gryphon
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 330 
Club RR Member Number: 157
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May 30, 2019 12:38:55 GMT
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I know this is a little modern for you folks, and my abilities are a long shot from some of the amazing and bonkers builds here, but hopefully I'll keep it interesting enough! I've had an early 944 for the last few years that I've been gradually improving as rolling project - build thread over on TIPEC. It's massively improved from when I bought it, but as I've been ticking off jobs and upgrades, it's not been turning into the car that I hoped it would. I love it's looks and enjoy driving it, but it's far more at home cruising down a motorway than it is winding down a B road... It's just too slow and boaty! This was hammered home when my partner hurt her back and stole my daily dervy hatchback and left me commuting in her MX5. Pretty much the antithesis of the 944 down a B road! This is a late MK1 dakar edition that she's owned for aaages but it spent a lot of those years sitting unused in her parents garage. Last year we pulled it out and brought it up to the Midlands, stripped the underside, removed lots of rust, added lots of powder coating, new IL Motorsport rubber bushings everywhere, MeisterR coilovers, refurbed brakes, gave the engine some TLC, added some nice light 15" konig wheels and gave it to Spires in Leamington for corner weighting and a 'fast road' geo. Took a good few months and more money than planned, but that car is great fun!  Had a slight power steering leak at the time of that picture... And has had a few upgrades since, but I think it gave me the MX5 bug. So... Now I want one, but still have the 944, don't have space/time for another car etc. I've also been looking at the Rocketeer V6 conversion kit which is definitely pricey, but I know I don't have the time or skills to give an MX5 that power or sound track without something like that... I was spending time idly browsing ebay as you do. In the meantime my girlfriend decided that her dakar needed a supercharger - sounded a good idea to me - and a few weeks later a full M45 kit came up for sale which we duly went and collected. Sitting next to the box of supercharger goodies was another Mk1, that the seller had been intending to fit the supercharger to before he had a change of heart. It looked a solid UK car, 80k miles, sills and arches had been done - a slightly rough job, but proper panels cut in. No rot elsewhere, and some nice upgrades... such as a Torsen diff, big brakes, decent condition mohair roof. Suspension had been shown some love a few years back, lots of powder coated bits, fully polybushed (need to drive it more before I make my mind up on whether this is a good thing or not, but first impressions aren't as bad as I had expected) and on spax adjustable dampers. The downsides were quite a lot of rattle can paint, an engine that was missing the airbox and MAF as it had previously been supercharged (not with the setup we bought!), an ECU that didn't match the immobiliser, so didn't run at all, no windscreen wipers, no steering wheel, and a pair of rough Corbeau bucket seats, the drivers one missing a seat rail. A bit of haggling brought it down to a price I just couldn't say no to! A little money to Shiply, and my new project was home  Realising now I have yet to actually take a good picture of it though...  Looking through the history it was originally bought in Coventry and spent most of it's life in the midlands until it had a few years in Swindon... So very much home. The plate has earned it the slightly awkward nickname of 'Rack'. A good poke around and bit of a clean revealed no nasty surprises. Engine is not very oil-tight and there's a little more surface rust than I'd initially thought underneath, but it's all solid when poked hard with a screwdriver. Having wire wheeled and undersealed the dakar I think I might get this one undersealed professionally once I've had a good look inside the sills.  A slight buying spree in the meantime has got me a set of very nice heated black leather red stitch tombstone seats from a Mk2.5, wipers and a rough momo steering wheel that I still need a boss for.  I've never seen a roadster with no seats in it before... looking at it you really have to wonder how the body has any stiffness at all. There's barely anything connecting the front and the back!  You can really see the bad panel join over the rear wheel arch in that picture too. I'm telling myself I don't mind it looking rough, but it does keep bugging me... Immediate plans for the car is for it to be the testbed for the supercharger setup so we can get our heads around fitting and tuning it before fitting it to the dakar. We've got it roughly fitted and kinda running at the moment, but that can be fodder for the next post! Longer term plan is to rocketeer it. My deposit is down for the kit but I have no idea when I'll actually get it at this point, so now I'm on the lookout for a low-ish mileage AJ30-V6 engine from a <2002 S-Type |
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Last Edit: Jun 22, 2021 10:27:33 GMT by gryphon
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May 30, 2019 12:45:09 GMT
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I'm sure there's lots of black 944s in the west midlands but I didn't spot you in Heath Hayes recently did I?
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gryphon
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 330
Club RR Member Number: 157
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May 30, 2019 12:55:43 GMT
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Nope, wouldn't have been me I'm afraid. I'm more Stratford/Warwick area and the 944 has a coolant leak that's resisting my efforts to fix it at the moment. I want to get it to a point I'm happy with then look at finding it a new home!
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May 30, 2019 13:00:03 GMT
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ah no worries - good luck in getting to that elusive point you're happy with it! |
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gryphon
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 330
Club RR Member Number: 157
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May 30, 2019 13:16:52 GMT
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Thanks! That 'I need to get rid of it because I have a new project but I'm not totally sure I want to so I'll just do this little bit first' point.... I'm very overdue a bookmarks catchup, but loved what you were doing with the Acty |
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I like a nice rack.
Would really like a mk1 mx5, but need something more practical 😖
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gryphon
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 330
Club RR Member Number: 157
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May 31, 2019 10:59:41 GMT
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We did have a wonder about the private plate... It was fitted by the first owner but has no relation to their name that I can see. They are not the most practical of cars. At least the 944 has rear seats you can fold down and it turns into a bit of a pickup tbh. Long weekend camping is no problem. We'd have to pack light with the mx5. But then we have a practical car, this one just needs to be fun - on to the thing that lead me to buying the car in the first place:  A pile of piping, throttle bodies, an intercooler, and a Mini M45 Supercharger painted baby blue hiding behind the intercooler. Now this lot is kinda my other halfs project more than mine, as eventually it's going on her car - mine is just a handy test bed as it's sitting there with nothing better to do and has previously been home to a supercharger. The upshot of that is I don't have to do all the cleaning, polishing and painting required in the above picture. What I did get to do was the wiring! In our box of bits was a plug and play megasquirt but for 94-95MY cars. 96-97 cars had the pesky addition of an immobiliser, apparently changed the tachometer to be driven from an ECU signal rather than a signal from the coilpack, and went from 2 connectors from the ECU to 3. An adapter harness is needed! The connectors are TE Connectivity 070/040 hybrids, which is a little annoying as the only sockets you can get are the big ~72pin PCB mount ones at £15 a pop, and the only place that seems to stock them is Mouser. So socket, connectors, crimps and wire ordered. Preparing to build the harness:  The male connector ends are all nicely crimped, but the socket end is going to have to be soldered. Less than ideal, but once it's finalised I'll pot them in and it should be pretty robust.  It seems that the two ECU pin outs that I worked from weren't totally accurate though - upon plugging this into the car, the first problem was the 5V rail on the ECU would cut out within a few seconds of power on. Some time with the multimeter revealed that the 5V Reference that was supposed to be going to the high side of the potentiometer in the TPS was actually being fed into the throttle closed switch and being shorted straight to ground. Beeping out the harness with the multimeter revealed the correct pin at the ECU end, so a quick bit of solder fixed that. Now I ran the injector and spark tests and everything was making the right noises, the engine cranked but wouldn't start. A little more multimeter debugging and I realised that the pin outs had also given me the wrong wire for the fuel pump control signal. Another swapped wire in the adapter harness and we had a running engine. 'Running' might be too generous a word- it fired, idled around 2k, ran very lean and liked stalling, but a step in the right direction! In the engine bay, things were looking more like this:  Bit of a mess, but it's all just a test fit, and most things are in place! I had to delicately re-model the exhaust manifold heat shield with a hammer to make space for the supercharger, the brackets for the throttle cables are very temporary, and the corrugated air intake is there because there is not enough room between the first throttle body and the bulkhead to fit a silicone elbow. We're going to have to mount that TB at 90° to the supercharger to make things fit properly. A little fiddling with TunerStudio and setting the fuel tables to very rich had it kinda running ok - well, maybe just 'running'.  Although still with a very high and worryingly lean idle... Satisfying though, especially as I was just going on the sellers word that the engine ran. |
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Last Edit: Jun 28, 2019 8:13:46 GMT by gryphon
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piguin
Part of things
Posts: 136
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May 31, 2019 15:02:35 GMT
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Ah, accidental purchases... those can be fun  Really looking forward to the rocketeer conversion, haven't tried one but it just feels the right amount of... well, everything P.S. For some reason can't see any of the pictures in your last post except the one of TunerStudio |
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gryphon
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 330
Club RR Member Number: 157
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May 31, 2019 16:06:45 GMT
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I'm looking forward to the rocketeer conversion too! It does sound very right for these cars. They are fun with the 1.8, but I don't think there's any denying a bit more go would increase the fun factor. Pretty much 250bhp per tonne Ironically once the engine swap is done my accidental car will be the most money I've ever put into a car. Ah well! Typical on the pictures, not going to be at a computer to fix that for a few days now... |
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Last Edit: May 31, 2019 16:09:17 GMT by gryphon
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May 31, 2019 21:16:19 GMT
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I see you put a deposit down on rocketeer conversion. Did you look into the Crapengineering Mazda V6 kit?
I can't find prices for it online but sounds cheaper than Rocketeer
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piguin
Part of things
Posts: 136
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From my (couple years old admittedly) research, the Rocketeer kit is more expensive than most, but the quality of the components is second to none, it comes with full instructions and great support and it is a full plug and play system (for right hand drive cars at least). From the cast sump that looks better than most OEM parts, to the carbon intakes, and everything in between - they even include all bolts in separate little numbered bags like you are building an IKEA cabinet |
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gryphon
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 330
Club RR Member Number: 157
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I did have a look at the crapengineering kits. They are a lot cheaper and have a good reputation but a lot less complete... I believe it's basically a subframe and bellhousing adapter plate. I think the new sump too, my memory is hazy but I came to the conclusion that a lot of the work left to do was a bit beyond my ability, and learning as I went along would take a long time. I also don't really have the working space for a really long project - I have a garage workshop, but the car is on the drive.
The KLZE from the MX6 seems to make around 200hp in the swaps I found, as against 250 from the Jag AJ30.
Reasons I decided on rocketeer are basically as piguin has said. I've followed a couple of builds and it's not quite as plug and play as they'd like but it's very close. I've never done anything like an engine swap before so I'll cheat on my first one! Plus the end result should be a much tidier, more reliable car, rather than a my-first-engine-swap spacial.
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Last Edit: Jun 2, 2019 18:16:01 GMT by gryphon
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gryphon
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 330
Club RR Member Number: 157
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Jun 23, 2019 20:47:26 GMT
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The supercharger side has stalled a bit because my weekends seem to have been filled with weddings at the moment 
On the plus side, the last one took me in the direction of a Jag V6 engine for sale, so I borrowed a trailer and had a look. The seller (Really sound guy) had very graciously said I could scope the engine before buying it. He's pulled it out onto the drive for us and the moment we pulled out the laptop and spark plug socket it started POURING down. Really really pouring. Turns out that the spark plugs are in deep wells in the head that gather a lot of water... You can see where this is going - in the process of scoping the bores we let a decent amount of water into the cylinders. One got rather fuller than the others as when I turned the engine over it ejected a fountain of brown oily water all down the front of my girlfriend who was holding an umbrella over us. Thankfully she almost saw the funny side! Only later did I wonder if that meant the water had been sitting in the cylinder for a while.
So after a wet scoping, it wasn't massively clear but I thought I could see scoring on half of the cylinders and my gut was telling me not to get the engine....
... but since when was I that sensible. After all, I was feeling bad about getting water in the engine that the seller would have to dry out asap, I'd borrowed a trailer and trundled it around all weekend, and the guy selling it seemed to want it gone, so we loaded it into the trailer for a steeply discounted £150 and trundled it home.
Got it up onto the stand as soon as possible and drained any water before giving everything a liberal douse of WD40.
Now most people doing the rocketeer swap seem to be buying an engine and dropping it straight in - be that a used engine or a £4k blueprinted one from rocketeer - and at ~80k miles mine seems younger than many of the used engines people are getting. As I was warned about scoring, and already thought I'd seen some, I figured I'd better get the heads off to have a proper look! First time I've done any engine work, but I have a friend who's built many and is very patient with all my questions! (Thanks Tom)
So.. rocker covers off:
Cam Chain cover off:
Timing marks added to the chain for the right bank:
Cams out:
And head off! I think my phone had some oil on the camera lens by this point, sorry for the quality!
A bit of cleaning revealed scoring on all three bores. Rear and middle is minor - only just detectable with a fingernail. Front bore catches the nail strongly across a lot of the scores.
That's as far as I've got to at the moment, next step is to pull the piston out and see if the scoring has damaged the piston skirt. It not I hope I can get away with a bit of honing... All on the advice of my mate, because it's the first time I've done any of this!
Can't take the sump off at the moment as it's currently bolted to the engine stand and I'm waiting on some new bolts to allow me to attach the stand purely to the block 
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Last Edit: Jul 1, 2019 12:59:21 GMT by gryphon
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rickygolf83
Scotland
Mk2 Golf 8v & 16v, VR6, Nova Antibes, Mk4 1.8t & mk4 Gt Tdi 130
Posts: 560
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Bookmarked!
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gryphon
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 330
Club RR Member Number: 157
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Small update... I got the sump off:  Found a fair bit of sludge and a decent chunk of ally in the oil pick up.... Haven't worked out where it came from yet!  And then the interesting bit: Piston 1 out:  ^Intake side is a little bit pooped  Exhaust side looks more like it's supposed to! So, new pistons needed at the very least. Currently I have one head off and one piston out. The weekends job is to make space on the workbench and finish dismantling the rest, then get the bores measured, which thankfully my mate has offered to do. Then I'll know if the block can be saved at least! Now to source a second hand set of pistons... or a dubiously cheap new set from the States. Or just try my luck with another engine - there's one with the wrong heads going for £140 just down the road from me after all... Btw, if any of you more experienced types think I'm going about this wrong or drawing the wrong conclusions I'd be very happy to hear from you |
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Jun 28, 2019 19:33:42 GMT
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I would be wanting to find where that chunk of metal is from- it's got a worryingly circular profile on the top edge and looks like it belongs somewhere important...
--Phil
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gryphon
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 330
Club RR Member Number: 157
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Jun 28, 2019 21:22:24 GMT
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I would be wanting to find where that chunk of metal is from- it's got a worryingly circular profile on the top edge and looks like it belongs somewhere important... --Phil I am keeping my eyes peeled. It is a curious bit of metal - one side cast finish, other side sheared off something around a centre point... Not spotted where it belongs yet.
This evening was spent finishing off the dismantling. No good news to report. All bores have scoring of varying severity and I need 6 new pistons. The one exhaust manifold stud that snapped is still stubbornly in the head too!
On the plus side I cleaned up all the oil I had managed to drip onto the floor - garage floor now has a clean patch.
Next step is bore measurement which will take place on Sunday if all goes to plan. Might have to put some time into supercharger in the meantime!
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Jun 28, 2019 21:58:14 GMT
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That looks like the end cap mounting for something, get a good mirror and a bright light and have a jolly good look up inside the block- looks to be the topside of something judging by the dirt on it.
It takes a lot for aluminum alloy to spall off like that, looks like it's taken an impact.
It also looks like it should be keeping two parts of the engine separate from each other... Like oil and coolant, for instance.
Phil
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Last Edit: Jun 28, 2019 22:00:08 GMT by PhilA
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sonus
Europe
Posts: 1,392
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Current
1968 TVR VIXEN S1 V8 Prototype
2004 TVR T350C
2017 BMW 340i
Previous
BMW 325d E91LCI - sold
Alfa Romeo GTV - sold
Citroen AX GT - at the breakers
Ford Puma 1.7 - sold
Volvo V50 2.0d - sold
MGB GT - wrecked by fire
MG ZT 1.8T - sold
VW E-golf Electric - sold
Mini Countryman 1.6D -sold
Land Rover Discovery TD5 - sold
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gryphon
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 330
Club RR Member Number: 157
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That looks like the end cap mounting for something, get a good mirror and a bright light and have a jolly good look up inside the block- looks to be the topside of something judging by the dirt on it. It takes a lot for aluminum alloy to spall off like that, looks like it's taken an impact. It also looks like it should be keeping two parts of the engine separate from each other... Like oil and coolant, for instance. Phil Thanks, I won't be putting anything back together until I've found where it came from! I see what you mean about it should be keeping parts separate from each other, however I think I'm safe on the oil/coolant at least as there was a fair bit of each left in the engine. The coolant looked perfect, oil a bit black but still very much oil, no mayo. That looks a really good project - he has far more skill than me! Looks like a crapengineering subframe? Also what's the engine... Mazda V6 but doesn't look like the AJ30/KLZE? The bores were measured last night - all round and well within tolerance. It also seems I jumped the gun on writing off the pistons - I've been advised that most are just normal wear, only one is dead. Three of the bores are fine, two a little scored and one badly scored. Apparently could be saved with a hone as it's a pretty low strung engine and I'm not chasing peak performance. Looking into options though! Best bet might just be try a new engine - they're cheap enough - but feels a bit like playing roulette... |
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Realising now I have yet to actually take a good picture of it though...
