1988 Porsche 944 Track Toy

So on Saturday everything was going pretty well. I took it pretty easy during warmup. I got a little more aggressive in qualifying, and managed to qualify 3rd in class.

Between warmup and qualifying, I took the car to get weighed: 2888 lbs. (last time it was 3012). And that was with a fairly full tank. I still have a lot farther to go to get down to where I want to be.

So I got suited up for the 25 minute race, and brought the car to grid. As they're hollering "THREE MINUTES!", I look down at the passenger floorboard (where my helmet was sitting since qualifying), and I see a medium-sized (3" diameter) PILE of ANT EGGS. And hundreds of ants are scurrying to cart those eggs forward to someplace else in the firewall area.

Like this, but maybe a tenth of the size of this pile by the time I discovered it.

I'm thinking, "are those ants also in my helmet?" So as the grid marshall is telling us "ONE MINUTE!", I'm taking my helmet OFF to make sure I'm clean. Fortunately, I was. The ants had started their nest in the shade of my helmet, not in the lining, fortunately. So the worst case would only be having ants in my pants.

I drove well, I think. I lost the red 944 in traffic but I was able to fend off the Sentra SE-R and then place some distance between us. And I dealt with dozens of Miatas who didn't seem to have much of a sense of personal space.

And then, I did a very dumb thing.

I hesitate to describe this part of the race, because it was such a dumb thing. But if you take one thing away from this, it should be this:

Visualize the ENTIRE race - from beginning to end - before going out there.

I did not do this ahead of time. I came upon the start/finish, and they're waving the white flag pretty vigorously. What was I thinking at that point? I don't know... I've done six dozen sessions of DE... And I've done only four races, last year. And maybe I thought to myself, "Oh, it's the checkered flag. End of Session." ... or I must have thought that. I don't know. Maybe I got bitten by an ant.

But I kept on around the course, waved to every goddamn corner station, and pitted in. ONE LAP EARLY. Nobody was racing around me at the time. I just did a complete brain fart and forgot about the existence of a white flag. WTF?

Oh well. Rookie mistake. Literally. I was happy about my driving, though. And it wasn't like I was giving up a podium finish. I was a little embarrassed, but mostly happy to be in one piece after my 5th ever race.

It's just the whole what the f were you thinking thing... It's a little hard to swallow.

If the ants weren't enough... I almost stepped on this girl on the way from the paddock to the tent. She was nice enough to hold still while I juggled my flashlight and my smartphone camera.

She's a female "fisher spider". Harmless to humans, or so I later read. I did not know this at the time, but she was so awesome I had to get a pic with a business card for scale.

On Sunday I got in the car for qualifying and it suddenly started to run a little off.. and vapor came in through the vents. I shut it down and discovered that my power steering pulley had sliced a hole in the lower radiator hose.

I called Just Joshin' Used Porsche 944 Parts, which is about half an hour from the track, and he wasn't available, but he directed me to the junkyard to get one for myself. I couldn't find it for a long while, though. In fact, it wasn't until I started to think like a lower radiator hose...where would I be? I just got taken off the car... where did I get tossed? I started looking about three feet to either side of the car... and then I saw it, three feet to one side of one of the cars in the yard. Again, the power of visualization!

Unfortunately by the time I got back to the track, my group was on the grid. So I watched the race from the Turn 10 tower.

Oh well.

I learned a lot over this weekend, made new friends, got to know others better, and had a fantastic time with my new racing family. I could be a lot more upset than I am, but it was more than just two races. It was a fantastic weekend of fun and I feel truly inspired to get back on the horse and try again.

In reply to CrookedRacer: Do you have 6 blade radiator fans fitted by chance? The 6 blade fans protrude farther out from the shroud than the 3 blade fans, and you need a different hose to clear them (or so I hear). I swapped the original 3 blade fan to that side off the radiator and put the 6 blade on the other side, where there was plenty of room, to solve the cut hose and rubbing on the newly acquired hose about a week after purchasing my car a few months ago.

Don't feel bad about thinking you were done a lap early, in my Bicycle racing days I have sprinted thinking it was the last lap only to hear the bell ringing for one more to go as I approached the line, I've seen others do this too so it's more common than you think.

Adam

Just imagine the August race with a fresh engine! Great job keeping it shiny (literally).

This bellhousing, which could easily have gone right onto this engine looking like it did, got blasted by the nice folks at Burtonsville Performance Machine.

I think that's got to be good for +5 hp, am I right?

Finishing up the front end of the engine. I need to have this thing all ready by Saturday's Swap Party.

Balance shaft gears on... belts on...

There's a little brass connector piece that adapts the cam to the distributor rotor. The little E36 M3 is literally called "connector piece" and it doesn't seem to have a part number. I damaged the one from this engine getting things apart because I had to drill out the set screw.

Where to get another one, other than the engine that's coming out of the car?

Finally, i've heard of racers who don't bother with the oil level sensor. I happen to want one, so I need a gasket for it. I don't have any sheets of it, and for some reason the Victor Reinz lower engine seal kit didn't come with one.

That's something else to sort out.

I already sorted the oil sensor gasket with a piece of rubber and some gasket maker. It is an easy one to address later anyway, should my dodgy fix not work out.

So I took the engine off the stand and got to work on the other end.

Pilot bearing and Rear main seal:

Fidanza lightweight flywheel:

And new flywheel bolts...

Looking snazzy! Nice! My car is pretty shabby next to yours....well done! I spent a good part of the day moving stuff around the shop getting ready for .....The Transplant......

In reply to jh36:

Ha! I spent two evenings this week just getting my garage a little more organized... simply so I could walk into it without a feeling of complete despair. It's what made today possible.

Home stretch!

Clutch.

Bell housing bearing guide before and after scotchbrite had its way with it.

Fluids ready!

And that wraps it up for this engine rebuild!

Saturday is Swap Party! Stay tuned for what will hopefully be a one day exhibition of the most 944 expertise and mechanical prowess assembled in one place since... well... since yesterday when Charlie reported to work at Intersport. That guy knows 944's.

But there will be four to ten of us working on this swap, aged 20 to 82. And we'll have a time lapse camera going.

Wish us luck!

So on Saturday I dragged the car to jh36's place, where Rob, James, jh36, Ernie, Lincoln, and I attempted a complete swap in one day. We accomplished the swap... sort of. I'll get to that later.

Here's the time lapse... as promised. It's really a quick edit that was a learning process for using iMovie to produce the video. I may be doing some more work with it... capturing some stills and letting them persist/fade away, doing more with the batch pre-processing to make the resolution 1080p right off the bat, cropping the ceiling out to make the format 16:9, and cleaning up the start/end of the video with more tail frames and some intro titles. It's a work in progress, so stay tuned for version 2.0.

So here's the swap in three minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/NswlGOETLcc

This is not an uncut time lapse. Significant periods are cut out: unloading the new engine from the truck happened outside. Lunch happened. About half an hour struggling with the transaxle happened with no perceptible progress as far as the camera was concerned. Dinner happened. What's left is probably a solid ten hours of wrenching and wrestling.

Dang I wish I had seen this thread sooner. You may or may not have seen me over on Clarke's Garadge. I have been playing with 944s for more than 30 years. If you ever need anything let me know. I have so many spare parts that I have parts bins that I don't remember what is in all of them.

Following the swap, I found myself in the midst of a house project that I allowed myself to obsess over.

I'll post it as a separate build thread eventually.

But this week I began work on the car. A few months ago, I asked on Facebook if anyone wanted to swap my 968 brakes for stock 944 brakes. Quite a few people jumped at it and I got a pretty filthy set of stock calipers. Good thing the guy isn't in a big hurry to get my brakes, because I haven't gotten around to doing the swap.

But this week I got around to disassembling them, and everything there is serviceable. Nothing broke off, and nothing was stripped or scored. The front knuckle needs to be changed too, and the ones I was sent were in great shape.

If I'm going to use these, I'll need to buy the hardware kit ($70 per end), and the seals kits ($10 a corner). I got a quote for powder coating ($150 a corner)...

Then I noticed I could get remanufactured ones for like $35 to $40 per corner (unfinished, but ready for a can of VHT paint). Unfortunately they aren't in stock at the supplier (Cardone), and lots of people are evidently waiting for them at Summit Racing and other suppliers. Rockauto, Advance, and Autozone all wouldn't let me order. Another supplier allowed my order to go through but cancelled it within an hour.

I'm going to call Cardone tomorrow to find out what the deal is. If they just don't have any cores to refurbish, I might be able to send these to them.

Maybe the days of getting a rebuilt 944 caliper for that price are long gone now.

So today I actually took the car cover off of the car and assessed the situation.

As you can see, lots to do here. The first thing I noticed is that I have to de-power my steering rack... I left the power steering pulley off the engine, so I figured I better get the rest of it out.

I removed the power steering fluid reservoir, cooling coils, and the reservoir bracket. And that made me feel... overwhelmed by the fact that I have to remove the steering rack to lubricate it, remove a bunch of lines, and plug a bunch of holes to do it right.

So naturally I moved on to other things. Like wiring. In about an hour, I had this:

It's not that bad, actually. I tossed most of the loom on top of the fuse box for this Kodak Moment. During the swap day, I had removed the fog lights and a few other things, and I really wanted to clean up the loose ends, literally.

This is the front end loom, and I only need about half a dozen of the wires in it to have a functioning race car. I ended up with a couple wires to the coil, a couple to the rad fans, a couple to a sensor on the radiator, and that's about it.

I pulled back and cut all the others a few inches from the fuse box connectors...

So that's where I sit now. I need to dress the few remaining wires. But this took me most of the day today.

So I buttoned up the wires and removed a lot of that emissions stuff including the charcoal canister. I haven't re-connected the blocks to the fuse cage yet. But I think it's looking a lot better now:

And that charcoal canister was BIG, and its vapor line goes all the way back to the fuel tank. I'll cap it off there and just vent the fuel cap. Somehow.

It was nice to get rid of that, if only to make a little more room between the engine and that firewall. What a mess it is back there.

Then I began the conversion of my power steering rack to a manual one, using this handy reference I found online:

http://www.cryogenicsmedia.com/Porsche/power-to-manual-steering-rack.pdf

Hopefully the dude hosts it there forever. And if he ever takes it down, it will probably live on in perpetuity on sites like Rennlist or Paragon.

I especially like the phrase he used along with a photo of some dodgy use of washers: "Don't judge me."

I won't judge you as long as you're helping me this much.

I also found a machinists' site that describes the process in a much more "ooh... technical" way... As in... don't try this at home kids.

http://mwthemachineshop.com/944-power-rack

They described an additional step whereby the pinion itself is disassembled and then joined with the steering shaft spline in a more positive way (that they kept a secret). It made sense, but I didn't go that far, since it would be disassembling staked pins and who knows what else. Someday I might tackle that job.

Anyway, I got the rack off the car and started to disassemble it.

Everything came off ok, but the hardest part was removing the joining ring pictured here... it's staked in and you simply have to overcome the stakes.

Removing the tie rod arms was also difficult because I didn't have an appropriately shaped cold chisel to move the stake out of the notches at the end of the rack.

The pinion was in good shape, and I didn't take it apart any further than this:

After greasing it up according to the pdf... here is what mine looked like.

There are two smooth holes that are simply press-fitted and had little fittings with o-rings in them. The two were connected by a hose, but I destroyed it when I took stuff apart.

There shouldn't be any more pressure between the two now that I've removed all the seals in between... so I filled them with epoxy and stuck them back in.

Just in case they ever want to come out, I took some safety wire and tied them down.

I put it back on the car and crossed that off my list.

Next: Exhaust!

It's been so long since I've gotten anything done to the car, I couldn't wait to get inside to post when I finally did!

In the late summer and fall, I've been busy with outdoor hardscaping projects, and since December it's been so cold in the Mid-Atlantic area that I simply didn't want to work outside on the car. This week has been the first warm spell we've gotten (it got up to 55 degrees today!) in quite some time.

This weekend I got the external oil cooler mounted and plumbed up. This was my first time building AN fittings, and it was pretty fun and painless, actually.

I started with some scrap steel and cut out my desired shape with a right-angle grinder. I gave it a gentle bend in a vise to offset it from the radiator a bit.

Then I lightened it a bit, and made it a little prettier...

I was wondering what I'd use for hardware and such, and I realized I had a slew of 1/4-20 screws left over from a project I've been working on.

I think I'm going to weld those nuts to the brackets to make them captured nuts. But they'll probably do ok as they are with a bit of loctite.

Here it is bolted to the car... and a hole has been drilled in the upper left of the radiator bracket to allow the lines to pass through:

Finally I got the AN-10 assemblies built and fitted in place.

The cooler is really solidly mounted - it's not going anywhere. Somewhere in my house I have some of that woven nylon cable sleeve protection (a couple inches in diameter) which I'll wrap around both cables where they pass through that hole.

I still have to make the connections final... that is, I need to find my teflon tape and the crush rings for the M22 adapters and re-assemble. I have plenty of leftover AN-10 line in case I need to replace one or both lines.

In order to get decent access to where the oil cooler would ultimately go, I took off the front air dam. Or is it the fascia?

Either way, it had a tear in it. Two tears, actually. One to the lower lip, and another that runs through a good portion of the central structure of it.

I also plan to fill in the side marker holes, and the fog light openings.

I ordered some resin and cloth, and got to work on it today. I have zero experience with fiberglass, but here's one guy who inspires me to just get started and do whatever needs doing:

B is for Build Fiberglass Repair

Chris has some serious work ethic. And he makes lots of mistakes. Which I like because we both learn from them. And it's genuine, unlike fabricated drama on reality tv.

Anyway, having watched his videos for the past couple years, I figured a tiny repair like mine should be cake. Right? Time will tell.

In the picture above, the gaping crack actually stops before it gets to those awful hand-drilled holes. Incidentally, I don't know what those holes were drilled there for, but they're illegal in PTE (or they could cost me points because they could be considered an aero mod, or they supply air to the engine bay, or whatever). They're not supposed to be there.

So baby steps. I decided to just fix that one crack, then work my way over to filling in the other damage and holes. Here I've done some sanding and roughing up the areas around the crack.

This should be enough stuff to do all the jobs on this here fascia, and then some:

Just one piece of safety wire was all it took to hold the crack together perfectly. No need for temporary screws or clamps. This worked like a charm:

This is the underside. It's kind of hard to tell but I think I got the fabric up into the channel without air bubbles. That was the tricky part: avoiding delamination.

It's kind of gooey but I'm hoping I got the mix of hardener correct, and I'm also hoping it's not too cold in the garage. I had a little heater going but as soon as I was done applying the resin, I opened the garage door to allow the fumes to dissipate. Luckily it's a relatively warm 55 degrees out.

So the resin in my plastic cup hardened, but the stuff on my part did not, presumably because it was too cold. So I set up my little heater next to it for a couple hours and it hardened up enough to do some trimming and sanding.

I plan to lay up another layer of glass cloth on the back side, and a narrow one folded over the bottom and back side of the lip edge.

So far, so good! Good enough for a race car, that is. I think the rule is that the car needs to have a clean appearance from 50 yards away, moving at 50 miles per hour. Talk about a low bar!

edit:  The rule is as follows: “The vehicle must meet the “50/50” rule, which means they must look undamaged and straight at fifty (50) mph from fifty (50) feet.”

Interesting, I’m not sure how well fiberglass will stick to the urethane, but for a race car, it might last long enough :)

I think I may have a spare 944 lower valence sitting in my 924s. I don’t remember what year it is from exactly. Either an 87 or an 88. I don’t remember which parts car it is from.  I don’t think there is a difference.  It came from a car that I parted with Brian (MO30 here on GRM). I think he would be very happy if it was to end up on a race car.