How can this happen??

It's not the intake that has the clearance problem. It's the first 90 elbow that comes off of the throttle body. So tilting it down would also tilt the elbow down and give us the hood clearance that we need.

Well I finally got some free time today to try and come up with a hood clearance measurement.i took pic's of what I found .There in my gallery. I used the ductseal as I said earlier. Its hard to close the hood and get a good measurement . The second time I tried it I closed it keeping my hand as close to the hood latch as possible and not slamming it too hard I came up with about 1/4 inch at the top of the throttle body to hood. You can see the mark from the hood in shot. There's a bead in the center rib that comes the closest.I put pic's in my gallery as well as a measurement of the spacer plates btwn the crossmember and body. Hope it helps.

What about doing what TonyG on RL said.

Lower the X-member 1/2", but then filling the A-arm holes and drilling new ones 1/2" further up on the X-member.

This would still lower the steering rack, but I don't think 1/2 would screw up the geometry of that.

I don't know why I feel as strongly as I do, but I don't want to add spacers to the top of the struts, or lower the ball joints.... If I have to, obviously I will, but I feel there has to be a better solution.

The spacers go between the crossmember and the body. You don't put them on the struts or the ball joints'. Look at my gallery. There were 6 spacer plates. 2 for crossmember, 2 for rear control arm mts and 2 for the middle mtg. points of the sway bar. That dropped it the same as the rest of the suspension.

I don't know what you guy's are getting bent out of shape over, If you lower the cross member 1/2" everything will clear. Just install the spacers that Dallas named off and you will be fine. Unless you are going to road race your car all the time you will probably never notice any change in the steering geometry. I have done several cars like this and even my personal car has 1" spacers and it drives fine. Unless you have your car lowered and it's already on the ground. Don't worry, Be Happy

You also need to either shim the top of the struts, or the lower ball joints or the geometry will be off.

Its the same as lowering your car and using the stock ball joints. It will eventually ruin the control arms.

Suspension isn't something you just start messing with. Everything is designed to sit in a specific place to control the load and forces from driving. Go do some research on control arm problems with lowered cars.

Unless your car is already lowered, 1/2" at the frame rails where the cross member bolts , isn't going to hurt or change anything that detrimental. I know else where on this forum there has been a lot of talk about bump steer and bump steer correction kits, but that is just that, talk. Ask these guy's how well their car's run. Oh, wait a second, their cars aren't even on the road yet.
If there was a real problem this would came up over at the other site. RH may be un customer friendly but I think this would have been something they might have tried to fix way back when.

I just read my last post.... and I apologize if it sounded arguish...

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm not agreeing either. I know 1/2 isn't much. The lowering springs are 1 1/2", so its 3 times as much.

I guess I will say that you'll probably not have any problems just lowering the X-member 1/2", and leaving the rest, but when I do it, I will look into filling and redrilling the holes for the A-arms in the X-member. I feel this is the best solution. You are keeping the correct geometry, and its simple.

Filling and re drilling won't fix the problem. The problem is not the A arms. It the steering rack and tie rods in relation to the arms. If you lower the cross member, which lowers the steering rack, then you put the tie rods out of line with the arms. If you move the a arms you still aren't fixing the problem. It's your steering rack that is the problem. You would have to move it down or raise the tie rod at the spindle.. (bump steer kit).
Myself and another on this site are working on a tubular cross member that would correct all of this without the hassle of the bump steer kit and a few other conversion parts, like the over priced oil pan!

Considering that RH did not engineer the 944 ls kit in house, they just following the recipe that TOM E. gave them, with no regards to why or fixing problems (i.e. pilot bearing)

With a correct fitting oil pan and semi adjustable engine uprights there is no need to drop the entire crossmember. However when faced with the interweb fact and the gospel accoring to Saint DJ that "every 944 that is being converted has been wrecked" it saves trimming of the hood braces and allows for major variations of oil pan fabrication.

Some shaping of the rack bosses with a grinder is needed on the late CMs for additional oil pan clearence, as they have much more beef that the earlys. One of the clearence problems in the intake is actually caused by the condition of your trans mount, at least that has been a quantifiable variable in the ones I have built.

If you have your engine in loosen up the motor mount bolts and the upright nuts or bolts and throw a jack under the trans and watch the intake drop. I am personally not a fan of altering too much what god, bill gates, and ralph nader gave us.

(correct oil pan + rack boss shaping + hood brace trimming + good trans mount) - suspension spacers = HELL YEAH

Using a solid or urethane transaxle mount should help longevity AND positively locate the trans / TT / engine...This should obviously be a starting point, before estimating spacers.

944v8inDFW wrote:...when faced with the interweb fact and the gospel according to Saint DJ that "every 944 that is being converted has been wrecked"...

Yea, that crap has been shown to be just that recently...differences in xmember mounting locations also needs to be considered.

Good info, RC. Follows the "K.I.S.S." principle.
Building one of these cars isn't rocket science...after all, Saint DJ claims to know ALL.

BTW, I have talked with Tom Egan (related?), jotted 3 pages of notes, umm, ~5 years ago...
very willing to help with info, etc.

[Yo DJ...Play dat funky music, wight boy...]

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] There is an example of a solid mount for the right money. No a fan of how that one is built, but it gives the idea. Solid mounts on a street car are not so bad given the smoothness of a V8.

In this example you can see by altering the vertical, hole wise or length wise, you can move the front of your motor around.

I have searched on and off for years for the control length between the face and the trans holes and have never been able to find one. Having measured at least a dozen trans mounts from high miles to new that length can sometime vary to more than 1/2 inch at full droop with weight on it.

As stated in another thread my key to have never blown a trans or CV is a good trans mount.

Lidnsey makes a couple as well, solid and one with some bushings
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]