John McM

I will take off the windsurfing pads, but leave the rack on. Should make a good noise at speed

C4 news is not promising. The oil is contaminated with what looks like paper fibres. I have a number of options but none are quick or cheap. Options range from taking a transplant engine to buying a yoke and cleaning it out myself.

KiwiSean

Another one sorry to hear about this John.

Is there no one in NZ that can do a detailed oil particle analysis like they have overseas? Dean must have a point of view on origin?

Hope everyone else has a cracking weekend, still gutted I'm not there.

John McM

The fibres look like paper towel. Given I was cleaning with those around the oil lines next to the tank I'm assuming that is the source, which paradoxically may be a bonus as run time post oil line fix is minimal. The fact remains though that a complete clean out is a minimum.

Thereafter it comes down to seeing if there is any damage. I'm keen to look at this myself as there is no real downside.

RS ZWEI

Turners have a damaged 1990 Porsche 944 S2 Cab up for auction:

http://www.turners.co.nz/Damaged/Pag...?RefId=1120605

Looks like it was NZ new and well cared for.

Macca

John. Sorry to hear about the news. You would have had to have left a fair bit of tissue in the line to block the oil galleries. If you are stripping the block down to the oil tubes you may as well spend the extra few thousand renewing all seals and gaskets as the labour charge isn't going to change from 50-60 hrs. Depending on how well set up your workshop is and how experienced you are with engines I would suggest (respectfully) that a flat 6 engine rebuild could be a big call. If the heads have been staved of oil, even for a modest amount of time you will likely need to replace value guides, check cams for scoring and whilst in there it would be silly not to replace springs and retainers and perhaps the studs so later you can increase rpm to 7200+ and also gives some assurance for miss shifts (depending on severity). Ramp guides and perhaps a scavenger pump service etc too. Some specialised equipment (cam wheel vernier etc) is needed to set these engines up properly (timing). The upside is that apart from being 10k poorer (if you have someone else do the work) you will have a leak free, strong engine that you will have confidence in.

Another bright way to look at this is depending on strip down prognosis go for a 3.8 conversion. If the cams are scored and the rings seen better days this may be a realistic option as you have invested in opening it all up in the first place. I did some work with Sean on this and he has constructed some great spreadsheet option resources you could touch base with him on...

Phil. You do not need to run excessive negative camber on the track for the sake of Playdays at HD unless you are really getting good and trying to beat the clock. I typically run minus 2 degrees on the rear and minus 1.5 on the front but this is partly to address a rear wheel offset/fender rubbing issue on fast compression due to the low cahssis I have. Having said that with the RE11s (180 treadwear) the wear rate on those settings has not been excessive and actually surprised myself and others. I have -2 and -2.5 dialed in as of yesterday but as the tyres wear down Ill correct that to -1.5 and -2 which is where I like them for fast road and track.

For yourself I would stay with the factory settings on your current tyres and then look to have a little more aggressive setting for street/track. You will find the increased wear level on road tyres minimal, maybe 2000km a set. There are probably some factory specs for the 996 GT2 which would work nicely.

Sean, we will miss you buddy. Weathers looking good. We will throw a snag on the BBQ in your honour! Fingers crossed for no blown engines or offs!

John McM

Macca, I'm not a fan of open ended repairs. Committing $10,000 to pulling apart an engine and oil cooling system with no understanding of how far it will go is not smart spending.

My initial option is to look at finding a 964 with a strong engine but undesirable body e.g. a cab and transplant parts, then break the rest of the car to reduce the cost. If that happens then there is no downside to a home garage strip down of the current engine.

In any case I'm in no hurry. It's not my DD and the sunk cost is not exorbitant to date. I will fish for a car now and put it away if nothing comes at the right price, while I wait.

PHG

thanks Macca.. the guy doing my service work is well steeped in things Porsche, and told me the same thing. It was only after watching a good driver (Paul) give my road tyres a real workout that I thought of getting semi slicks, as the good road tyres are not cheap. I know Richard Endean has track wheels.. (he's an old sailing buddy), and I thought it might have economic merit..then the brain says...lets maximise.. I shall pull my horn(s) in
John, unlucky to swallow enuff paper to block a gallery.. hopefully the mechanical impact is minimal when you get it apart

PHG

John, what about a damaged ex Japan.. I know a colleague up there who might be able to help, they write them off with minimal cause
I bought a damaged A6 S line with 4000kms on the clock ex Japan, and had it running here for $45k a few years back, when all sisters were $85-90k..

Macca

John. Im not sure I agree. Most of the cheap 964s Ive seen out there seem to suffer from a common factor. Underfunded owners with limited "porsche enthusiasm" who do the bare minimum of service work and whos engines and drive trains are fairly tired. Im in NZ 3-4 times a year and spend at least 2-3 days visit to CCS and I take a good look around (mostly at 993s) and Im always amazed at how "ropey" the general 964/993 fleet is in NZ. Very little in the way of preventative maintenance. Barring the 964s on this board (obviously owned by enthusiasts that dont shy away from spending real money on upgrading and improving their cars and keeping them cosmetically tidy) I think the chance of you finding a "strong" engined 964 (i.e. had recent top end work etc) is fairly slip in the sub 30k range. Even if so you would have to break the car and part out to recover costs, a long, time consuming and frustrating process as frankly most NZers wont pay much for parts unless forced too. Furthermore you have to install the new engine which will require further tools time and knowledge. At the end of the day unless you find an engine with clearly document maintenance records you run the risk again of an age/mileage related mechanical failure.

I cant see how buying a 25k 964 to do an engine transplant, then selling the parts that are worth something is likely to be a cheaper alternative (remember if its a tipo you may have to research the differences in bell housing etc to mate trasmission), given the history of teh engine may still be somewhat questionable. Just IMHO of course!

It all depends what your goal for this car is John. If this is something you want to keep for some time and "hot rod" as you previously mentioned, building into something special you can track, targa and also road drive from time to time then my money is on rebuilding the existing unit, keep numbers matching and improve the performance and reliability where budget allows to produce a reliable strong rebuilt unit that you can trust for many years to come. Unlike Paul you haven't put a rod through the crank case (which necessitates a new short block) so you do have the option of retaining the original case and hopefully most of the internals. The sooner you can have it back on the rad to enjoy your investment the better. From experience, although there is always some creep involved in these projects, it is possible to define roughly the estimated labour costs of rebuilding the unit once the heads are off the engine. If you do this work yourself then the costs are minimal. Dropping the engine, removing the ancillaries, cam chain covers and heads is something you could tackle over a long weekend and then get Dean or Peter to come and give their opinion.

Phil. If you are still learning to drive track perhaps stay with some good road tyres. Compared with a second set of wheels and rubber you will find that a tyre like the Michelin Pilot Super Sport will give you all the grip you need at this stage of the game without playing with camber settings. If you do 4-6 HD days a year, sure you will find your tyres give 35% less road Kms but hey lets face it we are talking a 2500 set of tyres here so its chump change compared to what you could be spending if you were running an older more track focused car. Paul, Macca, John and Sean all have the T shirt to prove it LOL!

Im not sure if George frequents the board much these days but if you are reading this then "well done mate"! George came 3rd in the 2000-4000 category (if I recall correctly) at the Targa Sprints recently. This category is fearsly contested and his times were very good indeed in his Boxster S race car. Kudos to you. Also you were one of the only Porsches to even get a placing!

John McM

It's always an option, but I'm going to take time to think this through. I'm still incredulous that paper is in the system. It can't fall in there. I would have had to put it down the pipe and forget to extract it. Still seems so unlikely considering how careful I was.....but the evidence speaks louder than memory in is case.

peterC2S

I'm really looking forward to trying the new track wheels on Friday. Got them on yesterday and couldn't resist taking them for a quick(ish) spin to work today. It will be the last time - ridiculously noisy - high pitched whine and doesn't matter if high speed or low speed. Not looking forward to the drive to HD Friday - that road is mostly coarse chip from the Bombays on. They are about an 80 rating and very sticky though - should be fun.

Re BBQ, not sure if anything is organised. I'll touch base with Steve tomorrow but cutting it a bit late if we do want to organise something as an aftermatch.

John - please don't go and look at Frank's thread on the 964 forum. I have a perfectly good engine but what he has done is so tempting. No idea what the budget was but the "OMG" response after the first drive said it all!

I guess part of it is the access to some pretty experience engine builders in the UK/US. Just out of interest who would be 'best in class' in NZ for that sort of work - full rebuild with some pretty major modification?

peterC2S

Michael - are you coming out this weekend? I'm keen for the drive on the 14th. And would be keen for the Europe Tour but for the lotto factor. Maybe in another 8 years!

Macca

Hi Peter. please let me know if I need to bring anything for a BBQ or can help in any way.

This is the issue. We have a few capable engine builders here (Peter at Motorscience being one of them) but they have little experience in playing with anything they havent tried and tested and this is a very limiting factor. If you dropped them a bunch of parts form 9M and other offshore suppliers and said "build me an engine with confidence" many would say they dont believe that the design will work or it wouldn't be their choice etc.

If I were building an engine for my 993 that was worthy of the investment I would have to think very hard indeed. I think i would send my engine and ECU to the US (Rennsport - Steve Weiner) or UK (9M - Colin Belton). People here will laugh and say that's outrageous but it costs 450 to crate and engine and send it ocean freight (three week service) to UK and all labour and parts can be VAT deductible on export. Better still these guys know what they are doing to get good reliable power and they will test the engine in a mule before shipping it back. Only limitations would be their access to similar fuel to NZ. It may seem like crazy money to some but $37k nzd (today rate) would drop the engine in a 964, ship it to 9M have a full 320 bhp conversion on 3.85 flowed heads with MAP/MAF with 9M cams and lifters, light valves, strong springs and Ti valves 7600 rpm limiter back to NZ and fitted in the car. Sounds like alot of money till you put a rod through a crank case and then have to start form scratch (sorry Paul to use your engine as a similar example!).

KiwiSean

There's a lot of very talented engine "builders" in NZ but I'm not sure there are any "engineers" who could port and polish air cooled heads and do bottom end conversions for 4.0 + capacity like you have in Europe and the US. We just don't have the demand for it.

There's certainly no Porsche specialists that can tune Motec.

That's the challenge with NZ. There's plenty of V8, turbo and rotary engineers that can program ECUs and port heads etc. There's a few very good Porsche engine specialists that can assemble the right gear too. I just don't see an intersection of the two skill-sets.

Apologies if I've offended anyone but I don't remember seeing a Porsche shop with a flow bench or shoot peening machine (what are they called again?) let alone a dyno.

Doing the numbers will tell you to throw the motor on a crate to the US and have someone send it back to you if you want big HP.

I'll still support NZ with my hard earned though.

KiwiSean

lol Macca, we're drinking from the same water supply!