To turbo or not?

Thinking of prepping my 79 924 for PCA Autocross next year and I'm thinking of turbocharging it.

I have an old school BAE exhaust manifold, an intercooler and a turbo (Mitsu TE04H). I'd have to fab an exhaust pipe and intercooler tubes, which would be kinda convoluted. With lots of MegaSquirt tuning effort I figure I could reach about 200bhp without upgrading the clutch. 300bhp might be possible with a bigger turbo, clutch and mondo lag.

Another thought would be to ditch the little 2.0L and put an Audi V8 in its place. 300hp out of the box and a lovely noise.

The weights are similar and I could sell the high performance 2.0L parts to offset the cost. I could control it with my existing MegaSquirt after a few mods to move it to MSII and to control the injectors and COP system.

In either case, the exhaust and cooling system will need to be modified/improved. The V8 might require modifications to the hood and might bump me out of a PCA class and into a non-Porsche class where I'd be uncompetitive.

So thoughts?

I should add that this will be the last hurrah for this car in my stead as the wife really wants it gone, but I want to definitively finish it since I've never finished any of my car projects before.

In autocross I would think you just need to work with the suspension and wheel time rather then power.

Now in saying this do you have future plans of road racing?

The car doesn't really fit into a road race category and the chassis would need a bit of work for that.

It would be a fun track day car though with the fiberglass bodywork and stripped interior with the 944 based suspension with adjustable coil springs and 28mm rear torsion bars along with adjustable Weltmeister sway bars.

In seeing what SWMBO wants I would suggest a 35psi send off with the eventual part out thread shortly there after

ALWAYS turbo. Always.

In reply to mndsm:

+1

Turbos: The replacement for displacement, now with more awesome!

Big turbo with rising rate fpr. You aren't looking for longevity here.

Send her out right in style with roasted tires and a hole in her block.

turboswede wrote: I should add that this will be the last hurrah for this car in my stead as the wife really wants it gone, but I want to definitively finish it since I've never finished any of my car projects before.

Swede, don't take this the wrong way, but tell the wife to quit nagging and get a hobby of her own!

Yeah, I'm also confused by this whole "wife wants car gone" thing, but then again I'm not married or anything close to that so maybe this is normal? It doesn't seem normal...

I believe the deal was he could get his new awesome 944 Turbo if he got rid of another car.

Sucks, but sounds more fair than "get rid of your car!"

I'll be honest- if my wife started putting demands on me like that- I'd have a hard time not considering booting her. I mean, she says I'm not allowed more than 5 cars at a time, which is totally fair. And she's gonna yell at me less when I break that rule now, because I was able to bail her out of a jam in 20min with one of my beater hoard when she popped the MCS. I mean I guess it depends, but if the car realistically isn't causing any detriment to the household, why dump it.

Swank Force One wrote: I believe the deal was he could get his new awesome 944 Turbo if he got rid of another car. Sucks, but sounds more fair than "get rid of your car!"

Yeah, if this was the deal, for sure.

Yeah, the car is a point of contention between us and since I got the 951 the pressure to get rid of it has increased. The fact is I'm not good at splitting efforts between multiple cars, so I think it should go down the road to someone else, but I wanna have some fun with it first :)

Eventually I think the 951 and 924 will give way to a boring commuter and an Exocet.

turboswede wrote: Yeah, the car is a point of contention between us and since I got the 951 the pressure to get rid of it has increased. The fact is I'm not good at splitting efforts between multiple cars, so I think it should go down the road to someone else, but I wanna have some fun with it first :) Eventually I think the 951 and 924 will give way to a boring commuter and an Exocet.

YES.

Is the 924 running/sellable now? If so sell it and focus on your 951 for auto-x. No point in putting a bunch of time and effort into something that you aren't keeping.

It's close. I haven't been able to tune the ITBs well enough to make it enjoyable to drive. There's some sort of ground loop I haven't found that causes it to keep running even after turning the key off. The dash lights don't work for some reason and there's an oil leak from the oil pressure sender (which doesn't work either).

The fact is, I lied to her when I bought the car and that's caused her to dislike the car ever since, the time and money I dumped in it hasn't helped at all. Let that be a lesson to you folks, I know it was for me. It doesn't help that she doesn't enjoy riding in it at all (seats are uncomfortable, she's too short to see out of it, too hot, too loud, etc.)

So I sold the CSX to get the 951 and I agreed if sell the 924 at the end of next season.

I guess I could put the stock intake on it and retune the EFI to work with it and play with the car a bit and have it for sale.

At least he is allowed to have a car

is this a b_tch beatdown, or car thread?

not knowing PCA rules for liquid cooled???? the air cooled decided the boosted cars no longer qualify - all are n/a, with larger cid requiring stock intake.

I assume the 924/44/64 have no such rule??

Adding boost would move it to mod instead of improved. I'm actually more concerned about the non-Porsche RWD cars (which is where the V8 would put me) than the local Porsche cars in Mod, either way I doubt I'd be very competitive since I'm not buying expensive tires, etc. just out to have some fun. Another reason I'm not worried about SCCA classing either.

The stock 95hp motor just won't be very exciting, even with the ITBs and bigger cam and lightened chassis. So more power is needed.

Yeah, the fact that she wanted me to get the 951 and helped me with logistics/rode along when I went 3hrs south to Eugene one or more weekends a month to Autocross for an entire season proves that she likes my car hobby just fine and doesn't mind it as long as I'm not an ass about it. Such are the things you learn as you grow and mature.

So the easy button is to go back to a stock intake and fix a few minor issues and send it down the road to someone who will appreciate it.

IMO take the easy road - at least you'll have another vehicle to focus your energy on plus you'll make SWMBO happy. It's more efficient to focus all your energy on one project anyway.

Is the 924 up and running now? I'm confused if you are looking to get it running or are looking to increase the POWAR!

Also if you sell it how much? One way flights from Knoxville are $150 and that would be one epic road trip back.

I vote Turbo (with a capital T).

turboswede wrote: The fact is, I lied to her when I bought the car and that's caused her to dislike the car ever since, the time and money I dumped in it hasn't helped at all.

Get rid of the car then.

NOW.

No point in causing marital strife over a 35-year old car.