Porsche 944 with nitrous?

I have an 86 944 that I drive on the street and use for the occasional auto cross & HPDE events. Plainly, the car is slow. Like, my wife's Corolla can smoke it slow.

I dream of building a 3.0L turbo engine for it, but with a mortgage, two dogs, a wife (& I'm not dodging the baby bullet much longer), it's going to be awhile before I can justify the expense.

Nitrous seems like the cheapest way to make the car fast. But, can I just bolt it on to a stock engine? Don't I have to richer up the fuel mixture somehow? Do I need one of those aftermarket EPROM chips or something? Does anyone have any real experience with nitrous on an underpowered little engine with EFI?

You can do a "dry system" (nitrous only, uses the stock fuel system & injectors for the increase) or a "wet system" (comes with fuel jets, etc, to plumb in). I personally wouldn't do either on a 944. The 2.5L is kind of a fragile motor, and nitrous does not suffer fools. You'd be better off with a 951 turbo motor swap, or an add-on low-pressure turbo or a supercharger or something.

Not to mention nitrous is illegal for autocross and HPDE.

M030: If you want to make it more fun, that is easy and not very expensive. For power, about the best you can do on a budget is the Russell Barry Max944 chip and get rid of the cat if you can. For suspension you can go with the very streetable Weltmeister 250lb springs and some Koni adjustables with 968 M030 sways. If you want to customize more, call ground control. Rebuild your control arms with poly bushings and poly-bronze ball joints. Replace your tie rods with new turbo tie rods. Replace one of your power steering bushings with delrin. If you do all of that, you will love the car even when your wife's toyota beats you in a straight line.

And if its been a while, change the timing belt and/or replace that dreaded #2 rod bearing!

Look up Rogue Tuning's NA Tune MAF conversion. It's good for 18 hp and 20 tq at the wheels if you also install the -4 degree offset cam key. While not in turbo or supercharger territory, still some pretty decent numbers. Not to mention the improvement in drivability.

Stay away from spray, unless you're drag racing. In which case you'd be missing the whole point of owning a 944 N/A.

I fiddle not realize (or even bother to check if) nitrous is not legal in Autocross & HPDE. Looks like there's an LS swap in my future..

I wouldn't bother with nitrous. I agree with about half of what asoduk said. A good chip and suspension upgrades are where it's at. It's never really going to be a screamer in a straight line. I don't agree with getting rid of the cat. You MIGHT gain 1-2 hp from doing so, but you'll also make the exhaust stink more, and if your hatch seals as well as mine you'll have a headache every time you drive it.

So my suggestions to wake up a 944 without drastically changing it's character are:

1. High flow cat and high flow muffler. The stock pipe is sized properly and mandrel bent, so you're not really going to gain anything by buying an entire system. Just get those two items and weld them in.

2. Rogue Tuning's MAF kit (mentioned above)

3. Suspension tuning (like what asoduk mentioned)

4. Optional (but encouraged): Check (or have checked) the flow of your injectors, or just send them off to be cleaned. 27 years of crappy fuel can do a number on injectors.

5. Freshen everything. Actually, this should probably be number one, but since you were just interested in performance, it's down here.

The only swap I'd bother doing in your car is an LS swap. The complexity and cost of dropping in a 944 turbo motor just aren't worth it when you can sell your current car and buy a 951 for less than doing the swap to your car...