Porsche 964 C4 Engine Replacement RennsportKC

This is a 964 that I did a clutch job on last year. 180k+ miles are on the clock, and it had come in for a routine valve adjustment. Unfortunately when I pulled the lower valve covers, I found 3 broken head studs! Not good, and it really put us in a pickle. The owner is in love with the car and drives the heck out of it. A full engine rebuild soup to nuts was going to run about 15-17k, with 180k miles on the car, we had to weigh the value of the car against the work needed, and it was just not right to just go in and replace some head studs without going into the bottom end. While the bottoms are pretty bullet proof, with that kind of mileage you would hate to drop $7k on a top end only to have the bottom fail 20k miles later. So we weighed our options with used engines, versus rebuild, versus just the top end, replacing the car, etc. In the end we found a great deal on a rebuilt longblock from Rob @ DC automotive. They have been pumping out Metzger motors in the past, and while that has slowed down a bit, he had one fresh engine ready to go with all the updates required of a 964 engine, and the cost was so reasonable, it wasn’t worth doing a rebuild ourselves. So…..new engine is on the way 🙂

Time for the old motor to come out. I feel like I have been here before!

Since we will be getting a long block, I will have to transfer over all of our components, including the exhaust, intake, alternator, etc. My plan is to put the new motor on a stand, drop the old motor out on a table, park them next to each other and start swapping. But with the motor on the table, that leaves getting the heat exchangers off impossible, so I removed them in the car. Glad I did, as the hardware was so corroded I had to chisel off the nuts.

And finally off the car!

Ok Lin, here we go again, removing the clutch fork pin assembly. Pay close attention……what am I thinking, nevermind, you’ll just tell me it is voodoo.

While I have it out, it was a good time to toss in new gear lube. Everything looked good in regards to fluids, so hopefully our transaxle has a lot of life in it.

I will also send off the fuel injectors for blueprinting and balancing while we are waiting on the new motor to arrive. The tin has been removed, will be reblasted, and sent to the powdercoaters. Since this motor is driven YEAR ROUND, it picks up a ton of corrosion on the exposed metal parts, so we will coat as much as we can to make it hold up a little better.

Stay tuned for updates. Motor should be here in a week or so, then the fun stuff starts!