Living with a Porsche 944

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.

The exhaust manifolds on the S cars are quite different to the 8v. As I'm fitting the later versions I wanted to cover them in heat wrap before installing. After soaking the heat wrap in water, it was simply a matter of winding it around the manifolds - I used a 5m length for each. The ends are secured with stainless steel ties - I found using a vice grip made it easier to tighten them up. Not the prettiest looking stuff but the idea is to keep engine temperatures down as much as possible - plus it's something I wanted to do.... Getting the manifolds in place proved to be impossible until I lifted the right hand side of the engine with an engine hoist - so it tipped towards the opposite side of the car. Loosen the engine mount bolts on the right hand side! I attached the engine hoist loop from the alternator bracket using the threaded hole for the water return rail. Remove all the engine studs also using the double bolt method as it makes movin...

The alternator had been rebuilt not long ago but it was in need of a refresh cosmetically before going into that nice clean engine bay. So I gave it a degunk, and wire brushing before applying a coat of high temp aluminium spray paint... But before fitting it into the engine bay it was attached to it's nice freshly powdered alternator bracket! Then, and only then, did it seem right to fit it! It's looking good in there!

This is the most exciting bit so far - finally dropping in the engine. It's a Milestone celebrated with some champagne! With the engine on the hoist, it was time to do the final prep in the bay - I removed the radiator to make a little extra space, and decided that things would be so much easier with the bonnet off too - an extra pair of hands made that a simple task (I marked it's position for ease of reassembly)...the underside of the hood needs some attention so it's much easier to do that with it off. T he new clutch friction plate was inserted into the bell housing after giving the lightened pressure plate one last clean with brake cleaner: The new hydraulic engine mounts were next - interestingly the holes for the engine mount bolts are threaded so there's no need for fitting the fiddly nuts underneath... I secured the rerouted wiring harness so as to avoid any damage from the nicely cleaned engine mount brackets - clean parts rule! In...