The Racing Season Begins Now. The Prep at Least.

I just dragged my 944 out of storage this morning and brought it back to my house to prep for the season. On the list are new front pads and rotors. New tires. New alignment. And lots of other small things, like making it safer.

One small, $30, step was installing a fire-proof shift boot in place of my fancy red leather one. The leather looked cool, but would not have protected the cabin from flames. And the shifter opening is often a place fire creeps in. Should give me a few more seconds to get out of the car in an emergency.

Thinking I might replace the zipties with hose clamps for even more protection.

More Race Wheels. One of These Not Like the Other.

My budget has taken precedence over my vanity recently. Currently my 944 SPEC race car has a very nice set of Fuchs with it. I use them for my tow rims as the rules only allow you to run Phone Dials or Cookie Cutters.

So, I made the decision to hunt up another cheap set of rims I could use for my tow wheels. And boy, did I come up with a cheap set. $90 for all 4. I bought 4 rims, one dented beyond repair for $40. I then bought one more 'good' rim from another SPEC racer. Thanks a lot for the sweet brush-painted silver rim, Chuck.

I will give them all a quick clean and respray, my vanity has not disappeared. Just been re prioritized.

So, look soon for a set of Fuchs for sale. I should be able to fund my new race tire purchase when I sell the stock 15x7 and 15x8 rims.

Installing 88 Engine in 83 944. Solving Wiring Issues.

Chuck Taylor(national director of SPEC 944), Chris Venturini(SPEC racer) and a couple of other folks helped me install my new 944 Motorwerks engine over the weekend. The old engine was unbolted and new engine bolted in within four hours. Then it took another six or so to get the wiring worked out. Hopefully the below will help anyone in the future to do this swap. Especially as it combines the benefits of an early chassis(light weight, steel control arms, manual rack) with the benefits of the late 88 motor(higher rev limit, tad higher compression).

Mating the harness of an early (1983) car and late (1988) engine and ECU is pretty straightforward. The biggest challenge being connecting the new engine harness to the old chassis harness because they have different connectors. The early car has a 9-pin square shaped connector, the later car has a rectangular 14 pin connector.

Luckily, 90% of the wire colors and functions are the same.

Before hooking up the wiring, it is beneficial to take the old 9-pin connector from the engine harness and use that as a base so that in the future you can easily disconnect the harness. So, what happens next is you permanently splice the pigtails from the old harness' connector onto the clipped wires from the new harness.

As your splicing them It is pretty much straight forward Pin to Pin ie Pin #1 to pin #1. all the way to 9/9.

All the colors match up directly except for a few. There are 2 wires on the 14 pin connector We did not use. Those are: pin #10 and pin #13.

Pin #10 (blue/green) wire on the new harness. This is for the water temperature dummy light, a feature non-existent on the early chassis. So, just cap this wire, and pin # 13 red/green, is used for the air conditioner.

There are now two plain black wires on the old chassis harness that we need to take care of. These emerge from the #2 and #4 positions on the connector.

The number 4 black wire goes to the tach. So, a jumper wire needs to go from this wire to the black/yellow + black two wire connector that is part of the new engine harness. It is a lone split from the main engine harness and it is pretty obvious from its position that it is a dash wire.

The lone remaining black wire off the old #2 connector is for the O2 sensor warmer. On a race car this is not needed. So, this wire can be capped. Or, as it is hot with ignition, used to power additional gauges, which is what I did. I used this to power the low oil pressure light and oil temperature gauge.

That's it!

Leaving It To The Pros...

I received my first royalty check for Hunt for 901 and splurged by paying my mechanics to do the timing belt and water pump install on the Brown Bomber. That is the name that has stuck in the past few weeks on my track car. 

Really, of all the jobs on a 944 the one that you do not want to mess up is the timing belt because if you do, the whole top end of the engine can be ruined.

And another thing about doing this and oil and gearbox fluid changes is being green. I remember as a kid, no joke, pouring oil in the backyard and flushing radiators right into the storm drains. Oops. Who knew it was bad, right?

So, now when you do these jobs at home you need to bottle up the old stuff and bring it somewhere. Ugh. Might as well pay my shop the $20 to do the change in the first place.

Can't wait to pick up the Brown Bomber later today and rev it up. I was too afraid to bring her past 3k as the belt was ten years old. Good thing too, the old belt had several cracked teeth.

Finally, notice that early 911 Targa in the pics. It is a daily driver. And yes, that is my mechanics finger poking right through the bodywork. At least it is lightweight.

A/C Delete Finally, Finally Complete

Finally the Rapunzel's hair-sized rats nest of wires and devices and hoses that is the air conditioning system in a 944 has been removed. The shot above shows all the contents that are hidden behind the passenger dash. Out of sight, adding weight silently. Like an extra chocolate bar a day, the weight sneaks up on you.

Good thing I did just hack out all the wires because I wanted to keep my heat in tact for defrosting my windows on early race mornings. There is a ground and relay that need to be kept for the heating system to function. But careful following of wires will allow you to remove the entire A/C wiring harness from behind the center console to the under dash connections.

Next I'll be installing some new brake lines and bleeding the clutch and brakes. Because right now both of them are softer than Ron Jeremy before his dose of, as the French say, le weekender.

A/C Delete Not Totally Complete

The nooks and crannies of a 944 hide more parts than the nooks and crannies of an English Muffin hide butter. I thought I took all the stuff for the A/C out but there seems to be a passle of stuff left under the passenger dash.

Can I take all this stuff out? Will I mess up some of the regular heating system which I want to keep? Who knows? Find out soon...

A/C Delete.

You've no idea how much wiring, plumbing and other mechanical bits are involved with a car's air conditioning system until you go about removing one.

There is, on my 944, the condensor, evaporator, extra blower, miles of wire. 12 feet of metal and thick rubber hosing, controls, etc. What a mess. There is even a whole passel of stuff behind the passenger side dash that will be staying put.

And every bit of this cold air making machinery is very, very well installed. Heck, I had to jack up the car and cut through the lines with a sawzall to make the pieces manageable.

But, the benefits outweight the sweat equity. Without a condensor, the radiator gets much better air flow. There are the weight savings of course. And most importantly, maybe a free HP or two with the removal of the compressor and its associated drag on the belt.

Porsche has a very nice A/C delete bracket. It is $160. I will be going this route. For a total of $22 including new belt.

And, contrary to what others have mentioned, I needed to undo almost the entire front valance to a point so that I could pry it outwards enough to let the condensor drop.

Bonus removal - Power antennae. You know, this thing weight 2.5lbs. High up on the car no less.

Few Hundred Dollars + Snowboard = New Porsche Race Car

It is true. I traded a few hundred bucks and a Never Summer(super sweet limited edition Coors banquet edition) for a 1983 Porsche 944. A race car has never come so cheap.

And this is no run of the mill 944. It seems to have been destined to be a race car from the day the original New Mexico resident ordered it up, then picked the car up in Germany as a tourist delivery item.

The car has:
Option 456 the Sport Shocks and sways.
Option 220 the Limited Slip Differential.
No Power steering.
Fuchs wheels.

Those are the three most desirable options to have on a 944 NA that will be raced. I am just going to DE the car this summer and if I get hooked or make more money, I might do SPEC 944 next year.

Sure, the car is super filthy and the paint is more faded than the Corey's combined careers but it is a very solid base. Total mileage is 143k. Importantly though, the previous three owners took very good mechanical care of the car. It got new shocks and clutch at 100k. It wears fresh tires. I have all the service records back to 1988.

The big things it needs are the timing belt/water pump/balance belts(I am hemming and hawing if I will do this myself) and the brakes and clutch to be bled and new soft lines installed(I will do these for sure).

I spent about 7 hours today tearing out the interior of the car. Yuck. You don't appreciate how well screwed together a Porsche is until you try to take one apart. On my jenky scale I figured I took out about 210 pounds of stuff.

Oddity, it also has option code 666. I guess the guy who ordered wanted the devil riding shotgun.