Rich's LS powered 944 track car

I used Aero Latches, lockable. Removed original latch panel for intake plumbing.

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Those are the same hood pins I have, but I didn't get the lockable ones. I like the head lifhts, how do they compare functionally to the stock ones output wise?

Okay, here are some more detailed pics of the new seat position. This is 3 clicks forward from the back of my rails which is where the headrest just touches the rollbar padding. You can see the rather large OMP steering hub and relative position of the shifter, which is in neutral.

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Here's the front of the seat. It lines up pretty much exactly where the rib in the floor is with the front seat track attachments points. About 1" behind the shifter in neutral.

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Thanks Mike and Doc. Looks like it's "AeroCatch" and they're dead sexy!

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Thanks Rich.

Looks like the floor mount pedals are not an option for me, my main hoop is directly lined up with the "b" piller (whereas yours looks to be 2" aft). If I move my seat back to where you have yours, my head will be 1/2" below the main hoop, I am not comfortable with that.[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Lemming wrote:Looks like the floor mount pedals are not an option for me

Bummer! But I agree, that'd be if-y to have your head under the rollbar. The set-back of my cage from the b-pillar is almost 3". And my main hoop is smaller gauge tubing, yours looks much more burly.

Rich

Yes, the tubing is 1.75' as it started life as only a roll bar before becoming a full cage.

My 3 day weekend went to assembly of the oil system. I'm using an RX7 oil cooler, TPC's remote filter and a 3 quart Accusump scavenged from a friend's old car. The big items are mounted but I'm stalled out as I had to make another order for more hose ends and fittings.

Here's the Accusump and remote filter mount from underneath. These are connected with various copper fittings that house my oil pressure senders and has a -10 output facing down that will go back to the engine. This is all behind the passenger side headlight outside the frame rail. You can see the output of the brake duct in place of the fog light which I hope won't crowd the filter too much for easy changes.

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The RX7 oil cooler fits beautifully in the nose and has an integral thermostat. Fittings are -10 AN to 18mmx1.5 with 18mm copper crush washers. This is fed from underneath by a hose with a 45 degree end to the ouput on the TPC oil pan. Output is to the side I'm still working on connecting that to the remote filter housing.

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This is covered with a vented nose panel. It's a fiberglass part out of Poland that I got on EBay. Mediocre quality to say the least but I think I can make it work. Maybe the hot-lookin' hybrid crest will draw attention from the poor fit and awful vent grills...

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Parts order should arrive Friday so next weekend should see more progress.

Rich

Make sure you use red picture on the stud going into the remote filter that the oil filter screws onto, otherwise it'll cone off when you remove the filter.

I assume you mean "red Loctite"? Good tip, I was wondering about that.

Rich

Yes, gotta like Droid auto correct. Don't ask me how I know this...

Howdy. I have a couple a measurements I want to double-check with the hive mind. First, I popped in the pilot bearing and it's adapter. I got the bearing seated down firmly in the housing such that the face of them both is even. And I got the unit seated down in the crank such that it protrudes .45" from the face of the crank. This makes it pretty much even with the flywheel bolt heads and seems to clear the clutch disc nicely.

Second, I've measured the gap between the throwout bearing and the pressure plate's spring fingers using the method in SPEC's instructions. After a bit of screwing around, okay kind of a lot of screwing around, I figured out how do do these measurements properly and I get .34" for a gap. With the shim this makes .21 which is within the tolerence of .2" +/- .025.

All this sound right? Thanks.
Rich

Tonight I got the steering rack installed. The interference of the hard lines on the rack with the TPC oil pan was the straw that broke the back of my power steering design. So I've entirely ditched the hydraulic system and have manual steering to go with my manual brakes. I used an early offset rack (thanks Shwinny), my existing late offset tie rod ends and the Moog EV-378 tie rods from a Mk III Golf to connect them.

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It's 4 full turns lock to lock now, up from 3.5 with the power rack. But I don't think that'll hurt me too much. Perhaps it'll take a shuffle steer in turn 3B, the tighest turn at the local track. The longer intermediate shaft of the manual rack clears TPC's long-tube headers nicely and worked without modification as I still have no subframe spacers in there. (so far so good on that...) I did have interference between the u-joint and the bolt in the motor mount but managed to get Old Painless (my sawzall) in there and cut off the extra length of the bolt.

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Things are progressing nicely. But I'm procrastinating on the wiring. One of these days I'll have nothing else to do and will have to get started on that.

Rich

Why was there an interference with the oil pan? I don't have any issues running my power rack with TPC's oil pan...

Cuirous about that too, I'm running a RH pan with no issues. Of course my RH pan predates TPCs pan, I'd rather have one of Eric's.

Here's the tread where I brought it up and Eric provides a work-around. But in my opinion, the pan could use some tweaks. The portion that's modified on the driver's side could be angled more to allow room for the ps lines on the rack. And that angle continued further back to not require one of the notches to be carved out of the crossmember.

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Rich,

I've been using the manual rack in my car for years and prefer it to the powered system. And yes, you do have to do the shuffle in hairpins.

Although I agree with tapping the lines with a mallet to move them a bit, as I did with the LT engine conversion, with the LS conversion, I had to notch both sides of the pan; not for PS lines (as I earlier converted to manual steering as well) but because unlike other LS conversions, my pan was too close to the left hand steering rack boss for comfort.

I really enjoy the manual rack though. Its not bad at all as far as strength needed to turn the wheels at a stop. Besides that, the engine bay stays really clean...no slim and grease everywhere as with the PS setup. However, once Im old and moldy, and if I still own the car, I will most likely convert back to PS.

944-LT1 wrote: Besides that, the engine bay stays really clean...no slim and grease everywhere as with the PS setup.

This week at the PCA DE at Barber, I told a few Porsche friends that I really like the fact that when I move my car after it has been sitting for a few hours, I no longer see even a single drop of oil (or any fluid) on the ground. That was never the case with any of my many porsche engines

No drops!? This is gonna be great. My 964 dripped oil and the urquattro would leave a full on puddle of ps fluid. And it's good to hear the manual rack will work well. I figure I move the car around as often with it off as with the engine running.

I'm gearing up for a first start of the engine this weekend. It was run on the dyno, of course, when the shop tuned the ecu after the rebuild. My plan is a full warm-up in my garage, testing the cooling fans, the oil thermostat operation and all of the electrical hookups I've done. While running at idle isn't good for engine break-in, I'd really like to know everything works before buttoning it up and carting it to the track. Second start will be for a 15 minute run session after which I'll change the oil and filter.

Any thoughts on this plan? Is cranking the engine with the injectors disconnected the right way to prime the oil pump? Any suggestions for tests to do when it's running for the first time?

This is getting exciting. Thanks.
Rich

She started! After a couple of hiccups in the prep, we got the oil pump primed and fired her up. The engine sounds strong and didn't pop any codes. The alternator charged correctly triggered by the blue wire at the firewall from the dash light. The trick here may have been also providing switched power to a second terminal of the alternator. See here:

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The bummer is the clutch is not releasing, synchros would engauge and spin-up the wheels trying to get a gear even with the clutch pedal depressed. Gap measurements were good with the shim installed, so I think what I need is a larger bore master cylinder. I currently have a 13/16" Wilwood master on the Tilton pedal box and now have a 1" in the mail. Hopefully that'll be the trick.

So now it's re-attaching the front suspension and re-fitting the body panels. I know hood clearance at the throttle body is going to be an issue so we'll see how big a hole I have to cut.

Rich

Congratulations!!!!

Excellent. I'm surprised that the 13/16 master is not working