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Old 05-08-2020, 05:06 PM
tomfree tomfree is offline
 
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Default OneLap build - '87 951 w/ LSx

For every build from someone like Engelbert (Rothaus) done with painstaking craftsmanship, care, skill, and most importantly talent...you have a build from someone who doesn't have the hand-on skill but still wants a great end product. Well, that's me. You always see the sticker "Built, not bought" on hot rods at car shows. Well, I suppose I should get a "Bought, not built" sticker for mine.

The car: '87 951, 98k miles on the tub, about 5K miles on the LS1 swap, freshened stock suspension and brakes. The car was a development mule for Texas Performance Concepts (www.texasperformanceconcepts.com) for their LS-swap kits, and was the personal car for the shop owner - Kent Marr. He took the car off the road a few years ago for a repaint and a bit of a resto. After the repaint, they dropped the motor back in the car, but someone mistakenly started it completely dry, trashing the motor in the process. At that point, the car was covered and stored to be finished "later"

Now it's 2 years later, Kent had a knee replacement and can't drive a manual trans comfortably any longer. He decided to sell the car as-is hoping to find a good home for it with someone who wanted to finish the resto, do a fresh motor, and put it back on the road. I enter the picture.

TPC is an engineering and parts shop, NOT a hotrod shop that does the installations. They partner with shops around the country, but their local favorite is "HotRodz of Dallas." Despite the god-awful shop name, Bob McAfee the shop owner is an PCA 944 racer, they've done a bunch of 944 LS conversions including the original swap on this car.

Both Kent and Bob have been great to work with so far, taking a lot of time to understand what I want to do with the car and help me plot out a project plan.

Here are some pictures of the car in it's current state for your entertainment Aside from shiny paint, it's a bit rough, but the bones are good. The price was pretty decent for the car, and the service has been first rate.

Wish me luck.
...and somebody buy my Boxster. The wife won't let me keep both of them.
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  #2  
Old 05-09-2020, 05:02 PM
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When you use the acronym "TPC" around here, people are going to think of Mike Levitis' shop, Turbo Performance Center.

Looks like you found what you're looking for. Good luck.

Also, when you talked about "a build from someone who doesn't have the hand-on skill but still want's a great end product," I'm reminded of this.

Peter
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2016 Cayman S
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2016 Toyota Highlander--tow vehicle/wife's DD
2017 VW GTI SE (DD)

Gone and missed:
1992 Miata ("SSM") race car
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2004 Toyota Prius - sold to son's girlfriend
2006 Dodge Durango
2003 Acura MDX
86 Black 911 Coupe race car
86 Gold 911 Targa
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  #3  
Old 05-09-2020, 11:04 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tomfree View Post
For every build from someone like Engelbert (Rothaus) done with painstaking craftsmanship, care, skill, and most importantly talent...you have a build from someone who doesn't have the hand-on skill but still wants a great end product. Well, that's me. You always see the sticker "Built, not bought" on hot rods at car shows. Well, I suppose I should get a "Bought, not built" sticker for mine.

The car: '87 951, 98k miles on the tub, about 5K miles on the LS1 swap, freshened stock suspension and brakes. The car was a development mule for Texas Performance Concepts (www.texasperformanceconcepts.com) for their LS-swap kits, and was the personal car for the shop owner - Kent Marr. He took the car off the road a few years ago for a repaint and a bit of a resto. After the repaint, they dropped the motor back in the car, but someone mistakenly started it completely dry, trashing the motor in the process. At that point, the car was covered and stored to be finished "later"

Now it's 2 years later, Kent had a knee replacement and can't drive a manual trans comfortably any longer. He decided to sell the car as-is hoping to find a good home for it with someone who wanted to finish the resto, do a fresh motor, and put it back on the road. I enter the picture.

TPC is an engineering and parts shop, NOT a hotrod shop that does the installations. They partner with shops around the country, but their local favorite is "HotRodz of Dallas." Despite the god-awful shop name, Bob McAfee the shop owner is an PCA 944 racer, they've done a bunch of 944 LS conversions including the original swap on this car.

Both Kent and Bob have been great to work with so far, taking a lot of time to understand what I want to do with the car and help me plot out a project plan.

Here are some pictures of the car in it's current state for your entertainment Aside from shiny paint, it's a bit rough, but the bones are good. The price was pretty decent for the car, and the service has been first rate.

Wish me luck.
...and somebody buy my Boxster. The wife won't let me keep both of them.
Congratulations and good luck with your build.

Tell the wife, I hope she finds a good home
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  #4  
Old 05-10-2020, 08:59 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr K View Post
When you use the acronym "TPC" around here, people are going to think of Mike Levitis' shop, Turbo Performance Center.

Looks like you found what you're looking for. Good luck.

Also, when you talked about "a build from someone who doesn't have the hand-on skill but still want's a great end product," I'm reminded of this.

Peter
I skimmed through that build thread, and it reminds me a lot of my first LeMons car build in '07-'08. I bought an '86 e30 325e and delivered it to my friend's shop in eastern NC where about 8 of us went crazy on the car all weekend. Gutted the interior, removed all the side glass, new belts, hoses, fluids, timing belt, etc., etc. We did the cage later, swapped in a shorter rear diff, and made it relatively safe. Lots of fun, lots of hard work, great experience. The best part - we actually won a race in that car by about 1/2 lap at CMP. If the race was 2 laps longer, the 2nd place car would have passed us.

You started (and finshed) a much better car - loved the pictures when it was completed but not all stickered-up yet. Menacing and purposeful.
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  #5  
Old 05-10-2020, 03:25 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tomfree View Post
I skimmed through that build thread, and it reminds me a lot of my first LeMons car build in '07-'08. I bought an '86 e30 325e and delivered it to my friend's shop in eastern NC where about 8 of us went crazy on the car all weekend. Gutted the interior, removed all the side glass, new belts, hoses, fluids, timing belt, etc., etc. We did the cage later, swapped in a shorter rear diff, and made it relatively safe. Lots of fun, lots of hard work, great experience. The best part - we actually won a race in that car by about 1/2 lap at CMP. If the race was 2 laps longer, the 2nd place car would have passed us.

You started (and finshed) a much better car - loved the pictures when it was completed but not all stickered-up yet. Menacing and purposeful.
Thanks
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2016 Cayman S
1999 Miata ("SM") race car
2016 Toyota Highlander--tow vehicle/wife's DD
2017 VW GTI SE (DD)

Gone and missed:
1992 Miata ("SSM") race car
2009 911 C2S Coupe
2004 Toyota Prius - sold to son's girlfriend
2006 Dodge Durango
2003 Acura MDX
86 Black 911 Coupe race car
86 Gold 911 Targa
82 WineRedMetallic 911 Targa
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  #6  
Old 06-22-2020, 08:43 PM
tomfree tomfree is offline
 
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I've been collecting some parts and working with both shops to make sure we're all on the same page with the scope of the job. It's slow going as my job is not allowing for a whole lot of clarity of thought for fun stuff lately.

Thanks to Dimi, I have a full 951 popup headlight assembly going to TX to replace the not-so-great GTS-bucket headlamps on the car. I'll populate those with some 7" LED sealed-beam replacements from Rothaus. (Englebert - I'm holding off on buying those until July to ease the pain on the credit card).

With the brake kit I'm planning to use (C6 Corvette Z06 calipers/Cayenne rotors on the front, 951 Front calipers on stock rear rotors for the back), I believe 18" wheels are mandated. With a goal of 400rwhp from the rebuilt LS1, I'm going to need a fair amount of tire on the car to go in the desired direction when I press the throttle.

I've purchased (4) 18x10 et 58 Carrera III wheels from a 997. It's a fairly common wheel on the 944, and I've found plenty of examples of running them as a square setup. I am hoping to fit at least a 275/35/18 at all corners, maybe a 285 if I get lucky. The 285 on the rear is a no-brainer. It may take some experimentation to get that much tire up front considering the relatively amount of neg. camber I'll get from a compromise street/track suspension.

I'll go deeper into the suspension conversation in another post, as I've gotten a few opinions elsewhere on the right combination of parts to make a 400hp 944 work well on track while not absolutely punishing me during the 8 days and 3500 miles of street driving between tracks. If I was smart, I'd have taken my budget for this and put it towards the nicest bone-stock 996 TT that I could afford.

I don't have a start date yet for when the shop will start the real heavy lift on the car, but that's my fault. I have to decide exactly which parts of the project that I want the shop to do, and which parts I'm willing to do once I have the car home.
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  #7  
Old 08-09-2020, 03:15 PM
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Due to madness at work for the last 6 weeks, I haven't even spoken to the guys in TX for a while. I should have some bandwidth next week and plan to get some more traction on this thing.

I did manage to buy my 2nd set of wheels for this thing locally. I have a set of 997-era Carerra III's for it in TX - all are rear wheels (18x10 et 58). These will be the track wheels and will fit the widest tires I can get on it, likely a 265 or a 275 on all corners. Today, I picked up another set of Carerra IIIs from Millersville. This set is the normal 18x8 fronts and 18x10 rears with decent street tires. Cosmetically, these are pretty nice, so they'll get non-track-day duty.

A buddy of mine was at a cars and coffee in Bethesda yesterday and saw an LT1-swapped NA 944 and showed me some pics - a nice little bit of motivation.
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  #8  
Old 08-18-2020, 04:48 PM
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Today was a good day - I officially kicked off the 951/LS1 project. It's going to take some time and money, but the first meeting with Kent Marr (Tx Perf Concepts) and Bob McAfee (HotRodz of Dallas) together on the phone today was good. The questions they asked me about the build told me that they understand what I'm looking for and they were realistic about the actual start date for the work. They've built a lot of LSx 944 cars together, understand the caveats, and know the stuff that does and doesn't work.

Bob has 2 cars in front of mine, one being a larger project that will likely run through the end of November. Work on the car is likely to last 6-8 weeks, depending on some of the routes I choose.

The first thing is the transaxle. In the LS 944 world, the 951 trans is better than the NA trans, but neither will live up to the torque of the LS for very long. Enter the 968 trans with LSD that Bob has in the shop. The gearing is not great for an LS, but they're MUCH stronger than the 951 trans. We're pursuing regearing options, but that's going to be $$$, so we shall see.
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  #9  
Old 09-04-2020, 09:26 AM
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Transaxle and suspension update:
- 968 transaxle
I ended up buying the 968 transaxle from Bob. On one of his previous LS swap customers, he had worked with a shop (name escapes me) that rebuilds and re-gears that 968 trans. It's not cheap, but it's one of those things that I'm investing in up front because it's ultimately what I want. The shop uses a taller final drive and different gearsets for several of the gears. I'm assuming they're using some mix and match parts from the European diesel VW/Audi transaxles that share the same basic architecture. I'll get a final document with all the new gearing and post it up here at some point. 6th gear should end up putting the car around 2K RPM at 80mph, depending on tire diameter. That should make the car a lot more pleasant on those long highway transits between tracks (as well as the drive from MD to VIR).

- Suspension - Remote reservoir / Triple Adjustable Motons
Massive overkill for me, but I got a deal I could not turn down. They're used, takeoffs from a 944 track car with about 50-60 hrs of use. Even if I have to rebuild them, it's still a better damper than I could buy new for that price. Being that I'll run relatively soft spring rates, being able to dial up the compression to compensate a bit will be a nice option.
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  #10  
Old 10-19-2020, 02:44 PM
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Transmission work is done and back at the shop with Bob. Here is the old and new gearing:

Final drive - unchanged - 3.778
1st - unchanged - 3.18
2nd - unchanged - 2.00
3rd - old 1.44, new 1.23
4th - old 1.11, new 0.96
5th - old 0.91, new 0.82
6th - old 0.78, new 0.56

So yeah, overdrive 4th, 5th, and 6th gears. 80mph in 6th should have it turning a little over 2K rpm on the highway, vs about 3100rpm with the original gearing. That should make the car a lot more livable for highway miles, as well as matching up better with the LS's torque on track.
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