'83 944 as Track Day car.....

[roadiesean]

Hi, new to this forum, have found a 1983 944 in fantastic body condition and at a seemingly ridiculous price of £300 with another £400ish needed to MOT it. Am I getting into a money pit, or could it be a bargain. The body is mint with no rust and the car runs well. What sort of moolah am I going to be sinking into it to get it in great trackday condition. This will be my first ever trackday car, it will be road registered and used occasionally, but its for play more than anything else. A good option ???

Thanks in advance guys.

[GR4]

Any old car can cost money, but surely you couldn't go too far wrong at that price! If you find any nasty surprises when you get it then just sell it on and get most or all of your money back. A few years ago I took an old 175k miles 944 in part exchange for a car I was selling. I kept it for a year, did 3 track days in it, and all it cost me was a service. Maybe I was lucky, but that car was great fun. So much fun in fact that when I sold it I bought a 968 Club Sport.

[MadRob6]

The early 944s seem a bit limited for track day upgrades. There aren't as many options for suspension upgrades for example but with the square dash they are generally lighter.

£400 to get it through an MOT sounds like it could end up costing a lot more to get things up to spec. I've spent a few thousand on mine just getting the mechanicals sorted and there's still stuff left to do.

[GR4]

Depends how serious you are. You don't have to do anything to a road legal 944 to have fun on a track day. I didn't.

[roadiesean]

Thanks guys, what sort of things are we talking about in terms of prepping it for trackdays ? Rough guide to getting it ready would be handy.

[MadRob6]

As GR4 said it all depends on how serious you are. You can do nothing but make sure the mechanicals are all healthy and just get stuck in with standard kit. I'll be taking mine on track in mostly road spec eventually although I have upgraded to braided brake hoses after several recommendations and I'll be upgrading the suspension mostly as my shocks are completely knackered.

[thegoose]

I did exactly this in 2003/4 with a car a friend's father, and then him, had had from new, but had been standing for a number of months. I had it inspected, reckoned on £2k to get it ready and bought it for £2k. It didn't need anything to MOT it as far as I remember and was an extremely sound and straight shell but here's a list of things I did/had done in no particular order:

New clutch
Interior stripped (and sold)
Roll cage welded in
2 Seats & mounts
2 harnesses
Brake valve (lever to vary/reduce pressure to rear)
New dampers all round
Steel braided hoses
Porterfield racing brake pads
New belts/rollers etc
Full service
ATE blue brake fluid
Plumbed in fire extinguisher
Turbo ARB
PAS rack replaced with non-PAS one
Momo steering wheel & boss
Replacement recon fuel tank
New rubber gear lever gaiter
Passenger foot brace (£20 used item from a rally car of some kind)
Full geometry set up at Ninemeister
2 replacement gearboxes (£100-£120 each and not long to fit, so the cheapest option)

Unfortunately the engine was using an awful lot of oil and then failed through lack of oil (d'oh! and hence the massive CHECK OIL TWICE DAILY label on the dash!), I got a used one with 3 months warranty for £900, which lasted 4 months, then I did it properly and had a rebuild (just under £3k).

The wheels on it were from a Boxster (I sold the original, aged, cookie cutters) and in reality offered too much grip for the power the car had, so as I learnt how to drive quicker the car got a bit boring for me, but it was quite nicely balanced and a good intro to driving a proper RWD sports car on track. It had been prep'd for use as a track day tuition car though and was quite good for that. The Irish guy that bought it was taking it to his house near the Nurburgring for use there - I've never been but would guess as you learn it you'd soon grow out of the car, if you know what I mean.

I had it 2/3 years but little used from 2004/5 when I got my race car and racing took more of my time up. I sold it for £4500, but it had cost all told over £12,000. It rented out at £750-£1000 per day (including instructor, delivery & fuel) but I still lost plenty of money on it

[roadiesean]

Thanks Goose, this is exactly what I am looking for, hmmm.....got some thinking to do.........

[iguana]

I ran a 924S trackcar for a season, it was a little cracker & cost peanuts.

But I bought it 95% already sorted, it would have cost an utter forture to build to that spec, rough prices, v good base car 2k (it was the least rusty body of the 5 odd 944s ive had) , cage- 1k, Leda race coilovers (fab set up) 1500, EMC engine new & to 944 165bhp spec approx 4k that had done approx 3k road miles.

Yet as a 924S it was pretty undesireable, I paid 1500quid for it from the classifieds on here, pulled some 888s out of a skip at the 'ring, fitted new pads- ebc yellows work well on these & are cheap, new discs- approx 50 quid i think, race fluid, good service, it was fully timmed for the last guys sprint series regs, I took all sound proofing out, just put the bare carpet back threw in some buckets & had fun.

As a budget rwd tracker it was ace, bit outclassed at power circuits like Snett & Goodwood,but was great at Oulton. Only sold as I wanted a tad more grunt & with that power its just not a driftable chassis in the dry & fitting an lsd woudnt have been cheap & easy.

Sold for a small profit to some guys who I kept in contact with & had another trouble free track season & it sold again recnetly on ebay I belive.

To me standard 944 suspension would be waay too soft on track tho, the Ledas were ace, tad firm on the road tho! made a GT3 seem soft

Edited by iguana on Saturday 11th February 21:21

[MrC986]

You need to think about whether you want to replace the original seats with decent fixed back seats as that will make a significant difference to how you feel in the car when you get on the track - the old ones will sell, but are probably worth very little unless you get lucky or they are a particularly good example. Also, dependant on the age, you will need to look out for head gasket issues & dependant on the model, will it need a cambelt/tensioners replacement which would be costly? Consumables i.e. discs/pads etc you can get from somewhere like Eurocarparts & they also do uprated Pagid items. A roll cage is a big cost item & will depend on how serious you want to get! Good luck with making that decision though it might be cheaper to buy one already 'done'& at a fraction of the cost

[roadiesean]

Thanks guys, I really appreciate all your thoughts on this. I think that I will probably give this one a miss. It seems like even the insurers can't get it into their heads that its just a cheap old car, not a 930 turbo and the realities of having to have it garaged etc are too tricky. Might just get another MGF for buttons and have a play with that.....or an E36 !!

[thegoose]

You could also look at an E30 325i

I bought the top one 2.5 years ago off eBay (£90 with 6 months tax & MOT) and besides a few minor bits (heater hose <£10, used brake master cylinder £10, a wheel bearing which had got noisy after 5 track days) it's cost nothing but fuel to run and been a hoot to drive.

The bottom one was a trade in on a 928S4 5 years ago, which a friend bought for £650 as a runaround, loved it and kept biting the bullet every time and having bits of welding done when the MOT came around, until this year when he gave up and bought an E46 convertible, so we took it on track too. There were 7 drivers between the 2 cars and it cost us £85 each including return fuel (one was towed there, the other driven on trade plates) - bargain day out.

It was amazing how differently they drove - mine (with cheap tyres on the front but sompletely rubbish ones on the back) hardly understeers but will snap away at the back in a controllable manner but it's unforgiving if you don't react properly. At Anglesey 2 weeks ago (when these pics were taken) the track remained damp all day (no wind, very odd) and in one lap I drifted it in 2nd, 3rd and 4th

The other car, which has a decent set of Yokohama tyres on it understeers quite a lot, but I'm sure this could be rectified by pumping the rear tyres up. The front pads must have been more than half worn though as we got through them. The other car's never had them replaced, nor have they overheated etc, so there's nothing to suggest that a £10 set of standard cheapo pads won't be up to the job. Cheap as chips!

Oh yeah, £300 buys it.

[iguana]

Aha on the bimmer route, I've had both e30 325 & e36 328 for cheap track frollics, both to decnet track spec, great track fun for peanuts.







Or staying Germanic, but wrong wheel drive, tons of track miles in Golfs too-

[iguana]

thegoose said:

E30 325i

so there's nothing to suggest that a £10 set of standard cheapo pads won't be up to the job

Had to fit emergency standard motor factor rear pads to e30 one trackday, as race set in box were wrong, were down to metal by lunch!

[thegoose]

iguana said:

Had to fit emergency standard motor factor rear pads to e30 one trackday, as race set in box were wrong, were down to metal by lunch!

You probably had decent tyres then - the capabilities of my tyres and brakes are well matched.

[thegoose]

iguana said:

Had to fit emergency standard motor factor rear pads to e30 one trackday, as race set in box were wrong, were down to metal by lunch!

You probably had decent tyres then - the capabilities of my tyres and brakes are well matched.

[Peter Empson]

All I'd do for the first few trackdays would be to fit some proper brake pads (I'd recommend Porterfields), change the brake fluid to Castrol SRF and give it a proper service (and make sure you take plenty of spare oil with you, they can really drink at high revs). If the suspension and tyres are reasonable you'll have a lot of fun and can then see where you want to improve it further.

One other cheap upgrade that makes a big difference is getting some used ARB from a late Turbo, so are possibly worth doing straight away if you can find a set.