Hello, Gentlemen.

I've recently acquired an 85 early NA for a burly sum of one thousand dollars. The old car had a removed head from a timing belt issue, rotted interior from a leaky sunroof and overall the beater is in a general state of disarray. I've wanted a 944 for a very long time.

The plan for the car is to swap in a 5.3 and boost it with a holset. I'm also flirting with putting in a later 2jzge with variable valve timing so I don't have to do a lot of work to get around the break booster issue.


My goal is to get this swap done with as little money into it as possible, and by little I mean sub 3.5k for everything including purchase price of the car.

I'll most likely post pictures later today, but the car isn't much to look at at the moment. D:

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I've done a lot of stuff, but it looks like I've done almost nothing.


Car had full interior, just working on doing the little $#** until I get it planned out more.


Can you resize pictures on forum motion? I used a width command to scale, but the forum didn't recognize the image afterwords.

First of all welcome to the forum. And welcome to an extreme addiction. Looks like you have made a good start on it but, I honestly think you may have to expand your budget of $2,500.....these conversions get very pricey but, are well worth it in the end. If you can fab a lot of parts on your own ie motor mounts, adapter plates, etc....you should be close to that budget. If not, just take your time and expand your budget to do it right. I'm about $9,000 in (including the cost of my LS1) and only about 60% complete although 95% percent of the major parts have already been purchased. Anyway....not trying to burst you budget bubble. You will find a wealth of info on this site. There are some AWESOME people here.

I agree 2,500 for the project will be hard to hit, but I'm attempting most of the fab work myself. Making things is one of the reasons I like working on cars . A friend of mine is machining the adaptor. The mounts, oil pan, drain, manifolds etc ill take care of and that's a large chunk of the change. I picked up some free ls1 parts from a friend of mine building an ls1 triumph ( drool). The suspension will blow my budget completely so I'm not counting that in the project

Nice. Yea having somebody build you a conversion kit is very helpful. Free LS1 parts are always awesome!

Welp, figured i should update this post as the car has been running for a minute and I just popped the transmission.


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Stanced out to make all the pussies wet

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seat in for a test fit and to sit in it and make racecar noises. I gutted the car awhile ago. The stock interior was fucked from the battery tray being rusted and water leaking into the passenger side. All the carpet was rotted, seated rotted, seat brackets rusted etc.

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mostly stripped down original motor.  Previous owner didnt do the 30k timing belt, smashed all the valves.

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Stinky ass LM4 aluminum 5.3 in the back of my xterra.

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Figuring out this pos mig fixing the battery tray rust. Seam sealed the entire thing then rhino-lined it. Hopefully it never rusts again.

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Using the corvette c5 slave with remote bleeder and lines that cost too fucking much.

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Corvette c5 bellhousing, torque tube to bellhousing adapter, misc bullshit.

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Spec clutch, JD said it was $#** and I should get a mcleod twin disc.

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so I did.

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purp fuel rails so i can blaze it.

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Fuel pump installed so I can wheelie.

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using the wix filter/regulator combo from a c5 vette and running -6 from the tank to the rail

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old motor out with no lift pure brute strength lol.


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bay cleaned up further once i could get in there to do work.

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using cave man tactics to put the engine on the stand. Still no lift at this time.

All observers thought i was going to die.

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Put the pan on the engine so I could find where the pan needed to be cut to clear the cross member.

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cut pan finished.


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cleaned the valve covers to paint them black so that they may never go back.

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#blacked. Didn't come out that well.

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ls1 intake, chinese fuel rails, custom accessory bracket that im not sure if I like or not. I should have just bought the fbody $#** for the lower mounting points.

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the harness. I had to convert from DBW to DBC and remove a bunch of $#**.

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harness finished and labeled.

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This is a hydroboost unit from a mustang cobra.  hissssssssssssssss


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Hydroboost bracket finished and hydroboost mounted.

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Car back on the ground for the first time in years.

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Initial test fit of the engine.

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Motor sitting in the car for the first time bolted down.

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Coil packs hit the hydroboost so the last pack needed to be moved up an inch.

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that ebay throttle body hit the hood so I had to go with an ls1 unit.
Harness looks great in this picture I'm sure everything will go fine.

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lalalalalalala installing injector clips

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relooming.

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Shiny fucking headers because mine were an inch too wide on the passenger side.

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car almost ready to be started. Still need to do something about the filter and the maf. There's not a lot of room up front and my power steering mount fucks me. Would have been fine with the fbody $#** but I dont want to spend that much on brackets and an fbody pully.

I skipped building the power steering lines I guess.

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remote mount oil filter bracket made and buggered on.

Caught the horns on a little bit of fire during this.


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Y pipe built that I still need to unfuck. I angled it down a little too much and one of the 02 sensors is at a poor angle because of it.
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Finished the rest of the exhaust rolling around in the driveway


That's about where I'm at. Next steps are brakes, get the clutch working (bad master), and get it to a cage shop.

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Flocked the old beat up dash. Glassed the cracks.
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Old gauges were dicked up so I got some arduinos and built some new ones.

Speedometer is GPS based

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Old center console was lost from taking this car apart 5 years ago so I went ahead and made one out of carbon fiber half assesdly. I tried aluminum sheet first but I didn't like it.

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Gauges running in the car
and trying to get a some work done with HP tuners
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Ghetto rear fuel set up
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I was using the stock feed with a filter spliced to the pump but the walbro didn't like sucking fuel through that and made atrocious whining sounds. I smoothed the flow area out more and the pump works fine now.

Building gauges for the fuel pressure sender and the wideband. They're mounted in the car right now but I th ink im going to change the wideband from voltage reference to serial to make the refresh rate a little faster as the voltage reference looses some resolution with the arduinos ADC only being 1023 counts from 0-5v. I have a 12bit ADC i could also use to get some more  resolution if needed.

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3d printed shrouds for those gauges. Didn't work out that well. I need to get more used to tolerancing 3d prints to know what I can get away with.

Both seats mounted. Both sides have harnesses now
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New clutch master with and ghetto adapter plate
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Interior shot as is currently.
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Quick pull doing some data logging


Video of blowing up the transmission as of today


This is a video doing one of the first live ODB2 tests on the gauge cluster

Lots of folks go with the turbo tranny because it is stronger. Did you figure out what went on you? Any idea what you spent so far?

I see Bourbon in a couple shots. You from Kentucky?

Lots of luck with your build.

I'm in Southwest Ohio near Cincinnati. Close enough lol.

I put a non lsd UY turbo transaxle in it last weekend and got it back on the road.

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First of all. Love the commentary! lol.

I'm doing an LM4 swap in my 83, and am doing it on a "budget" ad well. Not counting the cost of the car, I'm at roughly 2k, and I just need to get the Manifolds and Oil pan to get the engine in the car. It can be done for cheap with some creative thinking!

Looking forward to seeing your progress.

PS - you don't by chance have an online gamertag as rawr do you?

Also - Do you happen to know how far back from the sump you made those cuts on the oil pan? And how wide the cuts were?

show ur the damage was it the axel or the trans ?

LStuner wrote:Also - Do you happen to know how far back from the sump you made those cuts on the oil pan? And how wide the cuts were?

No idea I just put the mounts on and marked where the cross member hit while i had it on an engine stand.

I've played CS:GO under rawr but I doubt it's me you're talking about

matt889 wrote:show ur the damage was it the axel or the trans ?

The ring and pinion in the NA transmission didn't want to be friends anymore.

I found a guy who sold me a turbo trans for 300 bucks with an open diff so I fixed that but I broke more $#** later.

I tried to go to cars and coffee to start my vacation off.  I smelled a little bit of clutch pulling off the highway. Crossed my fingers and hoped it was one of the other cars there.  Clutch felt weird at the red light, thankfully I was the first one in line off the highway as the clutch decided to engage itself and pull me through the redlight without my consent then it puked brake fluid everywhere. I was broken down in front of cars and coffee for about 2 hours waiting on a tow feeling like an idiot.

Took the 944, sat it in a corner for time out for two weeks then I  went ahead and pulled the engine.

Somehow the entire throw out bearing melted and inverted itself.

here's some update pics. I've been neglecting posting $#**.

I built a bracket to attach a willwood master cylinder because the stocker didn't push enough fluid.

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Redid the battery lines because they were super fucking hack jobs
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I added a battery kill switch and a distribution block for the positive leads.

I cleaned up the harness as well, but you can't really tell.

That prop valve is getting moved. It's like that because I had the engine in and then realized I needed it if I didn't want like 70% rear brakes with the mustang master cylinder.
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My fucking expensive ass ceramic coated headers were rusting and flaking off so I sprayed those bitches with silver VHT header paint and my beautiful Y pipe.
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Throwout bearing quit life.


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I'm building an MS2 for a friends 1UZ swap as well

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I made a new video with the turbo trans as well before I broke the throwout bearing. Feels much better than the N/A trans.

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un-broke it.

rawr wrote:


My fucking expensive ass ceramic coated headers were rusting and flaking off so I sprayed those bitches with silver VHT header paint and my beautiful Y pipe.  
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Would you post some info about the headers you are using ? Did you make them or modify them ?

Thanks
Engelbert

They're renegade hybrids headers. I bought them off someone but they were never used on a build. I'm uncertain of who coated them.

Cool stuff
Have you thought about MS2 for the pcar LS swsp?

Sorry if I missed that somewhere

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