Part of the new kit and some of the old parts.

First was to tackle the front struts. And some how I don’t have a picture of the finished product. Hmmmm. I’ll add that later!

Then it was on to pulling the rear torsion bars and installing the new bars. On the 911, they created a nice hole to pass the bars out the side of the car. Since Porsche engineers hate mechanics, on the 944, you must drop the entire rear suspension carrier out to slide the bars out and back in. On a race car, we just cut holes in the body to avoid this. But this car is too nice for that.

Since I pretty much hate this job, I didn’t get a chance to take any pictures. Here you can see the end of the new larger torsion bar going back in as we raise the carrier back up into it’s mount. If you don’t get the ride height just right, you have to pull it all back down again to reindex the torsion bars. Yippee.

The end result is about like this. I have the fuchs off at the moment while we mount a lower profile tire on them for a better look.

Since the lifts are still full, back to my roots.

Intake box has to go.

Poof.

And since my attention span is only so long, I decided to pull the mufflers next. The exhaust system is modular, so we can tune it to the sound we want. If we need more rumble later, we can change the headers and/or the cats as well.

Dual cone intake and the carbon fiber heat shield in place.

And the muffler cans installed. The sound at idle is pretty tame, but at full throttle there is a very nice deep growl!

Today I installed the control arms/bushings/torsion bars on the 930. Everything went together pretty smoothly. Installing the torsion bars here. A slimy job as you want to grease them up good for rust prevention.

Then I went after the exhaust and turbo. I’ve had 930′s where 8+ exhaust studs snap off in the heads due to age/rust/corrosion. Luckily, these all came out pretty easy.

And the pile of parts start to stack up.

I went to start the turbo install, but ran into a snag right away. The turbo oil line wasn’t going to go on with the turbo set up this way. I scratched my head as the turbo sure appeared to be clocked correctly when compared to the old turbo. But obviously I couldn’t get a nut on the stud due to the other stud being in the way. A 2nd set of eyes suggested the hot housing studs/nuts should actually be bolts. Ah yes, sometimes you over look the obvious. I replaced the stud/nut with a bolt, and that provided the clearance to get the oil line on.

With the intercooler out of the way, I can start removing the air pump junk and get that stuff out of the way. I’ll be away from this project for a few days now as I have a bunch of local cars I need to get taken care of. Stay tuned!

This little guy has been sitting behind one of the buildings a few doors down. We mow around it a lot, and never saw it move….ever. Today the owner of the car came by and needed it running again for his son to use while they find him a new car. They had tried to jump start it on Sunday, but couldn’t get it to do anything. Turns out the car has 340,000 miles (yes, you read that correctly), and has been sitting for over 2 years! I figured after 2 years, the battery was likely so flat that it wouldn’t jump, so I grabbed a good battery off the shelf and threw it in the car. Hit the key, and as soon as the starter engaged, the car was running! I couldn’t believe it. No lifter tick, no horribly odd noises. She was running a little rough, but figured that would clear out. After a minute it died and wouldn’t restart, lol. So we towed her up to the shop for some diagnosing.

We figured out pretty quick we had a fueling issue, as diesel sitting for two years can really gum some things up. Since we couldn’t get a filter today, we bypassed the fuel filter to see if it would run. Bam, she fired right up. There will not be an insect problem within a block of RennsportKC, because it smoked so badly out the exhaust it wasn’t funny. Dark black smoke. So we decided to clear it out. Wes took off down the street with it, and 10 minutes later came back with a non smoking car A big pop, a big cloud of smoke, and she cleared right out. A new filter tomorrow, some fresh fluids, and she should go for a few more miles

With 3 major projects tying up the lifts, it was back to jackstands

These are the mufflers as modified. Can’t tell any different

And installed back up in the car.

My Title: “The Widow-maker: Part I”

Last week I got the 965 over to alignment and Todd knocked it out for me in no time. Then it was due some easy road time, and final tuning after everything was broken in. Friday afternoon, she headed home to SE Kansas

Pure awesomeness!

While we were sad to see this puppy head down the road, something just as good was left in it’s place. A 14k mile 1986 930! This car is CLEAN! While Dr Porsche would turn over in his grave by a car driven so little, it is a nice treat to see one in this kind of condition. You can read the writing on your shirt in the reflection at 20 feet away

Look at all that beautiful Porsche engineering. Oh…….yea, that’s all coming off

To be replaced with some of this: The plan: Brian Bodart from Rarlyl8 sent us his exhaust system and K27 turbo upgrade, along with his intercooler and adjustable WUR/ignition system. We will keep the power on the ground with Elephant Racing’s suspension setup (larger torsion bars, bilstein shocks modified for the 930 bumpsteer kit, and polybronze bushings for the control arms and spring plates, and spherical bearings for the rear trailing arms). Ride height will of course be low

Forgeline sent us some incredible wheels for the car. It will be tight…..dawg. I love these wheels!

Saturday morning I came in and stood there for a second…..it was quiet….really quiet. The phone wasn’t ringing, there weren’t any messages….pure bliss…..well except for the two birds that were having a fight on top of the skylight on the roof. Hmmmm waiting on parts for other projects……..so I got started.

The old front suspension. See ya!

A naked 930. Only thing hanging off the front still at this point is the steering rack and cross member. Did I say this car was clean?

A metric ton of crap.

This car has never had an alignment before from what I can tell (or at least they made no camber adjustments). I had to remove all the factory coating on the top mounts to get the old struts out, and allow for adjustment when we go for alignment. That took awhile. Damn German’s and their silly black goo. But the new struts mounted up nicely. Here you can see a good shot of the bump modifications. The outer tie rod is bolted to the strut with spacers. We will adjust the spacers above and below that outer tie rod as need be when we set the height of the car. This allows the tie rod to be straight without a severe angle due to the altered geometry of a lowered car.

And the new strut brace installed.

Turbo tie rod kit. Special tool required. KWP93201.V2

To start with for now, we will modify the spacer heights once the car is setting on the ground and we can see how the tie rods look.

Then it was time for the front control arm bushings. Old bushings remove easily by heating the bushing with a torch and then twisting them off with a large screwdriver. Easy as pie. Next the arms are cleaned, sanded, and cleaned again. The bushing sleeves are then JB welded to the control arms. This is done because the sleeves are slightly over sized to allow for German tolerance issues with the size of the control arms. By now the phone is ringing and emails are coming in, so that is all she wrote for now. Stay tuned, we have a long build ahead!

Pulled the dash out to remove the HVAC junk out, and allow for us to start mocking the cage into place.

Next we will build a firewall blockoff plate.

Removal of the steering lock is pretty easy, drill a hole in the bottom of the ignition assembly and pull out the spring.

Then we rounded up a ton of stickers we had laying around and pasted the car. Trying to make it look worse….not sure if we accomplished that! Also picked up a set of 15″ wheels so we can run the same tires that we did on the 944. We will sell the 17″ wheels that came on the car.

Since the cooling system is the weak link in the BMW, I pulled the waterpump and installed a waterpump with a metal impeller. The OEM pump has a composite impeller, and for the track, we are better off with something that won’t come apart after a lot of stress. This also allows me to get all the coolant out of the motor and add straight water

Then I cut out the front door panels to make room for the roll cage door bars. They will extend out into the door, making exit/entry to the car easier.

Then I needed to tackle a bunch of the wiring that was hacked up, so that is the fun project currently. I want to get all the cut connections traced back and removed, then I will button the wiring back up in place.

Mounting the slider to the Corbeau seat.

And installed in the car. Now we can start marking mounting points for the cage and get that built.