Living with a Porsche 944

I finally completed the 'necessary' wiring under the dash for the tacho for my 16v S install - major milestone & big thanks to those who've helped so far esp. JonM, Rhett and Hallsy! I can't believe I'm actually at this point finally...    So this morning I topped up the coolant after fitting the new header tank -  ...checked everything was connected & tight, fitted the freshly charged battery and sat in the drivers seat...and turned the key. Turning the ignition I had lights on the dashboard - in fact the wipers going caught me by surprise! Waited a while then turned to ignition - and life! Starter motor turns strongly but no ignition. I did this in short bursts to help things get lubricated.  But - no start... I even tried with the ignition module disconnected and that strangely made no difference - turns over strongly but no start. 

The wired in igniiton module: Refitted the refreshed AFM: Out with the old yella and in with the new (let's play spot the expansion tank): Now i need to tidy up the wiring and connect the expansion tank coolant hoses then fill it up! I realised today tho that my exhaust is not connected to the down pipe - the later steel headers don't line up with my existing down pipe...gonna be a load first start I reckon!

Made some vital progress this evening - completed wiring in the ignition module to the ECU loom! I felt like a start is close now so I filled the engine with oil and put the battery on charge, just to top it up - I was surprised to find it had 12.6v charge even after not being used for 2 years... I'm glad it was new just before TheHoff went off the road. I'm also glad I checked the sump plug... I was really tempted to try to fire it up but figured I'd be cautious & better install the power steering pump reservoir which I duly did - I'm not sure the pump would enjoy running dry tho. Couldn't find the fluid so I'll have to grab some tomorrow. With a new expansion tank on order, that will need fitting when it arrives and then coolant - I bought Comma G48 - or something... While I'm waiting for that I'll wire in the tacho tomorrow - which will need a plug fitting under the dash whislt standing on my head.

After refreshing the injectors I fitted them along with the fuel rail and a longer fuel return line. Notice the nice red water return pipe… Fitted a perfect length flexible coolant hose from CBS which does away with the convoluted setup that was on the engine - fits nicely with the new intake and throttle body setup too. I ordered a new S2 oil dip stick guide tube from my OPC and fitted that along with a new seal. This one is a perfect fit for the S2 intake -  the 8v and S versions just don't fit correctly with all the hoses around the back of the intake manifold. Then it was time get underneath to refit the alternator belt and refit the power steering pump. Straight forward. I had the tensioners sand blasted along with the other bits previously, they cleaned up well and then with a little paint looked good enough to go back on. It's not good to look at the underneath of your car - you just want to clean everything!

As much of this engine was filthy and in need of a refresh and resealing, I thought it wise to do the fuel injector seals too! The 16v comes standard with the green top Bosch fuel injectors. I purchased a seal kit from Mr Injector that comes with the correct size seals plus the filters, shims & end caps. For about £20 it's a bargain. The seals are easy to remove, the only challenge is how to remove the filter that's inserted into the one end. I found a useful guide on Youtube. Secure a screw in a vice - about 4/5mm thick - then screw the injector onto the screw and pull away from the vice. The filter should be left behind on the screw. Easy peasy as they say. The new filter is simply pushed into the injector - I used the face of a flat head spanner to press against. But before I applied the new seals and inserted the filter - I gave the injectors a refresh! Firstly I masked up the ends... Popped them into a make shift spray booth: ...

After the preceding tragedy of the snapping a ring gear bolt I was left with no choice other than pulling the engine and everything in the engine bay out again - or in a fit putting The Hoff on eBay. S ense prevailed and I extracted the engine and gubbins to get access to the snapped bolt. It took two and a half hours to get the engine out on the hoist. Thankfully there was just enough of the pan head screw left sticking out from the flywheel to grab it in the jaws of a vice grip... ... And the offending bolt was out! Installation tip! Before I reinstalled the engine I made some marks on the flywheel indicating exactly where the 9 threaded holes were. These marks on the flywheel are visible through the starter motor hole. Which makes inserting the bolts so much less effort! I also tried as best I could to line up the holes on the flywheel and clutch pressure plate by eye so that when the motor is back in it should need only minor turning of th...

At this stage the last thing I needed was a snapped bolt. The ring gear is bolted to the flywheel with 9 pan head screws. Supplied by Porsche I wasn't expecting any problems bar the challenge of aligning the three sets of offset holes on the flywheel and ring gear on the clutch pressure plate. Inserting the bolts through the starter motor hole in the back of the bell housing is awkward enough but very difficult to align the three sets of three holes (more on this later!). I had my son turn the crank shaft via a long breaker bar while I inserted a pencil into the ring gear hole to find the corresponding threaded hole in the flywheel. Once I thought I'd figured out the sequence I inserted the first 6mm Allen head screw and began tightening it up. When it was tight I then gave it a crank with the torque wrench and twang! Snapped bolt. To say I was upset is an understatement. I could immediately envisage pulling the engine to get access to the remaining part of the bolt ...

I'm fitting an S2 intake and throttle body to my 2.5 16v. The S version is quite a lot smaller than the S2 - why I'm not certain. There seems to be many theories just as there are with the different intake versions - honestly the S2 version looks much better and according to guys who've done the swap with the 16vS cars it makes a difference. If the size of the throttle bodies is anything to go by - there's a lot more air going into the intake which can only be a good thing! I mean the difference in volume is like a big gulp and a sip! I mocked up the throttle body and S/S2 AFM I sourced - as my car had an 8v head the AFM is different - whether the internals are the same or not I'm can't say for sure but the Bosch connector is identical. It will be interesting to see whether the 16v S ECU will run the engine with the 8V version of the AFM... With the S2 intake bolted up, I offered up the S2 throttle body to the intake manifold and connected the h...

Ah yes sunny summer is over and TheHoff was beckoning from the garage on the weekend, so I ventured in... here's what I've been up to!  I solved a couple of my "what the heck connects to this?" issues I was having with the engine harness. The big round connector...  ...needed this resistor plugging in - got it off a bloke breaking yet another 944S (they're going to disappear soon at this rate) With that plugged in I dared to look under the gearbox at the rear and saw a great big oily puddle... ...this had more than a little perplexed as TheHoff hasn't been on the road except when I rolled it down the drive and onto the back of a car transporter when I moved a few months ago... the fix was easy (I hope), it turns out (hahahaha) that I mustn't have tightened the gearbox drainplug properly when I did an oil change - but that was 2 years ago... :-/  Anyway it's all tight now - only a spirited drive will tell if the gearbox has se...

The wiring harness was looking worse for wear so it needed fixing up before installing. A few nasty burn marks and melted shield: Broken boots: ... and exposed wires! I found some silicon Temptape from Car Builder Solutions that looked like it would do the trick of sorting out the wiring loom without needed a complete remake. After giving the harness a good wipe end to end, it was a matter of covering every nasty spot with Temptape. All in all a good result! I then needed to extend the wiring for the throttle position sensor - so snip snip...  ...join, extend and wrap... ...attach the sensor plug connector... and cover it in Temptape. Job done.