Porsche 944: Actually there is a substitute

[sparkydog]

And I'm getting used to a new feeling on this build - arrival of new parts!
I needed more weld-thru primer and this snowballed into some electrical goodies. The remote jump start posts are wayyyy to large for my svelte little car so I'm going to send them back and search for something smaller. It is great for off-roading or racing applications but not what I had in mind when I clicked to add it to my shopping cart.

The 150amp breaker will go into my feed line to the fuse/relay box.

Let's see if Mrs. Sparky will notice the Summit stickers on her fridge!

[sparkydog]

Yesterday it was back to the jyard for a few hours of harvesting harness technology.

I returned to the same Benz that had given me the 13ft batt cable - where I proceeded to grab the loom from the right side of the car just because it gave me lots of wires & vac lines with almost no effort for removal from the car. I especially like the cool little vac line manifold! (No idea where or why I needed this loom but we'll see what I can come up with.)

And then on to a 2000 Firebird to get the section of main loom that goes from the fuse block into the dash and feeds the key and interior fuse block. I chose the f-body as a donor because it has the fuse block up near the headlights. This meant that the wire loom length was going to be relatively long. And I want it as a possible way to get my main power feeds from the fuse block behind the drivers seat up to the dash area with maybe only 1 set of wire splices.

I am hopeful/confident that many/most/all of the wires in the pigtail from my 2000 Grand Am fuse block will mate up to the same wires in the pigtail out of the 2000 Firebird. I'd like to be able to splice just off size/color codes rather than have to actually stare at a schematic.

In the last photo you can see that I might make it. On the left side there is about 1ft of overlap between the fuse block pigtail and the start of the Fbody section. Then up the side of the tunnel and on the right side of the picture is the interior fuse block and the main junction blocks. I might be able to mount the interior fuse block somewhere near the 944's glove box. We'll see in a few months when I get to the "make sparks" phase of the build.

[TexasLS1]

Haha the wedge-o-stick is quite innovative. Not gonna lie, I'll be adding that "tool" to my bag of tricks hahaha!! Awesome work as usual!

[Palf70Step]

AS always, enjoy seeing how you will mate something together that wasn't supposed to be!

[sparkydog]

Thanks for the continued interest in my build guys!

Well a little progress - the drive shaft tunnel will eventually need to be widened. With my engine shifted 1" to the right the tunnel will need to encroach into the passenger seat. So first up I added 4 simple tabs to the passenger seat rails and this moves the seat 1-5/8" out.

Next up is fabbing the trans tunnel. I mocked up the HVAC unit just to double check clearance and discovered that I no got any - clearance that is. In those photos you should be able to see that I've already cut out the bottom of my 944 HVAC housing. I did this in order to understand what lay inside the housing in that area and learn whether I have any wiggle room in that direction. I don't. Now I have more work for myself! (To re-seal the HVAC housing.) For now I have decided to just press on with the tunnel fab and know that I've got an issue there. When I'm back on the K member mods I may be able to drop the motor lower. If I do then I can come back to the tunnel and tweak it a bit to open up some room.

A final shot of the start of the tunnel fab. I'm enjoying this little task. The donor metal (dark gray) is courtesy of a Brother R450 CNC mill from my work. These mills come from the factory with a "shroud kit" that we never use. Each kit has about 4 large pieces of flat sheets. They were headed to the scrap bin but a few are now in my garage.

[Palf70Step]

Looks almost ready to drive.

[sparkydog]

I managed to get most of the trans tunnel fabbed this weekend. I should call it the bomb shelter - it's pretty darn stout. The new metal is probably 2-3X thicker than the material on the 944.

[sparkydog]

I finished the detailed section of my pocket in the floor where the Cat converter will tuck into. I had to put a small clearance pocket into the top of it so that it would clear the passenger seat rail.

That meant the trans tunnel area was 95% done. Since I had built it around the motor and trans while they were in the car, I felt it was time to discover whether the motor and trans could be removed.

I was glad I did this because there were a couple of small issues where I will need to add some more clearance in the footwell of the pass side.

I also learned that if I pick the motor using the middle exhaust header pipes, the motor hangs at the perfect angle to come up out of the engine bay. I didn't even need to rig a 3rd leg to my hoist.

[sparkydog]

And with some primer on it.

[fear_nothing]

Any updates? This has been a fun project to follow so far!

[sparkydog]

I yanked the motor and trans out and then finished my mods to the firewall/trans tunnel on the pass side (no photos). Next up was to finish the mods I made to the K member. I added some gussets to the motor mount areas on both sides and then it was time for the curved piece of 1/4" that would form the cavity for the A/C compressor.

[sparkydog]

In order to form the curved piece I first had to fab up my low-budget bending die. I found a photo on the internet that gave me the idea for the basic design of it. For what I needed it worked like a champ. We have a giant hand arbor press at work that made short work of the bends.

[sparkydog]

After that it was fun to lay some "large" beads down on the K member - and then I painted it - the 4th thing on the car that is painted!

[sparkydog]

I now have the trans and engine separated so that I can inspect the clutch disk, flywheel and throwout bearing - and make some mods to the slave cylinder fittings. I am tempted to mate the trans up to my L67 block and stuff that combo back in the 944. I have to finish off the top of the firewall area and I'd kind of like to do this with the L67 supercharger on in order to try and clear the throttle body and air intake. But only if the mockup of the trans onto the L67 goes quickly - otherwise I'll just put the L36 back in (as that will be the initial motor it runs with).

[sparkydog]

I swapped the T5 over to the L67 and stuffed it into the 944. Welp there's the L67 mocked up. Some minor clearance issues with the throttle body and EGR valve (they had to come off just to get it to fit). I'm going to have to come to Jesus with myself about using the 944's HVAC unit... there's no way to do that and be able to pass CARB inspection with the L67 supercharger. The only way to rig the L67 in the engine bay is to convert the space originally occupied by the HVAC unit over to a space occupied by the L67's air intake and EGR hardware.

(In the photos I have the L67 throttle body bolted to the SC intake by only 1 of the 3 bolts - so that it is staggered up in the air above the 944 firewall.)

The last photo is where the EGR is supposed to be located. And I have a secondary issue in that the L36 exhaust manifold does not have a port for the EGR connection. Oh well if it was easy then everybody would be sticking L67's into their 944.

[sparkydog]

Ehh - who needs HVAC? I'll worry about that later.

Off with the nasty 944 metal that was getting in the way of my L67 throttle body and EGR valve. There, that's better!

Now I have even more fab work ahead - I'll need to box that area in, isolate it from whatever ends up being my HVAC air inlet, finish the top of the firewall - while at the same time adding some structural tubing to tie future shock tower struts into the center of the firewall.

[sparkydog]

I was wandering around the wrecking yard a few weeks ago. At the time I was looking for ideas for cup holders. Yes the lowly cup holder - but that's for another post. While I didn't have any success with that, I did stumble across a older 5-series BMW that had this stuff on it.

$30 later it was my stuff. Different forward tilt hood hinge tech. Yes I already spent dozens of hours fabbing my current hinge stuff. But why do things once or twice when you can do them 3 times?

[Palf70Step]

Sounds like me...3 or 4 times before your close to finalizing things.

[sparkydog]

Glamour shot of the front motor mounts.

New windshield!

Starting to fab up the new cavity for the future home of the L67 throttle body.

[sparkydog]

My daughter and I put the 944 hood on so I could check clearance between my firewall cross bar/top and the bottom of the hood. There wasn't any - so I compensated on the cross bar and then welded it in. Now there is about 1/4" which will be where a seal goes.

[sparkydog]

Details of the bar structure. And shots of the mostly finished "L67 annex/box" area where the 944 HVAC used to live.

[sparkydog]

And then there was the trans mount. I changed it again. I wanted more room on the passenger side so that my future/imaginary exhaust pipe can make the turn from the cat down under the drive line. So I hacked off one leg of my weldment and then used the now obsolete trans bracket 2.0 to help position the new attachment point. This means I will now need to design trans bracket 3.0.

And the final pic is a reminder to my future self that there is a hidden bolt location for the 944's wiper frame. It's tucked waaaay up under the center of the windshield were no one would ever suspect!

[sparkydog]

Two questions for the tribe:
1) Is anyone familiar with GM clutch/flywheel/spring plate stackup and want to comment on the worn off flywheel bolt heads from the clutch plate spring tabs? What caused this? (pics 1&2 the shiny bolt heads are like that on all 8 bolts. Pic 3 the shiny part just inboard of the springs is what rubbed the bolt heads.)

2) If I re-surface my flywheel it's $65. If I buy a new flywheel from Rockauto it's about $65 with freight. So I want to buy a new one. But I seem to remember something about how on the V6's maybe a new flywheel needs to be match-drilled/balanced to mimic the old one? (Or am I confusing issues with swapping a V6 motor from auto to manual trans?)

[aussiejohn]

Clutch disc in the wrong way around.

Regards from Down Under.

aussiejohn

[sparkydog]

Kind of getting my arse kicked with new parts. Clutch kit from Rockauto missing the throwout bearing - so back it goes and Sparky adds another week to how long it takes to get this car running. Next a small win - I surfaced my own flywheel using one of our grinders at work.

And then... went to put it back on the motor using the new flywheel bolts from Rockauto and they are too big. This started a long and frustrating search on the internet. Every parts list on the internet says that the crank/flywheel bolts should be 7/16 dia but mine are not on either the l36 out of the Camaro or the L67 out of a Park Ave. My bolts are prob metric and about 5/16-ish. (In the photo the bolts the interworld says are correct are on the left and the bolt size that actually works are on the right.)