Skip to main content

SumoPower & Dyno Destiny

It's been an interesting few days with the 944. New sounds, or should I say noises; new insights; and new challenges are plentiful.

With the family mile muncher off the road the Porsche has been in daily duties of late acting as a family car. Which is less than ideal with no rear seat belts. My younger children find it quite comfortable back there actually.

Friday past I headed down to Rye to meet a friend & client at Sumo Power. One of the top tuning workshops in the UK. Sumo Power also field a pair of Nissan GTRs in the FIA GT1 world championship and race prep a selection of Rally & Drifting cars too. The race cars are a sight to behold and the facilities quite exceptional. A great place then to hold a rolling road session on a project car.






Besides the race car SP had a veritable smorgasbord of retro and performance cars to drool over. Such as a twin turbo'd Lamborghini with dry-ice cooled charge cooler:





A convertible Aston Martin:





A lovely Dodge Charger getting a little bit of attention to the rear:





And not forgetting some awesome Japs:






A certainly the most desirable of the lot an AC Cobra with personal plate!





Although my humble 944 didn't feel out of place when it came to the power run on the incredible dyno, it was certainly in the shade of some monsters.

I wasn't expecting much from my 25 year old '44 after 203,000 miles on the original engine. Peak power was 125.6bhp @ 4400rpm at the rear wheels; and peak torque 130.4@3400rpm. This would have been the basis for the planned engine upgrades to net a target of 200bhp at the flywheel for my 944 but it seems like the engine is too tired with excessive blow by at high revs to make it a viable base. Which was confirmed by a trip to Project9 Engineering yesterday.

Thankfully the base mapping of the other project car went well. But more on that at a later stage.

Gary from GTart was our tuning meister for the day and he certainly knows his way around an engine - this was one of his builds:






The current condition of the aging 944 2.5 8v has no doubt been accelerated by it's daily use ferrying my family and it's stint strapped to the dyno. While I decide what action to take, I'm torn between tuning an 8v to reach 200bhp on a modest budget or an engine swap with a more modern powerplant plumbed in. We'll see what transpires after a few more chats & research.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Dan Gliubizzi19 April 2011 at 21:25

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Red Car19 April 2011 at 21:31

    Thanks for the post. You have given me a few ideas and options. My 1983 has half the miles, but has lived a rough life. I had not considered an engine upgrade!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Engine out the top - Easy Peasy

After reading numerous posts, the Porsche workshop manual and Clarks Garage step-by-step engine removal guide - I felt confident enough to tackle the job. But I wanted to remove the engine from the top.  As I discovered, it was pretty straight forward even for a novice! Result. I wanted to avoid removing the cross member and disturb the front suspension to do something I was convinced could be done easier from the top. Posts such as this one convinced me to give it a go at least. And I'm glad I did. In summary I was able to remove the engine from the top without needing to remove the bonnet/hood; torque tube; transaxle; bellhousing; clutch; clutch slave cylinder; cross member; front suspension; and radiator. Contrary to many so called internet experts opinions and many confusing threads this was painless and without dread. All that was necessary to remove was the starter; power steering pump and alternator (I figured to make the bottom of the engine narrower); intak
19 comments
Read more

New Steering shaft bearing Nightmare removal

In my quest to tighten up the handling on the 944, I bought a new Needle Bearing from Porsche in an attempt to eliminate the fore-aft play in the steering at the top universal joint. The part number for the replacement is 477.419.059 and costs £88.86 posted from an OPC. Nothing like the effort required to actually remove the old one... I began the process by reading section 48 of Porsche Workshop manual. It appeared a simple enough process but two things bothered me: firstly, it required a chisel to remove a shear bolt (which in my limited experience never "shear"; and secondly a drill to remove two screws from the ignition lock. I was bothered because a quick look under the dashboard made it quite obvious that whoever had written the manual hadn't performed this task - well not without a dashboard in place that's for sure. I was bothered before I'd even started. Furthermore, the manual doesn't detail the replacement of this bearing at all - just the rem
3 comments
Read more

Bellhousing & Clutch fork removal

Removing the bellhousing from the Porsche 944 engine is not as complicated as it may seem - such as in this situation with my replacement engine. When I removed the original engine I detached it from the bellhousing in the car and removed the clutch pressure plate bolts through the starter motor hole - see my other post for details . In this case I decided to remove the clutch fork pivot shaft bolt. Begin by removing the four 17mm bellhousing bolts - you'll find that the bellhousing doesn't detach completely from the engine. It'll feel like its hooking on something. That something is the clutch fork pivot shaft inside the bellhousing. The bellhousing will be loose enough to rotate - turn it 180 degrees and peek through the access port which is now on top - this is what you'll see: If the engine is still in car you'll be looking at this from underneath. The pivot shaft needs to be extracted from the clutch fork. It's held in place by a small bolt on the
5 comments
Read more