Is the 944 4 cylinder interesting enough?
Discussion
Most of the 944 turbo modification movement is in the US where over 50% of the turbo's went.
Over there some people turbo the 3 litre 16 valve engine but to do that correctly is very expensive e.g to convert to a twin pulley timing system (using Honda timing pulleys, which won't fit under the bonnet), custom cams for a turbo 16 valve, adapting a suitable intake etc.
This build was the last car built by a firm called Gantspeed Engineering, based in Lincolnshire. I spent many years consulting engineers in the US, collecting parts and then working with Robert Gant to build a car which I felt would effectively be a GT3 RS version of the 944 turbo.
I wanted my 1990 MY car to retain its original matching numbers block, hence machining away the bores entirely and fitting Darton Modular Integrated Deck (MID) sleeves in a 104mm bore size to give me a capacity of 2688 cc using the 78.9mm stroke.
This car has a full interior, original sound deadening and looks standard apart from sitting a little lower on 18' wheels and the exhaust tail pipe being slightly larger.
I've moved to ductile iron liners to make the engine stronger & close the deck. Finding someone to correctly lap alusil bores is getting increasingly difficult & even then you'll still have an open deck which starts to experience bore "fret' at around 400 bhp & are prone to bore ovality at higher boost levels.
The devil is in the details, things like the billet front hubs or the brand new Porsche uprights which were tapped and threaded to take the pins from the billet control arms where Porsche used a pince bolt system and cast aluminium arms.
Other projects have meant I've just put it on ice for a while, but it's nearly there.
In 1989 Baz Hart of Hartech took a group of clients on a tour of the Porsche factory in Zuffenhausen. They were being guided by the Head of Engineering. One of the group asked him, rather cheekily probably expecting an evasive answer, what was the best car Porsche built. His unhesitating reply "The 944 turbo. Next question!"
Over there some people turbo the 3 litre 16 valve engine but to do that correctly is very expensive e.g to convert to a twin pulley timing system (using Honda timing pulleys, which won't fit under the bonnet), custom cams for a turbo 16 valve, adapting a suitable intake etc.
This build was the last car built by a firm called Gantspeed Engineering, based in Lincolnshire. I spent many years consulting engineers in the US, collecting parts and then working with Robert Gant to build a car which I felt would effectively be a GT3 RS version of the 944 turbo.
I wanted my 1990 MY car to retain its original matching numbers block, hence machining away the bores entirely and fitting Darton Modular Integrated Deck (MID) sleeves in a 104mm bore size to give me a capacity of 2688 cc using the 78.9mm stroke.
This car has a full interior, original sound deadening and looks standard apart from sitting a little lower on 18' wheels and the exhaust tail pipe being slightly larger.
I've moved to ductile iron liners to make the engine stronger & close the deck. Finding someone to correctly lap alusil bores is getting increasingly difficult & even then you'll still have an open deck which starts to experience bore "fret' at around 400 bhp & are prone to bore ovality at higher boost levels.
The devil is in the details, things like the billet front hubs or the brand new Porsche uprights which were tapped and threaded to take the pins from the billet control arms where Porsche used a pince bolt system and cast aluminium arms.
Other projects have meant I've just put it on ice for a while, but it's nearly there.
In 1989 Baz Hart of Hartech took a group of clients on a tour of the Porsche factory in Zuffenhausen. They were being guided by the Head of Engineering. One of the group asked him, rather cheekily probably expecting an evasive answer, what was the best car Porsche built. His unhesitating reply "The 944 turbo. Next question!"
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