Junkyard 944

Nice!!

Looking damn good!

It has been over a month since I worked on the 944. The entire month of March, I was in Florida at a nuclear power plant to support an outage. We were doing maintenance on the plant. I ended up working night shift, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was exhausting but a good change of pace from sitting behind a desk. Now that I am finally back home it is time to work on the 944. This week, I was able to install the radiator fans, coolant hoses and reservoir,  front bumper and hood release cable. Yesterday, I filled the system with coolant. Unfortunately, there was a small leak on the coolant temperature sensor. There was no easy way to get to it, so I had to pull some hoses off. Now the sensor is tightened, hoses reinstalled, and more coolant added. So far there are no leaks. The real test is when it is pressurized.

I have an alarm issue with the car. Does anyone know if the 944 came with a factory alarm? There is an alarm system on this car that is going off constantly and draining the battery. I have to get a battery charger and then start pulling fuses. If it is factory, I would like to find a way to keep it. If not, I may end up just removing it. For now, I just want it to stop draining the battery.

In other news, I was browsing the old Craigslist for 944 parts and came across one in Lexington, NC that had the exact same interior as mine. I jumped in the car and drove 1 hour to a salvage yard. A perfect break in the middle of the day. For $120 I scored three screws that I was missing for the radiator fans, the center console armrest (will be recovered), the ashtray, glove box door, and a matching passenger leather seat that I was missing. That was the last parts that I should need to get the car done.

This weekend I will be attending the novice autocross school and my first event on Sunday. Unfortunately the 944 will not be ready, but I will be there in my DD.

Yes, 944s came with factory alarms. Mine was already disabled when I bought it, though, so I never learned how to mess with it. That second keyhole on the driver's side shuts it off.

I spent a little time today working on the car. I bought a new battery and installed it. My intention was to start the car and let it warm up, then fill the coolant system. Things did not go as planned.

I started the car and it had a knocking sound. I thought it was just the lifters being stuck from sitting for so long. I let it run for a couple minutes and white smoke started to come out of the tail pipe pretty consistently. The knocking didn't get any quieter and then smoke started to rise from the engine compartment. I shut the car off and noticed a small puddle of oil under the car at the back of the engine.

It is safe to say that the engine is blown. Not really what I was planning on and a little bummed. Now it is time to evaluate my options.

Sbc. I know a guy that has one that went big block instead.....

I do have the SBC (as seen a couple pictures ago on this thread) sitting on an engine stand in my garage. I am just not sure if that is the way I should go. I have no idea what it would take to put that in this car.

tedroach said:

I do have the SBC (as seen a couple pictures ago on this thread) sitting on an engine stand in my garage. I am just not sure if that is the way I should go. I have no idea what it would take to put that in this car.

A bellhousing from a Chebby, a torque tube to bellhousing adapter, clutch/flywheel, headers and motor mounts.

http://944hybrids.forumotion.com/t82-how-to-convert-the-porsche-924-944-to-v8-power

You can go further with brake, drivetrain and suspension mods, etc. but honestly you'll be fine as long as you avoid drag race starts and use good brake pads.

I would pull every remnant of whatever alarm is in there and not look back :)

@Stefan: Thank you for the information and support. I am going to do some more research on this. I like the idea of more power than the stock engine. I need to look at the balance of power, weight, and fuel efficiency. 

@jfryjfry: I need to remove all remnants of the alarm. I don't have the second lock cylinder by the drivers door to turn it off and I am not sure it is factory. It has to go.

tedroach said:

@Stefan: Thank you for the information and support. I am going to do some more research on this. I like the idea of more power than the stock engine. I need to look at the balance of power, weight, and fuel efficiency. 

@jfryjfry: I need to remove all remnants of the alarm. I don't hav the second lock cylinder by the drivers door to turn it off and I am not sure it is factory. It has to go.

Certainly.  A 4.8L LSx is a pretty good solution all around and from what I've seen, the swap is easier with an LSx and the wieght balance is still pretty close to perfect (that 2.5L is still a hefty thing).  Anyway, just enough power to have good fun, with a little cam help it can spin pretty good for more sportscar personality but not so much torque that you kill the drivetrain in quick order.  Keeping the EFI helps with efficiency and hood clearance.

It should be noted that the difference between a 944 Turbo transaxle and a 944 Transaxle is in the hardness of the gears and the ratios.  The rest of the drivetrain is the same.  Swapping the 5th gear ratio helps a lot and you do that using 5th gear from a very early 944.  There is a transaxle strengthening plate that the GT40 and LAmbo Replica builders add to the Audi 016 transaxle that I've not seen the 944 swap folk use yet, but it apparently helps reduce the chances of spitting the pinion gear out.

Good luck!

How the hell did you convince an NC junkyard to sell you a car on the lot? Did they not process the title? I've been told that once the title hits a junkyard, the car can't be on the road ever again.

Brett_Murphy said:

How the hell did you convince an NC junkyard to sell you a car on the lot? Did they not process the title? I've been told that once the title hits a junkyard, the car can't be on the road ever again.

It is possible, but very difficult. The junkyard also has a parent company that is a used car dealership. They handled the paperwork, however, I still have to take it back to them to get it inspected in order to get the paperwork to put it back on the road.

The engine is not completely dead. I spent some time thinking about the symptoms and the unknown origins of the engine. Then I had some discussions with a friend about the symptoms and options. The first step was to run the car again until it was warm, then drain the oil. I wanted to see if there was any foreign material or metal. The  car started right up and ran for a couple minutes. The white smoke coming from the tailpipe stopped and there was significantly less oil leaking under the car this time. The loud ticking noise was still very apparent.

I shut the car off and drained the oil. I let it sit for a while, then drained the oil catch pan slowly so I am left with whatever settled. Surprisingly, there was no metal pieces or chunks. There was a very small amount of metal dust in the oil, but I had to really look for it in the light. 

With this news, I looked for the oil leak. It looks like it is at the top of the engine. It might be as simple as a valve cover gasket, but it is at the rear of the engine and hard to see. If that is the case then I am down to only the ticking noise. My next step is to run sea foam through the engine to see if it is just stuck lifters. I will let everyone know what the results are. 

Over the weekend, I used sea foam on the engine. I unplugged the vacuum line from the brake booster and added about 1/3 of a bottle while the engine was running. The engine was still running at 2200 rpms, which made the loud ticking sound even worse. I let the sea foam soak in for 15 minutes before starting the engine. When I ran it this time, there was some smoke coming out of the exhaust. I let the car warm up a little and started to rev the engine. Some smoke came out but not as much as I was anticipating. Frustrated with the ticking noise, I kept revving the engine to blow smoke out. Then it happened.....

The ticking went completely away and the engine was running smoothly. The idle even went back down to 800 rpms. The drop down to idle just happened because I was revving the engine by hand and the throttle cable came off the wheel. After a quick adjustment of the throttle cable, the engine was running without much noise.

I still have a small leak of oil that I believe is the valve cover gasket and I discovered that I had a leak in the exhaust manifold. Some replacement gaskets should fix that and are already on order. 

Overall is was a very successful weekend. I did kill a coolant hose because I forget to tie it back to the radiator support. But that is now on order too.

All I have left now is to replace a couple gaskets, a coolant line, fan temperature switch and install the lower valence. Then I am ready to take it out for a test drive. 

Not bad! Might have to try seafoam on my car too. For a sec it sounded like you had a valve that needed readjusting.

While waiting for parts to arrive in the mail, I went to work cleaning the new interior parts. The armrest did not really come clean and needs to be recovered at some point but it is better than nothing. I took a couple hours installing the passenger seat, glove box door, ash tray, and armrest. The interior is mostly complete now. Just a couple trim pieces (which I have) and some carpet. Unfortunately, one of the supports on the drivers side sun visor broke. Now I need to source another bracket.

The new parts arrived in the mail last week. I had ordered a new valve cover gasket, exhaust manifold gaskets, coolant fan temperature switch, and front upper radiator hose (the one that was cut while running the engine two weeks ago).

Before I proceed, I have a lesson learned that I want to share with you. After I cut the coolant hose, I went online to order a new one. I spent about 30 minutes trying to find the best price. It seemed like I would never find the right hose but I was able to get one off of Pelican Parts. I was excited that they had one in stock and it was only $1.50 plus shipping. I looked at the picture to verify it was the right hose and everything checked out. Five days later the hose arrived. It was not the right one, not even close! Instead of being about 2 feet long, this one was only 2 inches! That definitely does not work. I went back to the computer and looked up the original part number and compared it to what I ordered. I had ordered the wrong hose and Pelican Parts had the wrong picture for the part. Even though I was a little frustrated, I found the right hose on Amazon then sent an email to Pelican to inform them of the wrong picture.

Now, the correct parts are in and time to get to work. I spent some time removing the coolant fans in order to gain access to the coolant fan temperature switch. Then changed the coolant hose that was broken. In the process, I found that the small overflow hose was loose, which could have been the source of the coolant leak the entire time. I finished up reinstalling and tightening everything, then added more coolant to the system. I ran the car for a couple minutes to get the temperature up and everything seemed to be going ok. I let the car sit overnight with a tray under it to see if it still had a coolant leak. The next morning, I discovered that the leak was gone. I was excited to have one more thing off the list.

Next up was to tackle the oil leak. This was a simple solution of changing the valve cover gasket. I was unsure if this would fix the problem, but it was the easiest solution for where the oil was coming from. 30 minutes later the gasket was changed and I started the car. No more oil under the car.

While I had the valve cover off, I took a picture:

Here is the engine as it stands today:

And for a quick picture of the front of the car. I have to attach the lower valence, install the hood latch, and install the air box. After that, it is time for a road test.

This is great ted!!!

I really need to come out there soon and see this thing in person. 

In reply to Dusterbd13 :

You are welcome to come over any time. Just send me a text. Once I have it registered and tagged, I can take a trip up to your place to see your projects. I will need a place to drive to that also has tools in case something needs to be fixed.

I spent a couple days working on finishing little things on my list. I was able to get the front end completely back together, finish the wiring on the lights, installed the air box, secured the battery, resealed the tail light (which is still leaking.....grrrr), and modified the hood latch. Now that all of the major parts are buttoned up, it was time for a road test. The first test was very short. I drove around the neighborhood to make sure that everything was going smoothly. I can honestly say that these N/A cars do not have a lot of power but it was still fun! The suspension needs a lot of work and the alternator is whining a lot. The best news is that the car did not overheat, no oil leaks, and no coolant leaks. 

The second drive was today. I decided to take the car out for a test that was a little longer. Instead of 5 minutes, this one was 30 minutes long. I went through the gears without issue. The transmission didn't make any noise and shifting was smooth. I would like to have a smaller throw on the shifting but that is a mod for another day. I got the car up to 70 mph before I had to slow down again. The brakes will need to be changed. They look like they are in good shape and stop well enough, but I would rather change them to be sure they are in great shape.

I have not charged the A/C yet, so driving a black car in hot temperatures (over 90 degrees) was a little silly. That didn't stop me from having a smile on my face. The car is far from perfect and not up to the standards that I normally build. However, this was a junkyard car that was written off. I can live with the rattle can paint and panel gaps being a little off. I am just happy that I was able to get the car back in driving condition.

This is not the end of the journey. I still have work to do before it is ready for Autocross. Next up is changing the alternator. I may also have to install some hood pins. The hood latch is ok, but not as sturdy as I would like it. 

Here is where it sits as of today:

My black 944 with a black interior and depleted A/C was an oven. I DDed it for 7 years. Popping the sunroof barely helped.

In reply to GCrites80s :

I am thankful that this is not my DD. That would be miserable. I still want to fix the A/C. It is all hooked up, just need to charge it. That is on the list. I can't take the heat of a black car in the south without A/C.

After traveling for work, vacation, and catching up on yard work, I finally got back to the 944. I started yesterday with a broken hood release cable. This convinced me that I needed to install hood pins. The hood was not latching correctly and I was not comfortable leaving it. I was able to get under the car and pop the hood. After that, I spent 2 hours replacing the alternator. Sorry, no pictures of that since it looks the same as it did before. With that out of the way, I moved on to the hood pins. I installed some brackets for the pins and then drilled holes in the hood. This caused me some anxiety but knowing that I have a spare hood in the garage made it easier. I went with the flush mount hood pins, however they do not release very easy. I will leave them for now, but long term they might need to be changed again.

I replaced the windshield wipers but when I tried to use them, they didn't work. It turned out to be a blown fuse. Easy enough.

Now that those were done, I took the car out for a drive. No A/C still sucks in a black car! But the good news is that it ran without an issue. I did stop to take a couple pictures before heading home.  The rattle can paint job will need to be fixed eventually, as will the passenger headlight. But it is together and functional.

Next up is some paperwork that needs to be done, then I can drive some more. I am sure there will be things to fix along the way. I will keep posting here as I get the car into its first autocross and any upgrades I do along the way.

Now for the pictures!

Hood pin bracket

Cutting the hood

Preparing to drill the hole

Hood pin installed

Out for a test drive:

In reply to tedroach :

Outstanding!  Would you tell us how much $ you've got in it up to this point?

I like those hood pins. What don't you like about them function wise?