1985 Porsche 944 LS Swap (take 2) - 4.Great

[Rally Pat]

Man I am behind on updates, but also I haven't done a lot the last few weeks. I've spent the last few weekends working on family member's cars. More on that soon. Hopefully since everything has settled down again, maybe I can do some stuff this weekend.

[iwashmycar]

LS swap thread had me wondering about this one!

[Rally Pat]

I'm still here, I'll update ASAP. Cliffnotes: I got a new truck and have been servicing family member vehicles, and in my spare time I've been trying to get my AWS certifications. I have to stuff to post, I just need to do it. Its actually quite a bit of effort to make the write ups and format the img codes and whatnot.

 

Thanks for being patient!

[Otis Nice]

It's all good. Projects are just that: projects. They get worked on when they get worked on and sometimes "life" gets in the way.

[Rally Pat]

Its been nearly a year since the last time I posted in this thread and even longer since I updated on the car itself, and I really feel like I owe you guys an explanation. Its been so long I had to have a mod reopen the thread (thanks Mitch).

 

Around this time last year, things started to go sideways for my wife and I. First, my cousin was landscaping our house and in return I was servicing his vehicles and this took a few weeks. Then, shortly after that, our oldest dog that my wife had for 14 years got incredibly sick and had to be put to sleep, which took a pretty big toll on us. At the same time and after that, I was spending literally all my free time in classes online to expand my skillset to try to reach the next tier of my career in IT. Literally go to work, work, come home from work, study till bed, repeat.

 

After that, we found out my wife was pregnant. My wife has health issues that make her a high risk pregnancy, so my time was spent taking her to doctors appointments and making sure she was as comfortable as possible. At the same time, my studies continued, and being an IT contractor it was time to switch clients again so I was starting a new job at Honda Research and Development, driving an hour each way to work every single day. \

 

We made it through every single milestone that we were worried about with regard to my wife’s conditions and how they could impact the baby’s health with basically no problems…..then we made it to the anatomy scan. To make a very long, crushingly depressing story short, we lost the baby at 20 weeks. This has messed us up pretty bad, and was causing me stomach issues so bad they thought I had colon cancer and I had to have my first colonoscopy at 32 years old. I’m fine, thank goodness. Things continue to get a little better each day. I am leaving the world of IT contracting to go back to a full time job with people I used to work with who sought me out to fill a specific role, which I hope will calm things down. I’ll actually have vacation and good benefits for the first time in years, which is great.

 

Anyway, a lot of you guys are my friends and know all this already, but I felt like I should recap anyway. I am starting to work on the car again because I really need the distraction and it sucks to not have anything to take to any of the car meets and whatnot. I still probably won’t have it done this summer, but I AM working on it semi-regularly again.

 

I have updates from stuff I did a year ago and never posted, I will start with that stuff and then we will see where I go from there. We are in the stage of the project where I have to start dealing with the little fiddly stuff like making the power steering/hydroboost work with a pump it was never meant to, getting the cooling system plumbed up, cleaning up the wiring, getting the clutch hooked up and bled, etc. I need to make a list, but thats where we are at.

 

Thanks for being patient.

[zeitgeist57]

WORST BUILD UPDATE EVER

 

J/K of course. I'm very sorry to you and your wife, Pat. Thank you for sharing your personal struggles and I hope you both continue getting to a better place. <3

 

Looking forward to developments when you can share. If anything on this beautiful 4th of July, you're inspiring me to update my RV thread.

[10phone2]

pat sorry to hear about the struggles, but you made it past them. looking forward to the updates of the 944

[Otis Nice]

Its been nearly a year since the last time I posted in this thread and even longer since I updated on the car itself, and I really feel like I owe you guys an explanation.

 

First off you don't owe any of us anything. Understand that. For your own sake.

 

Secondly, as someone who has lost 2 kids, let me tell you that I get it. I think each situation is a bit different but from someone who has dealt with it twice and in two very different ways myself I get it.

 

You take care of you and yours, do what's best for you, and work on the car as you see fit. Updating this thread should be the LEAST of your concerns.

 

I'm looking forward to seeing you get back into the swing of things, as hard as that can be sometimes, and keep moving forward.

[Rally Pat]

Alrighty, lets do this. These early posts are literally from a year ago, so hopefully I don’t forget stuff.

 

Picking up from the first start following Scott tweaking the ECU.

 

I decided to turn my attention to the cluster and getting everything working on it, starting with the tach. This was pretty simple: Find the wire for it, hook it up to the tach line on the LS harness. For some reason, LS’s put out a 4cyl tach signal, so no weird adapter/converter is needed to adjust the accuracy or anything like that. Will have to verify with HPTwizzlers at some point to make sure, but it seems accurate as is. The green and black wire is the tach input.

 

I hooked up the appropriate wire, and got the tach to bounce, but suddenly the car wouldn’t start. Given that this was a year ago, I can’t really remember why, but I think it may have been the fact that I couldn’t yet manipulate the throttle from inside the car. If you recall, Scott turned off just enough nannies for the car to run, but it is very much still unhappy.

 

 

[Rally Pat]

With the issues I was having starting the car by myself, I turned my attention to the throttle setup so that I can operate the throttle alone. The kit comes with a pretty generic carb throttle cable, which is really disappointing, and another thing on the list of stuff from this “kit” that I could do better and cheaper if I did it all over again.

 

Trying to be as frugal as I can and keeping in the spirit of Matt Happel’s builds, I repurposed the truck throttle cable mount. Flipped it upside down, massaged it with a grinder, and drilled a couple of new mount holes through where the corvette one would normally go. Its not pretty, but it’ll do.

 

[Rally Pat]

Just needed a couple of washers to help get it to fit the bracket, and it was good to go.

 

Since the next part involved getting under the dash, and I am not exactly a gymnast, I took the driver seat out. Of course, the damn allen bolts were pretty stripped out but I somehow got em out. Under the seat was all sorts of crap, so I took some time to clean as much up of it as I could. Put down a pad to lay on, and started work under the dash.

 

[Rally Pat]

Heres where the cable comes out through the firewall. Attaching it to the pedal wasn’t a big deal, just had to drill out the nubbie for the stock cable and fit the pin through. The hardest thing I actually had trouble with was getting the pedal out and back in.

 

[Rally Pat]

Last part of this was finding a cable stop that would fit and making it work. Once again, the ‘kit’ just comes with a bunch of off the shelf stuff and expects you to figure it out.

 

One of the things I hate dealing with on any car is a throttle cable, and the stop that was the perfect size for the 4.8 throttle body had a hole that was too small to fit the cable through. Drilled it out, get it hooked up, seems to work good. Tossed the cluster back in to see if the tach would work now that I could make the engine run.

 

[Rally Pat]

With that working, I wanted to take a look under the car to start planning out what Im going to do for the exhaust. One reason the ECU is so unhappy right now is that the O2 sensors are not plugged in. I still had the manifolds and O2 sensors that came with my engine, and thought maybe the 3 bolt flange on the truck manifolds were the same as the 3 bolt flanges on the headers froim the kit. They are not. Still not sure what to do with the exhaust at this point. Do I pay to have someone do it? I called a few places last year (when I took these pictures), and I think I was quoted like $2000. Will have to revisit this when its time.

 

For aesthetics and cost savings, I’ve been talking about going into a Y and into a factory 944 Turbo muffler I have. I asked around, and general consensus seems to be that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal if I had that setup power loss wise.

 

[zeitgeist57]

Great little updates.

 

Engine Masters on MotorTrend did a few exhaust mods, and going Y into exhaust piping sized for the engine volume displaced actually made the MOST hp over H-pipes and true duals. The 944 muff may be a bottleneck but you may just give up a few Hp up top in the RPM’s...you’ll have good torque down low.

[Trouble Maker]

Pat, so sorry to hear everything that's happened with you and your family over the last year or so! Like Otis said, you owe us nothing. Just glad you're able to get some wrenching therapy in now.

 

How much longer if any will you be at R&D? I'm mostly work from home, but if your still there and working in office, I could swing in one day and we could grab some lunch.

[Mace1647545504]

Pat as was said before you don't owe us anything..ESPECIALLY.. with all the issues you've been going through !

 

Never lost a child but my sister has lost all 3 of hers and it's horrible.

 

Heal your family first as that is the most important thing.

 

Good Luck

[Rally Pat]

I put in an order for a few things to make the rest of the gauge cluster work, as well as a brand new clutch master cyl. The heads on an LS are ambidextrous, they are the same casting no matter what on both side and can be switched around. As it also turns out, the Porsche coolant temp sensor has the same threads as the GM sensor, so in order to get the temp reading on the dash, all you have to do is remove a plug and thread in the Porsche sensor. Now, I have mine cut out of the harness, so I need to figure out how to wire it back up to whats left of the body harness, but that is an easy win.

 

 

[Rally Pat]

Probably gonna catch flack for this one, but the car I have didn’t come with a brake master cyl or the reservoir that goes with it. I need the reservoir more than the master, since the res feeds not only the brake master but also the clutch master. I found a 944 S2 one on ebay for pretty cheap, and picked it up. I am actually considering running the master as it came if it functions, otherwise I will pick up a new one. Its more money than I want to spend, but I will if I have to. To add to that, because the Hydroboost ads a few inches to the firewall to tip of master cyl length, I need to figure out a way to extend the stock brake lines to the master. I know there are products that do this, but I haven’t purchased anything yet.

 

[Rally Pat]

I ordered a new Porsche oil pressure sender, and an adapter to help it fit in the GM location. At first, I ordered the wrong size, because of course I did, but I go the right one eventually: M16x1.5 Male to M18x1.5 female. Thread that in to the engine, thread the Porsche sender in to that, wire it back up to the lines that you cut like an idiot when taking the old harness out.

 

[Rally Pat]

Unrelated but sorta related to the build, around this time I procured a 2002 Tahoe from my Father in Law that I am so madly in love with I sold my 17 Civic to Carmax. I felt nothing for that car lol. This thing has been a little project in itself, I’ve done lots of stuff to it. Replaced all the speakers, replaced the factory Sub with an upgraded one, installed a Chinese 10 inch android head unit and back up camera, installed a dash cam as well. Its pretty awesome. May ruin it with a turbo kit some day.

 

[Rally Pat]

Over the past year, I've become quite fond of these Chinese Android head units and grabbed another 10.1 inch single DIN like my truck has to throw in the Porsche. Just messing around here, set it in there to see what it might look like.

END OF THE 2020 PROJECT PROGRESS, EVERYTHING FROM HERE ON IS RECENT

 

[zeitgeist57]

I threw some $60 eBay clear headlight/parking lights on my Silverado, does a TON for the look of the front end as well as light output at night.

[Rally Pat]

Meanwhile, in 2021....

 

This is the first time I worked on the car since last year. The intake manifold was off, I don't remember why, maybe to make accessing the oil pressure sender easier? Its one of those situations where you come back to something after a long time and its like picking up some other person's work. Either way, I really wanted to hear it again, so I slapped it back together and gave it a crank. Battery was super dead, charged and reconditioned it overnight. I must have sealed some vacuum leaks or something because it runs alright on its own now without me touching the throttle.

 

[Rally Pat]

After I got the car running again, I wanted to go back to getting the Oil Pressure sender wired back up. Not knowing if this was going to work or not, I just loosely twisted the wires together to get it tested. I will clean this up later when I finalize more of where the LS harness stuff meets the Porsche Harness. 4 bar is 60-ish psi, looks like its working alright for a beat up truck motor.