First Time Swap 85 Porsche 944 to LS6

Just a few weeks ago I was riding my 09 Ducati 1198S around town and realized it was time for something new. Not just a new bike....a new project! I sold the bike in under 3 days and made enough profit to start my new project. I soon after found a 85 Porsche shell w/the trans intact. Wonderful interior and exterior condition. So I brought it home, $1900 down.

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Next the engine. I found a great engine for 2300 but I was able to talk him down to 2k

Factory Aluminum LS6 Block
Weiseco -25cc pistons, 3.905" bore
K1 6.125" rods w/ ARP 2000 rod bolts
Factory LS1 Crank
317 heads w fresh valve job and Comp 918s good for .620" lift (roughly 8.5cr with current heads)
Mild 224 Comp cam
Comp timing chain set
LS7 Lifters
LS6 intake manifold w F-body TB
Front timing cover, rear cover, and valve covers
ARP Head Study & Main Studs
Alternator, Water pump, and power steering pump included as well.

Pictures to come.

So far I have removed the front bumper, quarter panels, hood, and started cleaning up the all the wires. Im not exactly sure what I should do with them at this time but there out of the engine bay for now.
I am going to start sanding the inside of the engine bay and get it ready to clean up and paint.
In addition we have taken off the wheels, breaks, calipers, and pads. The car is on jack stands for the time being.

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After the engine bay has been primed/painted and is ready to work in I will start to drop the engine in it. I have another 2 days to wait to get an engine mount and cherry picker from a friend.

Currently I am struggling with the decision to get a TPC kit or a RH kit. If anyone has used either of these kits Please feel free to get ahold of me and lend me your thoughts on it.

Other matters are deciding to have the transaxle rebuilt and upgrading my Axle Half Shafts/Drive Shaft.
I think this would be the most cost effective way to beef up the rear end.

Thanks guys.

One final note, I have never done any type of engine swap, I can count on 2 hands the amount of car parts I have changed...... I am actively reading forums and have two good friends who know a lot of information that will be helping me complete my project. Any and all information that I can get from any source will be greatly appreciated. Im flying blind in this and my goal is to get this project running by Fall of this year. Second goal is 500RWHP after project is done and Supercharger is in.

Use TPC's kit. No question.

Just emailed the guys at TPC asking a few minor questions. I will most likely use their kit soon. If you don't mind me asking, where did you start your swap? as you can see the engine is out, the wires are all loose so I can completely take them out and get a new wiring harness to start fresh with. An ECU I can grab out of a junk yard around my home. Im trying to break the axle nuts but I need a torch to break them. That will be sometime this week. Other than that you can see what I have done. Leme know what you think

Looks like you have jumped in with both feet. You will find just about any information that is needed to work through your project right here.

As to the wiring you can remove the engine management harness, however if you are planning to keep the lights you might want to set those wires aside rather than removing them. They are completely separate from the engine management harness.

Keep us posted.

Post up your location and there may be members close by who can help out, or you can check out there swap.

For a transmission, dont waste your time with the N/A trans, leave it in there and blow it up! Get a turbo trans and swap the 5th gear from a N/A trans and youll be good, it will hold up if you drive smart!

Good luck!
Mark

Marky522 wrote:
For a transmission, dont waste your time with the N/A trans, leave it in there and blow it up!

Thats what I was thinking about doing but I may replace the stock half shafts and the torque tube before I do it. See if I can extend the life of it a little, after I have it running smoothly and can find a nice shape supercharger ill upgrade to the 944t transaxle w/LSD
As far as where i'm at, I live in South Bend Indiana, about 1 hour from Chicago. Accepting any and all hits/tips and help.

Ordered the TPC kit yesterday now the wait. In the meantime I started to disassemble the dash and remove the gauges. I'm goin to remove the entire dash and find a replacement since it started to split in a few spots, was also going to change out the gauges with a whole othe setup that will be more comparable with the next wiring harness which I believe I will getthe stand alone from SSP. Any comments on what you all think about that would be greatly appreciated.

Next I have been reading alot of the forums about the C5 bell housing. I am a little confused on this currently. Do I need to buy the C5 bell housing or not? I was under the assumption that the stock transaxle fit to the stock Porsche torque tube and then the engine afte and adapter. If not then I have started to look for a bellhousing and am but waiting on the word.

Next is the stock torque tube, I can't seem to find a beefy replacement for it, I was wondering how I should be looking for it? Iv true keyword searches but I can't seem to turn up anything. Leme know what you guys think.

Thanks for the much appreciated help and I'll keep ya posted.

As far as the dash goes you could see if those guys in Italy at LM Corse offer something. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
They even customer fabricate interior parts for race cars. Might be worth a look, if price is no option. I know they used to offer Porsche parts.
If you just have the cracks on top you could also consider one of those dash caps.


Sorry, no help with the torque tube and axles. Just recently got my car and it is sitting around waiting for me to source my parts for the conversion.

Here is the sequence from front to rear.

LS Engine/Flywheel/Clutch (with a Hydraulic Throw Out Bearing, [HTOB])
C5 Manual bellhousing (automatic does not fit flywheel and clutch) or Quicktime version.
Bellhousing to Torque Tube adaptor
Torque tube....Constantine rebuilds noisy/worn TT's
Transaxle (use a unit from a Turbo 951 its stronger and a LSD is available)

Then you need to consider cooling, brakes, suspension and steering
and of course have plenty of money.

There is a lot of information on this site covering how to do these swaps. I highly recommend you read as much of the threads as you can, especially the "how to"

For the dashboard you can't beat Classic9's work, I have pics in my gallery.

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Damn that is a nice looking dash. I'll have to keep that in mind for my car.

You need the 12554980 2-piece bellhousing. Search the vette forums as they pop-up for sale once in a while.

Stock torque tube is fine. But if you find it needs to be rebuilt, Constantine is the way to go. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

If you have an NA tranny, run it till it blows, all-the-while looking for a turbo box for if/when it does. No point in replacing something thats not broken yet. However, if youre the savvy type, take the NA box out and sell it to offset the price of a turbo box.

Just ordered the bell housing 175$ shipped new. Also got a guy with 60# injectors for 80$ if I buy the fuel pump w/ bucket, harness and sensor for 150$ so 230 for the injectors, pump, harness, and sensor. My question to you all is will it be fine running 60lb injectors. I saw on a did post people running 39 and 40# injectors but just wanted to double check if there would be any problems.

Unless your running some kind of boost. 60LB injectors are a waste. You will have to set the ECU to run them at about 30% duty cycle. You can run the stock injectors up to about 375 hp to the ground before they start to run out of fuel output. Your stock Porsche fuel pump will also work up to about 375 as well if it's in good condition.
As said before, read , there is a ton of info here. If you start asking repetitive questions your probably not going to get the answers your looking for. just my 2 cents......

Just an update:

Just found injectors and a PCM, still looking on forums for a bell housing. Iv completely stripped out the old wiring harness and am debating hard on what to do about a new one. I am leaning towards buying a stand alone one from a web source IE Painless wiring, SSP, or another online producer. Part of me is still hoping I can find a wiring harness and modify it myself however the task of finding a wiring harness that is priced accordingly is proving to be more of a challenge than I had hoped. Still I search. Also I am looking for fuel rails and I will be ordering the fuel system from Eric in the next day or so.

While everything comes in Ill start stripping the bay to paint it. Im thinking just a gloss black will work.

On the side I have resorted to buying broken cars, fixing them and flipping them. Currently I have a 95 Ford Thunderbird 3.8 not supercharged with a blown head gasket that I am half way through changing. Tomorrow I will have finished and I hope to flip for a 1500 profit which will be used for suspension parts and hopefully a clutch kit.

Next month ill look into buying a full break set up and then see where to from there.

Pics to come after bay is fully stripped and painted.

I went with a standalone harness from PSI (Performance Systems Integration), really nice quality and much cheaper than the other options. Cost was $500, i figured for an extra $300-ish, i would rather get a brand new harness that for the most part is plug and play rather than deal with modifying the nearly 10 year old harness from GTO motor i bought.

Thanks for the input ill check em out shortly and let ya know if I went with em. Did you find any specifically difficult portions of the install harder than it should have been?

Forgot to ask, I see that on their site it states that each harness comes w/ the 4l60e or t56 trans pigtail. What steps did you take to mod it for the 944t or 944 NA transaxle?

Ok guys its getting down to the wire, I just got in the Fuel Rails from Professional Products, the Plug Wires 10mm from Taylor Auto and some paint to do the bay, Pics on that soon enough, 1 more type of grit to sand with and ill be ready for the paint.

Anyway upon removing things from the engine bay I ran into some complications. There is a piece labeled FAG just above the drive shaft that was bolted to the back of the bay. I am having bad luck searching for this part in order to replace it if need be. Any ideas?

Next is once again the wiring harness....I pulled the harness all the way to under the dash where it lingers there. Now I have been reading about wiring harnesses for over a week and liked what Speartech had to say, also there are a few shops that sell them on ebay and they get those harnesses from Painless wiring. I talked one guy down to 725 w/shipping for a harness. HOWEVER the question lies in the current harness....

When I pulled everything to under the dash I noticed the bundle of wires that run from the front all the way to the back of the car, for lights and such, also transmission i presume. What should I do about this? If I need to hold on to pieces then IDK what I should hold on to yet. I am not opposed to spending around 1k for a full set up w/o emissions. even without AC which I don't plan on running. Let me know your thoughts on this as I am wanting to pull the trigger soon to start working on it. (T-4days!)

Finally I removed the fans from the car just under the hood and was wondering to myself. If I don't run A/C to the car is heating the car going to be a tough call? I assume I mist leave the fans and blowers in the same place in order to run heat. Will this be a problem trying to wire for this?

Any and all information you can give me will be greatly appreciated.

On the fan wiring, I just left all the 944 stuff alone. Some of the guys on here connect the fan triggers to the new PCM, but I left the stock 944 thermostat, relays and wiring alone. Works fine.

For the rearward wiring; that's lighting, speedo and fuel pump. I left all that in place too and connected the new harness' fuel pump relay outlet to the existing wiring at the fuse box. By the way, I went the Painless route. The manual that came with it helped so much it was worth whatever more I may have paid for the harness.

Not sure what you're talking about on the piece at the firewall.

Rich

I think the part youre seeing is the clutch master cylinder?!?! Thats the only thing I know on the firewall with FAG on it.

944-LT1 wrote:I think the part youre seeing is the clutch master cylinder?!?! Thats the only thing I know on the firewall with FAG on it.

and it would be above the steering shaft

Time for an update, parts are a raving steadily and the conversion kit will be delivered this afternoon. Painting the engine is more complicated than I thought with having to tape off each part in order to get the colors correct. Black is being done today and Red will be done the day after tomorrow in order to ensure it dries correctly with enough time. The paint label says to cure it after it is done, however I have no way of doing this currently since it says 200*F Hopefully it will be okay sitting until I can get it installed and start it up to heat it.

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Engine Bay is done, Cant get a picture yet because its covered while I paint the engine.
The black stuff I sprayed on first was a protective rubberized coating because I stripped all the old off in order to make it look smoother.

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Fun project all around, I have to just keep in mind that it isn't supposed to happen in a week.

Oh and as you can see I overused the tape, first time, live and learn haha.

Engine bay after I finally removed the tarp.

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Engine looks decent after the big paint parts. New 10% Harmonic Balancer is being professionally installed Wednesday then I can throw on the oil pan and other swap components. After that I get to do more waiting as I move into my new house and get the clutch/wiring harness ordered after settled in.

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Fuel rails went on smoothly, I need to order some fittings that weren't included but thats easy stuff.

If anyone has any constructive criticism please feel free. Like I said, this is my first swap and I would like to only get better from here on out.