exhaust to be removed. It will be a bit laborious to do especially being a track car it means at least once a season. I was less than impressed by any aftermarket headers I could purchase. The build quality would not hold up to what I am building. We contacted Full Race who makes a very nice product, far more substantial than the common names we are used to seeing and SOUL doesn't make one . I decided the hours needed to custom make one vs just buying would be easier to just buy. So I ordered a set from Full Race and they told me 5-7 weeks. Ouch OK but I have the slick top I can work on and many other little projects on the track car. Four weeks go by and they call to tell us that they cannot find the jigs for the 993TT setup so we are SOL and they won't be supplying them.

So back to ground zero. We ordered up some Schedule 10S stainless for the exhaust in straight lengths and many sweeping and close 90 degree elbows and 45's. Although it is 304 stainless which is prone to cracking, the extra thick walls I feel will hold up. The entire turbo and exhaust setup will be strongly supported to the engine so chances of heavy vibrations that might cause cracks shouldn't be a concern. We don't want any miter cuts in the exhaust and the Triple Y makes it far more difficult to make things fit tightly. I see many of these builds done by some reputable shops and I was never impressed by how low the exhaust hung. We want the exhaust as short and tight as possible to keep the heat in and that is a challenge. I see now why other builds don't take the extra effort to do this. The material is not cheap and the time to figure it out was tremendous. If I had to estimate the cost by adding up the hours and material I suspect just the headers would set me back $6500. Although achieving equal length is optimal we chose not to. The sound is not quite the same and Porsche does not use equal length. The lengths are relatively close though but that was more due to need to make the sweeping elbows work as much as we could. If I could get away from tight 90's I would prefer to for flow.

You really need 3-4 hands to figure this out while building on the car. I guess I could have spent time making a jig per side but decided it was far too much effort for a one off build. I can always build a jig from what I have if I want to do this again and the time saved would be tremendous. So instead brackets were made to support the turbo where we wanted. The flanges were attached to the case and we went from there. First was the collector. George calculated out the angles and 3D printed a fixture so we could cut the angles and weld it up. Took a while but the end result was as good as we could ask for. BTW this is where Jonte is right it is as much art as science.

Here are the jigs and the first collector. John is by far a better welder than I am. Although I can do the work I can't lay down those dimes as well. He was a bit rusty but eventually they get better as we go.




From there it was head scratching time. George 3D printed some clamps so we can hold the pipe and rotate them and then tack them in place. Back to the drawing board as our first attempt was not to my liking. It hung down too low so we cut the tach welds and started over. Once we got the configuration we wanted the pieces were welded. One section at a time. Stainless will walk when welding without a jig so each section was done individually to take into consideration any movement.



Attempt # 1. Good flow but hung too low.


Another issue is the engine is offset being a flat six so each side had its issues especially with the Y collector changing the angles from side to side. I could have dropped another $3k over the cost of the Borg Warner turbos and have a reverse scroll on one side to make things easier but the goal is to keep the costs down. If this was a street car I would have considered it but too many things to spend money on. I estimate I could buy a nice Gt3 for what I have into this now. Add my time and make it an RS plus. But I don't want what everyone else has.

Another thing that was needed to be done prior to the headers was adding the Waste gate. We do not want boost creep on track since this car will be on boost most of its life. Unlike your street turbo cars which are off boost more than on. We decided to make it work we would modify the stainless housing s of the turbos to accept the WG. Always fun cutting an expensive part like this. Each WG is setup to prevent creep as much as possible. We will only be putting out about .5 bar or 7 psi max so the more flow the better. So we cut and welded the housings to work.


These along with the exhaust will be ceramic coated later. I had Tial WG from the prior turbo system which were fine but huge and did not use a v-band clamp so I went with Turbo smart WG's which will do the job equally as well and are far more compact.


So after a lot of head scratching we ended up with these.






I had issues with the right side since the chain tension protrudes making each side match is next to impossible. I also had run short on sweeping 90's and when I went to order Iw as told back ordered 5 or more weeks. They were adequate for a boosted engine so I decided to forge forward and live with cylinder 5 as is.






So onto the exhaust pipes. The car will have two exhausts. Straight pipes for most applications and a cross pipe with resonators for tracks with db restrictions. For now just the straight pipes are being made.

I could have gone the easy route and just dumped the WG to atmosphere but chose to plumb it into the exhaust pipe. For now just the exhaust pipe I will add more pics of the rest later.

Initial pipe prior to shaping the tips.



I will try to add more later but need to work on the end tanks for the IC which have been another fabrication hell.

tjb616

I admire your willingness to throw money at such an extensive custom build just to throw 7psi through a motor where spool isn't an issue! Protomotive bolt-on kits accomplish the same thing very well. They certainly aren't as pretty, though. I can honestly say I've never seen a waste gate application like that either.

cobalt

The engine was equipped with a protomotive system at .5 bar and put down 330 whp and tq on the mustang dyno. It moved but was very inefficient, used far too much fuel and was in need of a stand alone ECU. I have driven some Protomotive builds that where quite good but this will excel in both power and efficiency and best it will run on pump gas. Although this is a track build we wanted the engine to be streetable more as an exercise of what can be done. The power band will be far more linear and the system in general far safer and less costly to run.

Nothing against Todd's designs but times have advanced so much these past 10 years and still advancing. His systems do perform but this will be a monster in comparison.

The parts aren't as bad as many would think it is the one off, fabrication time that adds up and makes the build so costly. I am also a bit OCD when it comes to my cars so appearance and craftsmanship are equally as important to me even if it isn't seen.

I have a little time today they pushed my procedure off till later today but this is the IC end tank I have been working on. Custom made to fit the car so I can fit everything and is using the most efficient core on the market. Unfortunately this is the smallest one that fits and I will be using 2 in a side in to center out configuration. The challenge was to make a tank out of billet sheet that will flow as optimally as we can make it and still allow me to access the oil filler without removing the IC.

For comparison this is the protomotive IC I removed. Not one of the better Protomotive IC's I have seen and was very inefficient. The core was nothing special and the flow pattern all wrong. It was fine for street use but not track. This would not hold up to the power we will be seeing at .5 bar on track and would heat soak quickly.



This is the new Garrett IC one of 2 I will be using and is packed with cooling fins.






Excuse the cardboard setup it is still in the mock up stage of the process. This allows me to figure out dimensions. This will allow me a 4" tank in the center that will feed the TB from a GT3. It will be mounted to the GT3 intakes and the engine support bar. I will use the core to hold the intake plenum halves together. Although it is only .5 bar the pressure inside the plenum would separate the two halves under boost.

Unfortunately they are now telling me it might be 54 days before I see the second unit. I might have to pay up for one off Ebay since it seems to be the only source right now.







Trust me I understand the cost factor and nobody is going to pay for a custom build like this. I would have to charge 6 figures for the engine alone. LOL

That is why my street build will use ITB's and be N/A.