Our Wild 944 -- Chevy V8 powered Porsche !

Time has been flying by, sorry for not updating earlier. We are in the home stretch, almost got the car fired last weekend 04/02 but the exhaust was giving me a few problems, always seems that way, the last thing that has to go in has to go around everything else, but it’s getting there. Ethan and his friend Reggie have been doing the wiring for the last couple of weekends; they have it all ready to go. All the gauges are in and functioning, the main thing left is a bunch of small sheet metal jobs to get done before we can think of paint. The front end went back together last weekend as well, I finished the break cooling ducts, the metal parts and got it all lock-tited up and installed, added the flexible cooling tubing to the break blowers and they clear the tires nicely. Just ordered the NACA DUCTS for the rear quarter windows so we can cool the rear brakes, we plan on replacing the quarter windows with plastic and adding the clear plastic ducts. I found some really nice 3 inch silicone cooling hose on E-bay, it was govt. surplus and half the price of regular cooling hose, very nice stuff.

We have been working on a fiberglass hood and sun roof to take some weight off the car. This is coming along but is still in need of some more work, see progress pictures, we plan on having these covered in carbon Fiber wrap to help with reflections. Another area of some change is in the air cleaner, I had purchased a high flow air cleaner but that just ended up being way to large to see around, so I dug around in my good old stuff pile and came up with a very cool 1060’s top fuel drag car scoop. This scoop takes a smaller filter element but we plan on putting an filter cross to top for more flow, the only problem with using this scoop is that it bolts to the carb so a rather large hole will need to be put in the fiberglass hood, but that’s O.K. Lots of little things to get done – keep watching!

Wow what a winter. Been really cold up here so not as much headway as I would like. Where are we now? Front suspension is almost done, we are reinforcing the stamped steel A-Arms with 1 inch thick wall square tubing. The lower A-Arms have always been suspect on the 944, a person can go with the aluminum ones but frankly they are not much better – just lighter. We are going to be under weight so I have no problem adding a few pounds to the un-sprung weight of the car. Building new lower A-arms bushings from aluminum and small roller bearings, the rear caster bearings are too much work and we will buy them. Have the new upper camber plates coming. We got a set of really nice OUTLAW 4 piston brake calipers for a great price, the bolt pattern for the mounts are slightly different than the Porsche caliper mounts so we just made an adapter plate and they fit great. Set the motor into its final position and built the front motor mounts, these are removable along with the front motor plate – rock solid; we mounted the front solid because we made the trans mounts solid. Started the dash this weekend, making it out of aluminum, I’m thinking we will cover it in carbon fiber wrap so it isn’t too much of a glare, putting the same carbon fiber wrap on the center counsel. A couple of weeks ago we did manage to mount the peddle assembly. We also decided to re-locate the side door roll cage bar on the driver’s side, just way too hard to get in and out for these old bones. I want to run, but not get my back all messed up back every time I get in and try to get out again– getting old sucks. Building the radiator mount right now, radiators are always a pain in the rear and this one is no different. We built an aluminum fan shroud that encloses the radiator and steel angle to support it in the car, should be done this week. Really hoping to fire this baby off in two weeks, just waiting on some AN fittings and a fuel cell.

Lots of pictures to come – so stay tuned.

Well, we got a little bad news this last week. Seems the wing we wanted to run is not legal in SOLO events. That is too bad, it really looked good, and this really lowers the COOL factor a bunch.

Anyway, we got some good stuff done. The driver’s side rear fender is taking shape and I got some extra practice time in on my new TIG welder and that allowed us to get the bell housing patched up. Now we can get the clutch and pressure plate on the motor and set the distance for the hydraulic throw-out bearing. I also need to measure the length of the input shaft on the Porsche torque tube, I need this in order to complete turning the Pilot Bearing holder I’m making in order to install it in the Chevy crank. Last weekend we build the center counsel to hold the fuse blocks, power switches for the fans, brake blowers and water pump, as well as, the brake bias control knob. This will be covered in Carbon Fiber style material and should look very cool. I also took a set of carbon Fiber looking side mirrors that were originally for a Honda civic and modified them to fit the Porsche. They have a plastic mirror housing and I used a very hot heat blower that is used to repair vinyl fabric to heat the mirror mount and bend it to match the contours of the Porsche window frame, after that I made up a metal mounting plate on the inside of the window. LOOKING GOOD!!! Pictures soon.

Wow, been awhile since we updated you all, sorry about that, but mid summer stuff getting in the way – you know how it is. O.K. let get you caught up. Lets start with the front end. We built the brake blower intakes and we were trying to mount everything up – BUT something was wrong, nothing was fitting? After trying to make it all fit, I decided we needed to take the entire front end apart. We found out very quickly that when I first welded up the radiator intake area, I missed the boat and got it way off square. So we got the cutoff wheel out and cut it all loose and after making it all square – guess what – it all fit – go figure!

The brake blower ducts were easy, I just measured around the blowers and added an extra ½ inch, sheared off some 19 gauge and punched a ½ inch flange, wrapped this around the blower and tacked it when wrapped, slipped it off and welded it up. I cut two discs to fit the opening and welded them up, a little black paint and away we go. The plastic fans are pop riveted to the ducts. We cut a ring from an of aluminum street sign we got from the salvage yard and chucked it in the lathe and trued up circles, drilled a few holes and mounted it up to the brake blower, we also added some cool black mesh we salvaged off of an of computer server cabinet we took to the salvage yard.

We finally got the gauge panel going, we cut a metal back plate and matched up the gauge holes and welded a support back to the roll cage. I cut out the aluminum face plate and did some engine turning on it, just to spiff it up a little and Ethan made up all the wiring. We are still short one gauge for the gas gauge, but need to figure out what sending unit voltage we have before we order. We also bent up a center consol and an upright dash for the power/start/brake pressure gauges. We have yet to mount a pair of fuse blocks; these will go in the center consol back between the seats where they will be out of the way. We also will be adding a brake bias control knob just to the rear of the shifter. The shifter will be re-done to a short shifter style, we will go over that when we cut it all up.

We pulled the engine out so I could modify the oil pan, we needed to raise the forward section of the oil pan in front of the sump in order to clear the Porsche cross member, you can see by the pictures that we got about 1 ½ inche3s more of clearance. At this point we could fill it with 7 quarts of Royal Purple Break-in Oil and spin-up the oil pump after attaching the oil pressure gauge – make sure you get that gauge hooked up first or you get a Vesuvius of Royal Purple coming out of the oil pressure galley at the back of the motor as we did – quite impressive, except for the cleanup. We set the valves, locked down the Poli-Locks and installed the Stud Girdles.

I also got the front struts ordered so we can get the final assemble on the front suspension. We still hope to get this thing out this season for a little shake-down and then we can tear it all apart for final painting and detailing so we are ready to go in the spring. Well that’s all for now, check back soon!

Well we have been busy, last weekend we put the engine back in the car so we could work on mounting the splitter. We built the lower splitter mount and we set the splitter at 5.5 inches off the ground and about 6inches ahead of the upper splitter, this mount will also be part of the radiator mount. We spent a lot of time looking at the front fenders and figuring just how we were going to widen and mount the front fenders. We had thought about just building front fenders but we wanted to keep the Porsche look, so we just decided to widen the stock fenders. As you can see front the pictures, we cut 6 inch panels and put ½ inch flanges on them to get the 5 inch finish. We had to do the top in 3 pieces because we want to put Louvers in the center area, but the Louvers did come in the mail so we just left the hole open for now. We figured out where everything was going to fit and started drilling and putting in Cleco’s to hold everything so I could weld it all up. I also had to do some hammer and dolly work to get things lined up. I also had to build the fender mount in the rear just in front of the door. This all went well and we should have the front fenders all finished up next weekend, we are both pleased with the new wider and nastier stance. I also worked on the driver side headers, the headers on that side needed to be reworked, so I cut them apart and changed the angle in order to make it clear the steering.

Started getting everything ready for the motor build over the Memorial Day weekend. We matched the ports on the heads and intake manifold; this is a very important step in getting the most out of your engine. I can tell you one thing, porting an aluminum head is SOOOOOOO much easier than a cast head, it only took us 1 hour to do both heads and the intake. As you can see by the pictures in the gallery the ports narrowed at the top a great deal and by matching and softening the transition we made it flow much better. I reshaped the new Nascar Splitter that will go up high on the front end and got it bolted in place, (See Picks). We also built the gas cap door out of aluminum, I had the flip-up gas cap for many years and just didn’t use it on anything, but it works great here. I showed Ethan how to use the metal lathe to cut the backing plate, now we just need to mount it permanently with stainless steel bolts.

Should have lots more after the long weekend coming up.

Ethan took the block back to the machine shop so it could be washed out one more time after grinding and to install the cam bearing, we should be just about ready to put this beast together on Saturday, were’s hoping.

We picked up the block from the machine shop Saturday morning, he wanted us to do any grinding on the block we wanted too, we added a little relief on the block where the crank comes close, due to the stroker crank and we ground off all the flashings in the oil returns in the lifter valley.

I couldn’t resist the chance to mock-up the motor just to see what it was going to look like. Take a look at the pictures in the Photot Gallery, LOOOOKING GOOOOD. Just to walk you around the motor, it’s a 350 4 bolt main 80-85 block, bored 30 over, Scat 383 stroker crank kit, ProComp 5.7 inch rods clearance for the stroker, Probe forged pistons, ProComp Aluminum Heads, Procomp Air gap dual plane intake manifold, Cat Power gear drive timing gears, Don’t have the specs on the cam in front of me but it’s a flat tappet cam with over a half inch lift. We are using an electric water pump because we want to be able to bring the car in and keep the fan and water pump going in order to cool off the engine between rounds with 2 drivers. We also bought a Nascar front engine mount, and a low alternator mount, that along with the fabricated valve covers – she is looking very nasty.

We have been busy the last couple of weekends. Started cutting out some of the sheet metal panels for the right side of the rear quarter panel – Pictures to follow. Bid and won a few more parts from E-bay, got a new Moroso 3 qt. Oil Accumulator (ACCUSUMP), and another Nascar front Splitter for the front end, got a killer deal on the splitter at only $20.50 plus shipping. Pulled the old motor out this weekend and got it taken apart, went well except for 1 freeze plug that gave us fits, it popped inside the block and I swear we chased it all over that block, BUT we finally got that bugger. Ethan is taking the block to the machine shop today, we plan on having it bored .030 over, decked, line bored, cam bearings installed & hot tanked. We are going to lay out all the parts to make sure we have it all, so we will have pictures of it all soon!

This sunday we plan to finish tacking the quarter panles in place. Then we are going to start the wire framing to mold our quarters into our white concept photo.