Cultural Appropriation: 1984 Porsche 944 LS1

A few weeks ago, DrBoost posted his stalled 944 swap project in the $2017 classifieds. Against my better judgment, I sent him a message asking for a few details about the car. After trading emails and texts, I eventually concluded that I needed this car in my life. As a term of the sale, I had to start a build thread....and so, 15 days later, here we are!

Even before I bought the car, things got pretty interesting. As it sat, it had the original NA transmission in it, with a Turbo transmission included in the sale. A 944 trans can survive gentle use behind increased power, but the fragile internals and short gearing don't really make them a good fit. PilotBraden had posted in the for sale thread asking about the transmission in the car, and so a deal was struck. PilotBraden and I got things sorted out while he was celebrating his birthday and I was preemtively celebrating Halloween - before I had even bought the car, I'd sold the transmission out of it.

The following weekend (yesterday) I made the drive from southern Indiana 6 hours north to pick up the car. On the way, I stopped by DrMonterey's place to pick up some Sparco seats, since they were only 10 minutes out of the way. Got up to DrBoost's place and looked the car over. I learned a bit more about the history of it there, but was still ultimately satisfied, so we made a deal and went to load the car up. Shockingly, as soon as we went to load the car up, it started pouring. The forecast was clear....in sourthern Indiana, so of course I didn't bring anything waterproof. However, we managed to get a 944 that didn't run, had no brakes, and most importantly had no steering column loaded onto the trailer in the midst of the deluge without dropping it off the ramps or knocking it off of the dollies more than once...

Naturally, as soon as the car was on the trailer, it stopped raining. Leaving DrBoost's neighborhood, I realized that I'd been near there before, almost 5 years ago, on a ride on my old 1979 GS750. He may recognize this picture:

The drive back went well until, about 3 hours in, the check engine light came on. I couldn't tell a difference in performance, so I kept on going - that ended up being a fault for the EGR valve, which I've had before as sometimes it sticks. About 15 minutes later, I lost the lights. Headlights, taillights, trailer lights, everything. In the dark. In the rain. Towing a trailer, on the highway, with no traffic and no ambient light. After what felt like a few minutes of panic (probably more like 10 seconds) I figured out that the high beams still worked, so I drove another 5 miles to a truck stop. Somehow, I'd blown a fuse, and after 15 minutes of troubleshooting and 4 more blown fuses, all I knew is that it was somewhere on the truck and not the trailer. But it stopped blowing fuses, so I hit the road again. Fortunately, no other problems popped up along the way.

This morning, I got the car unloaded and really looked it over on my own time more closely. It's definitely going to be a project, probably moreso than I expected in some ways. It also leaks water rather badly, since it doesn't have a battery tray, so most of the interior was soaked from the trip. It's been a few years since this car has seen the elements, and I didn't think to tarp the engine bay before I left.

So now the stage is set. I'll keep updating the build thread as I go, however I've got a few other projects going as well in addition to 2 wheeled competition, so there may be some fits and spurts here and there. More to come shortly, but the toaster oven just beeped and I'm hungry.

Love the shape of a 944, and was horribly tempted by this car! Bad timing for me, but glad to see it landed semi local. I hope to put eyes on it someday and see how it progresses in person.

This post will pretty much be a background of the car. Build threads are as much a record of this stuff for me as it is sharing the project, after all.

I have no idea when the car was last on the road, but I found a lottery ticket under the driver's seat dating back to 1995 in Delaware. The newest coin I've found in the car at this point is a Tennessee state quarter, which was released in 2002. The car still has a Delaware plate on it (renewed 2008), however at some point it was moved to one of the Virginias, where the swap was started by an early 944 Hybrids forum member. Based on some of the parts used, I'd say this was pretty early on in the LS swapped 944 movement. The project must have eventually stalled out, and DrBoost went down to get it. He had it for a few years and did some work on it, but for various reasons decided it was time to give it up, and now it's in my garage.

I have broken one of my cardinal rules, in pretty egregious fashion: I bought someone else's project. Not only did I break that rule, but it is a second-generation project that probably hasn't moved under its own power in roughly 9 years. What could possibly go wrong?

The goal for the car is to eventually become a reliable, quick track-focused car. I will initially try to build it to Challenge rules, and once that target is hit, develop it further into a higher-spec, reliable HPDE car. It could be entertaining to take it to LSFest or do One Lap in it or something, but those plans are of course further down the road and depend on how much I end up liking the car.

There is a caveat to the Challenge target: I don't like to cut (too many) corners with builds, and if I start running into things that I would need to hack together just to stay under budget, I may have to scrap that plan. I don't want to put it together a car that runs or drives poorly or is unsafe and unreliable just to stay under budget. At the time of purchase, I thought it could be done, but would be pretty tight. I'm a bit less confident of that after spending some time working on the car. More on this later.

Can't post an update without a pic, so here's proof that it made it into the garage:

And this is how thick the dust is. The paint isn't great, but it's not as bad as it looks either.

Congrats on your next project. I will be following along closely. I just picked up a 1987 and a 1988 Porsche 944. If I have any spare parts, I will let you know. 

There was a clean 944 sans engine that included a V8 on CL locally for $1500 or so last week.  I guess someone saw this post and went off and grabbed it because it's gone now! 

Getting these to run cool water temps on track is a challenge.  Big engine in a narrow engine bay with very little frontal area for cooling, especially if you're planning on keeping A/C.

I ran mine for 6 years, happy to talk to you about what worked for me and what didn't...

@Gumby - I'm sure it will be out and about once I get it running. Maybe I'll make it to the next midwest GRM get together or something. I don't know that it's really great timing for me right now either (the E30 has a blown engine that needs rebuilt, and the Lemons car needs some attention...) but I know in a few months once those are taken care of, I would have really regretted not pursuing it.

@tedroach - posted in your thread; thanks for the offer! As I dig further into this car, I'll get a list put together. Should have something in the next few days and we can see what makes sense to ship.

@pinchvalve - Huh, I didn't see that one. Hopefully this thread will go smoothly enough that it's motivation rather than discouragement to build something like this, haha.

@docwyte - thanks for the offer; I'll be in touch once I start having to make decisions about brakes, cooling package, etc. Did you space your subframe down? This one already has the spacers in it, however I'm somewhat concerned about what that does to the handling of the car. I haven't been able to determine if mine has any kind of bump steer compensation or anything done to it, since I've not had the wheels off yet. I am not planning to keep AC (I've DD'd cars for 8ish years with no AC, so it doesn't really bother me anymore, plus it appears a lot of the AC parts have been trashed or damaged on this car already) but will still be looking a good aluminum radiator and an oil cooler. I've only got the stock NA radiator at the moment.

So, first things first, gotta figure out what I've got. All this stuff was tucked away in the hatch area. It's a decent pile of parts, though I couldn't tell you why the sunroof wind deflector was removed. Yes, that is a steering shaft - the steering wheel and rack don't exactly have a strong relationship right now. There's a lot less there from a brakes perspective than I thought - there are twin masters for manual brakes (the brake pedal has been modified for a bias bar), part of a Ford hydroboost setup (the firewall part, minus the mount and actuator rod), and a BMW power steering reservoir. There's no master cylinder, in addition to a few critical parts of the Ford system being absent. Fortunately, I think I have a correct Hydroboost reservoir in my BMW parts stash. With the brake pedal being as modified as it is, I may pick up a spare of those as well. That sheetmetal bit is a battery tray, but it's a late tray, which is different than an early tray. That alone may become motivation to relocate the battery to the trunk.

In front of the car, we've got the bumper, valence, lights, crossmember, trans cooler, and transaxle, which needs another mount before it goes back in the car. I may end up pulling the torque tube just to make sure everything is happy in there, since it's never going to be any easier than it is now. But that's down the road some.

Chewed up acorns are never a good sign....this was the first of quite a lot of evidence that something furry called this car home for awhile.

That being said, the interior looked okay and complete overall, aside from missing sun visors and a broken console. The carpet was soaked from the hole in the battery tray though, and the smell of small animals was pretty strong. Tackling the battery box seemed like a good place to start, so I began stripping the interior to get the carpet out. Note that the seats are correct for the era, but are not original to the car. The seats should match those psychedelic Pasha door cards.

Gross!

It cleaned up really well though. The carpet is actually in really good shape. I did also do a little carpet restoration to the trans tunnel since I do not intend to reinstall the rear part of the console.

The seats will be cleaned thoroughly and reinstalled. The driver's cover is deteriorated somewhat and has blown the stitching out, but that's a long way down the fix it list at this point.

$4 in change and 4 working Bic lighters, 2 pens, and a 1995 Delaware lottery ticket along with miscellaneous discarded hardware to get to this point. The driver's side front left seat mount is broken, so now the carpet really needs to come out so I can do some welding there. The cleaner it got the happier I became. There's something very rewarding about bringing some of the former glory back.

One thing I really hate about Porsche compared to BMW - everything is glued in! Not cool. I'm going to have to make a lot of tabs and such, because some of this trim is going to end up glued to a thin backer to give it shape and then mounted so it can be removed without damage. The adhesive used originally is strong enough that it's a challenge to avoid tearing the carpet and other fabric in the interior.

Glad to see the thread, and yeah that pic is familiar!  Wow, you really were in my neck of the woods. 

That's an early car, so you need to decide what you're going to run for brake calipers before you decide what do for a master cylinder.  I'd suggest picking up the turbo brakes from an '86, they're a direct bolt on.

Then use the 86 Turbo master cylinder with either the Ford Mustang hydroboost with the Texas Performance master cylinder adapter, or use the BMW hydroboost, the 951 master will bolt right up to the BMW setup.

As far as radiators go, depends if you wanna fab yourself or exercise your credit card, both Renegade and Texas Performance have drop in aluminum radiators.

For cooling on track, hood vents are a really, really good idea.

Yes, I ran the cross member spacers and never had an issue.  No problems with bump steer etc.  Unless you're going to run the IFC Racing cowl induction hood, you need the spacers.  Even with the spacers I still had to shave down the front of the throttle body and cut away the hood bracing.  There just isn't enough room there otherwise.

I didn't see headers, bell housing, or bell housing adapter, motor mounts, oil pan, etc.  What do you have for those parts?

Question:

how do you 944-jockeys swap in another engine type when the OEM is engine + driveshaft+ rear transaxle?

Are you carving out the transmission tunnel? What do you do for the rear? Corvette IRS?

I wonder what the vehicle weight winds up being after all said/done?

Cool project. 

Agent98 said:

Question:

how do you 944-jockeys swap in another engine type when the OEM is engine + driveshaft+ rear transaxle?

Are you carving out the transmission tunnel? What do you do for the rear? Corvette IRS?

I wonder what the vehicle weight winds up being after all said/done?

Cool project. 

You can use the stock N/A transaxle if you don't beat on it, swap in a turbo transaxle if your gonna beat in it, or swap in a C5 'vette transaxle if you're going to up the HP.   

The LS block sits a few inches in front of the firewall, no hacking or bammering needed. 

Just to let you know, I have the visors, all the pedals with linkage (brake, clutch, and gas), interior parts including door panels, and brake calipers and master cylinder.

I am sure that I have more, but this was just off the top of my head that I see you could use.

I have a console also, but I think it might be different than the one for yours.

Agent98 said:

Question:

how do you 944-jockeys swap in another engine type when the OEM is engine + driveshaft+ rear transaxle?

Are you carving out the transmission tunnel? What do you do for the rear? Corvette IRS?

I wonder what the vehicle weight winds up being after all said/done?

Cool project. 

There's a really good wiki on the V8 in a 924/944 found here: http://944hybrids.forumotion.com/

Basically: build adapter for Chebby bellhousing to front of Porsche torque-tube, bolt engine to bellhousing, connect engine ancilleries, drive. 

This works for nearly any engine you want to use, provided you can get it to physically fit in the engine bay and can build the proper adapter for the new engine's bellhousing.  The torque tube is just a really, really long transmission input shaft.

Going to try to make the forum do a multiquote here....we'll see how this goes.

docwyte said:

That's an early car, so you need to decide what you're going to run for brake calipers before you decide what do for a master cylinder.  I'd suggest picking up the turbo brakes from an '86, they're a direct bolt on.

Then use the 86 Turbo master cylinder with either the Ford Mustang hydroboost with the Texas Performance master cylinder adapter, or use the BMW hydroboost, the 951 master will bolt right up to the BMW setup.

As far as radiators go, depends if you wanna fab yourself or exercise your credit card, both Renegade and Texas Performance have drop in aluminum radiators.

For cooling on track, hood vents are a really, really good idea.

Yes, I ran the cross member spacers and never had an issue.  No problems with bump steer etc.  Unless you're going to run the IFC Racing cowl induction hood, you need the spacers.  Even with the spacers I still had to shave down the front of the throttle body and cut away the hood bracing.  There just isn't enough room there otherwise.

I didn't see hea:ders, bell housing, or bell housing adapter, motor mounts, oil pan, etc.  What do you have for those parts?

This car already has updated brakes - the rears are '86 951 brakes as you suggested, and the front has been converted to 951 suspension (not sure what year as I haven't looked at it closely yet) with massive Lexus LS430 calipers. I'm not sure what the pad availability looks like for these calipers yet, or what the front rotors are off of, but I think the brake setup is solid right now aside from ducting. 

I'll have to price out the hydroboost options, as it seems like both work well. I don't particularly want manual brakes. I'm not sure how the GM PS pump will handle the additional hydroboost duties, but it looks like there may be some shimming needed (or just buy the Turn 1 pump)

Hood vents are in the plan, though I don't have any specific intention there yet. My throttle body and hood have already been modified, though I need to do some more work to make it look nice. The spacers are already installed, and it's super tight in there. Good to hear that the spacers work well, as finding an extra 3/4" in there does not look like it would be easy.

The drivetrain is actually already "installed" in the car, though I don't know exactly what I have. Headers appear to be ceramic coated TPC parts, but I haven't confirmed what mounts, oil pan, etc I have. The clutch appears to be from Spec. I'll get pictures posted as the project continues, since it's not really done correctly at this point. The front subframe was ground where the rack mounts to it to add some clearance, and there is still some contact between it and the oil pan. It almost looks like the engine mounts are a little too short, so there is some more finagling to be done there.

tedroach said:

Just to let you know, I have the visors, all the pedals with linkage (brake, clutch, and gas), interior parts including door panels, and brake calipers and master cylinder.

I am sure that I have more, but this was just off the top of my head that I see you could use.

I have a console also, but I think it might be different than the one for yours.

Okay, I'll keep you posted. I ended up being out of town last night, so didn't spend any time on the car. Hoping to work on it tonight. The late model (1985.5+) interiors are quite different than my early interior - there's not a whole lot of shared parts between the two.

Agent98 said:

I wonder what the vehicle weight winds up being after all said/done?

 Unfortunately, I don't have any way of weighing this car. Early 944s are between 2600 and 2800 lbs depending on what you read, with later ones being a few hundred lbs heavier. The swap really doesn't add much to the weight as the LS is aluminum - per the internet, you're somewhere between a wash and adding 50 lbs depending on how you do it. I'm hoping that my final weight will be around 2600-2700 lbs wet, with the removal of AC, some sound deadening, and some other unneeded bits. I'm not going crazy with weight reduction at this point, though.

A few more pictures of interior progress. In order to repair the battery box properly, the interior basically has to come out. I am planning to delete the AC anyway, since I'm missing pretty much everything involved aside from the HVAC box under the dash. One of the previous owners had cut the old tray out, taking the HVAC box mounts with it and cutting through some of the harness as well. The box was also full of acorns, so it needed to come out anyway.

I've pulled multiple pounds of speaker and amp wiring out of the car, and the head unit wiring is pretty much worthless. I'd be shocked if it actually worked. This will all be redone.

Battery tray, from the bottom. The patch panel I have isn't big enough to do this right, so I'll probably end up fabricating quite a bit of it to fill in the gaps.

Someone broke a window in this car at some point in its life - this was behind the passenger rear interior panel.

Another mouse nest behind the trim on the other side. Looks like I'll have to remove all these panels to clean back there, and they look like they'll be a pain to get out since the window seal is installed over the edge of the panel...

Ever wonder why old cars get that distinctive musty smell? This is a big part of why. The carpet sits on top of a mastic sheet, which is bonded to what basically looks like fiber carpet padding. There is additional mastic sound deadening bonded to the floor pan, which fortunately looks really solid here. That carpet padding absorbs any water in the floor pan and gets pretty disgusting as a result. All of that padding is going in the trash. If the carpet looks funny without this insulation underneath, I'll get some carpet padding and make new inserts, but these are too far gone to save.

Seems like I've made negative progress, since it's all dirty again. It will all be worth it when it goes back together, though. This is how it looks currently.

Great to see you are making progress. It may look like you are taking a step backwards, but you have improved the car tremendously by clearing out the nests and getting that moisture out of there. Makes me think twice about pulling back my carpet.

I low-key wanted this car and I'm very happy I no longer lived in Virginia. The car was really close to my uncles house lol. 

I'm watching this thread to see the progress. 

Pics aren't showing up for me.  I believe that front brake kit was put together by a guy on the hybrids forum who goes by XSchop, I believe it uses Porsche Cayenne rotors, but I'm not sure. 

The Ford Hydroboost setup is the cheapest to buy, but you'll need the TCP adapter plate for the firewall plus the adapter for the Porsche master cylinder.  Don't use the Ford master cylinder, it has WAY too much rear brake bias.

Check your motor mounts really carefully, TCP went through several design changes and the earlier ones are garbage.  I had several problems with their earlier mounts. 

The Turn 1 pump is necessary for any track work, otherwise you'll be boiling the PS fluid, which is really bad with hydroboosted brakes.  Also add as large of a PS cooler as you can.

In reply to docwyte :

Pictures should be fixed - I forgot to share the host folder so the links probably timed out.

I'll see if I can hunt down any old posts on that setup; I'll try to document all of that as time goes on, especially since I need to figure it out anyway to set the brakes up. Good to know on the Ford MC. I will probably end up modeling the brake system using one of the brake force calculators online - I love the feel of a well set up brake system on the track, so it's something I tend to spend a lot of time on so I don't get frustrated by it being incorrect down the road. I'm more versed in BMW brake systems than Porsche systems, but if they are similar, I'll probably end up replacing the proportioning valve with something adjustable as well.

When I get the car up in the air, I'll post some pictures of the engine mounts. If we can't sort out what I have here, I'll do some research and get in contact with TCP to try to figure out what I have. Considering the age of the build, I'd say they're almost certainly an older iteration.

Boiling PS fluid is no good. I'll make sure I get a pump and a good cooler to go along with an engine oil cooler.

Re: my comment at the beginning of the thread where a Challenge budget is seeming more and more far-fetched. The more I learn about how this car has been set up vs. what I need to (or should) do to make it function properly, the more difficult the budget proposition seems. If I were just building it to autocross or run down the strip as done at the Challenge, that would be one thing, but making it hold up reliably and safely on the track is a bit of a taller order. Not giving up on the Challenge yet, but at the same time I'm trying to be realistic about it.

I used a tilton adjustable proportioning valve for years, TPC recently released their 951 MC Ford hydroboost adapter.  Believe me, the bias was SO much better with the OEM 951 MC and OEM 951 proportioning valve...

If the motor mounts have rubber bushings in them, they're 1st gen and garbage.  If they have poly bushings but have a copper sleeve in them, they're 2nd gen and garbage.

In reply to docwyte :

Good to know. At this point, I will plan on using the Ford setup with 951 parts once I confirm that the Lexus piston diameters aren't going to throw things off too much. It will probably be at least another month before I'm looking into that stuff.

Hopefully I'll be able to check on the engine mounts in the next few weeks. I really want to get this battery tray knocked out before I start working on other parts of the car, though.

By the way, I have 330mm front rotors, which I believe means whatever setup I have is using Cayenne rotors. The brakes on this thing are just massive.

Got the carpet and dash out today, so I'm about ready to start digging into the battery box and fixing the broken seat mounts. There are some cut up wires under there, so wiring might suck a little bit. This will also make it much easier to reach the pedal box to fix any hackery that has taken place there. A friend also offered up their fancy carpet cleaner vacuum thing, so this car will get the full treatment in an effort to make it smell nice again.

There is plenty of evidence that this car has been apart before - lots of missing or incorrect hardware. That's great motivation to continue teardown, since I'll fix all that stuff when it goes back together. Unfortunately, some previous owner also drilled a lot of unnecessary holes...

I did find one amusing missing screw - the plastic steering column surround has two holes in it to mount it, clamshell-style. Only one of those screws was present. When I got it apart, I discovered that the other screw hole was still virgin plastic with no threads - the factory forgot to put this screw in! Sounds about right for VW quality control at the time. A surprising number of parts have the Audi and VW logos in plain sight, too.

I'm a little blown away by how simple this car is. My E30 has about twice the wiring under the dash - this thing is closer to my Caprice in complexity and build methods than it is the BMW. Not a bad thing, really, but I do wish it had an electronic speedometer. When the turbo front suspension went in, the speedo drive cable got left out. I still need to figure out if it will work, but need to do some research since I don't know how it was driven originally anyway.

Yeah, and the gear in the odometer loves to crumble. I remember the first time the odometer went out the shop handed the gear bits to me and they looked like they were made of gummy bears. He replaced it with one made out of a better material but it still crapped out again after about 4 years.

If it has 86 Turbo front suspension, then the speedo cable hole can be drilled in the upright by a competent machinist.

otherwise, swap in an electronic speedo of the same size and drive it off the rear like the later 944 cars do.

BTW, the early cars like that were essentially evolutions of the 924, which was a cast off VW parts bin project that Porsche did for VW and bought back from them when VW passed to do the Scirocco instead.

So yeah, there’s a ton of VAG parts in them.

The Front suspension is a reversed MK1 Golf setup (the control arms cross over and the struts can be interchanged).  The rear is similar to the Super Beetle and many Super Beetle owners use 944 rear control arms to gain rear disc brakes.

The Transaxle is an Audi 016 as used in FWD Audi’s all the way up to the 5000.

My odometer gears are broken; checked them last night. Old BMWs have the same problem. I will probably end up converting to electronic VSS.

I actually don't know what year front suspension it has, but since there aren't any spacers, I'd have to guess it's an '87+ front end. I'll add that to the list of things to check.

I knew there was a lot of VAG parts sharing, but this is some GM-level parts sharing stuff haha. I didn't know the the suspension came from such humble beginnings. I was looking at it last night and discovered there are Konis on the car, along with Weltmeister springs though.

Apparently an 016 LSD is a decent alternative to throwing down for a 951 LSD as well, though it will be a long time before I'm looking into that. Need to get it running and driving first.

The engine mounts appear to be the rubber-isolated early style, but it's hard to tell from the top. They are definitely too short, though. The project has gotten a little bit bigger now, since it looks like this car had the firewall failure around the clutch master. someone then riveted a "reinforcement" plate to the engine bay side of the firewall to try to fix it. In addition to looking like crap, it has aluminum rivets in it and because the panel is on the engine bay side of the firewall, those rivets are in tension and will almost certainly fail eventually. While I was discovering this, I also found that most of the bell housing bolts are missing or are incorrect hardware for the application.

At this point, I think I'm just going to yank the torque tube and engine out and do it right. If I don't, I'm afraid I'll miss something stupid that might be a lot harder to address later. This will also allow me to clean the engine bay up quite a bit, kind of like I'm doing with the interior now. Yeah, it will add time and likely some expense to the project, but it will have a much better chance of working right the first time.