Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / The Last of the Cheap Porsches: Why the 924 and 944 Still Matter

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The Last of the Cheap Porsches: Why the 924 and 944 Still Matter · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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  Grand Touring Motorsports started as a social group of car enthusiasts,
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  but we've expanded into all sorts of motorsports disciplines, and we
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  want to share our stories with you.
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  Years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings
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  together a top notch collection of knowledge and information
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  through our podcast, Brake Fix.
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  The last of the cheap Porsches.
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  They were plentiful, and some had aggressive jackknife fender
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  flares, and others were more demure.
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  They don't have the panache of the 911, but that's okay.
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  Because these amazingly well balanced front mount rear drive vehicles are
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  what many would consider A driver's car.
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  Something you jump in, don't think twice about, but puts a smile on
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  your face when exiting a corner on a back road, autocross, or racetrack.
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  Tonight, we're chatting about the Porsche 924 and 944.
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  The 924 being originally designed by Porsche for Volkswagen, and
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  is the predecessor to its more famous younger sibling, the 944.
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  These vehicles spanned a 16 year production run from 1976 through
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  1992 before ultimately being replaced by the 968 and joining us for an in
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  depth conversation into one of my favorite Porsches is Kevin Duffy,
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  noted 924 and 944 expert from 924s944.
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  com to explain to us.
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  Why we should buy a watercooled Porsche.
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  Thanks, Brad.
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  And with that, welcome to Brake Fix, Kevin.
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  It's great to be here.
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  Like all good Brake Fix stories, there's always an origin.
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  So tell us about how you got into cars.
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  What attracted you to the 924 and 944s?
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  How you started 924S944.
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  com?
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  And what was the genesis of all this?
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  Well, back in the early 80s, my wife wanted a Porsche.
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  They weren't real expensive, but they were expensive enough.
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  So I looked out, looked around, tried to find what I wanted, and
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  I did find a really nice 78 924.
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  Bronze color, low miles on it.
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  It was four or five years old at the time.
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  And so I bought it.
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  That car stayed in our family until our son actually started
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  driving it when he turned 16.
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  We put 250, 000 miles on that car.
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  And that's how I learned how to work on these because you really couldn't afford
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  to have the dealer do anything on them.
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  And there weren't a whole lot of mechanics around that would touch them.
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  So I had to learn myself.
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  I had some background in mechanics anyway, but I just had to learn how
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  these cars were the same and different.
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  And that started the passion that still exists today.
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  When I started 924S944.
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  com, it was an effort to get the word out basically.
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  And just start to write a little bit about how these cars work, what I'd
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  learned over the decades about them.
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  As much as I'd like to say it's a thriving business and all this, it really isn't.
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  It's my passion and my hobby.
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  I'm a retired law enforcement officer and retired teacher.
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  From that, when I retired, it was now I can spend full time on doing what I
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  really love to do, which is these cars.
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  So the big question, how many 924s or 44s have you had over the years?
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  It's in the several dozens, at least.
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  Many of them have come and gone.
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  I had one that sold it about, oh, probably eight years ago.
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  The fellow that I sold it to about a year ago called me and
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  said, I'm going to sell the car.
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  If you want it back, you can give me what I paid you for it.
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  You can have it back, which I did immediately.
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  And it turns out that that car was my first 924s special edition.
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  And so I bought it back from him and I'm in the process now of restoring that one.
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  But I had another one.
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  The one that I drive daily is a, uh, 87 924s.
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  I bought it as a salvage title total, bought it, fixed it.
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  Took me a week to fix it because it was an engine fire.
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  So it really wasn't that badly damaged, but they told me.
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  I fixed it and drove it for a couple of months.
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  The president of our local PCA region wanted to buy it.
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  So I went ahead and sold it to him.
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  And when I signed the title over, I knew I was making a mistake.
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  Two years later, he called me back and said, I'm going to sell the car.
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  Do you want it?
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  He sold it back to me.
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  It has a name.
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  Its name is Sparky.
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  Sparky is my buddy.
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  Sparky will be with me forever because he was a reject.
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  He was going to go to the crusher just because he had a bad repair.
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  Somebody did on a fuel line.
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  It spritzed into the spark plug holes, fuel and sparks make fire.
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  And that's what happened.
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  So that's where he got the name Sparky.
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  And we saved it, but Sparky is a really cool dude, and he's gonna be with me.
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  He's gone to a lot of shows, gone to a lot of events, and we are planning
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  on driving to 944 Fest next summer.
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  No trailer.
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  I'm driving the whole way.
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  So let's turn the pages backwards and talk about the history of
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  the 924, 44, and 968 lineage.
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  Let's start off with the age old question before we dive into the
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  really technical details here.
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  People will often argue Is it a Volkswagen or is it a Porsche or is it both?
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  So let's set the record straight, Kevin.
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  You're an expert on these cars, which is it?
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  It's an interesting historical issue.
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  And unless you really know what happened in the seventies with these two companies,
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  Volkswagen and Porsche, it's hard to understand really what happened.
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  Porsche, even though they make lots of really cool cars, they're
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  actually an engineering company.
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  For example, Harley Davidson hired Porsche to help them design
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  a couple of motorcycles because they're an engineering company.
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  That's what they do.
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  Back then, you could buy a 914 from your local Volkswagen dealer.
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  And so, they wanted to replace the 914 with something that was liquid cool.
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  Reason being was that water cooled engines had better emissions
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  than the air cooled engines.
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  So Volkswagen had their Beetle not being able to meet emissions.
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  Even the 911 was not able to meet emissions.
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  They knew what they were up against.
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  So Volkswagen said, we don't want the 914 with its air cooled engine.
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  We want a water cooled Porsche to sell at our dealerships to replace it with.
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  So they signed a deal, and they paid Porsche 50, 000 marks to
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  design what we know today as a 924.
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  When the car was just about done, this could be legend, it could be true.
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  The guy that's heading it up died, had a heart attack, keeled over.
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  The incoming folks who took his place said, we really don't want that car.
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  We want something a little different.
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  We want a front wheel drive car.
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  And so because of that difference, what happened was that Porsche said,
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  yeah, but this is a really good car and we did what you wanted.
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  We designed it with all the off the shelf parts we could use.
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  But we took your 75 horsepower four cylinder two liter and we made it into
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  a 100 horsepower or even in Europe, 125 horsepower that you could drive
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  it and it handled well and did all the things it was supposed to do.
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  They gave him 40, 000 marks back and bought the car.
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  With the idea that at the time, VW Audi was going to keep supplying them with the
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  two liter engine, which was an Audi engine and a Porsche head to make it better.
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  And off they went.
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  Porsche bought it back from them and immediately started working
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  on their own iteration that we know of today as the 944.
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  Building a brand new car from scratch is tough, and even modifying a car
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  that you already have is tough, especially when you love talking about
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  engines, drive trains and all that.
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  That 10,000 engine limit was something that they really didn't
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  think that Porsche was gonna sell.
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  That many of 'em, well, just the na, the naturally aspirated cars.
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  They sold 120 some thousand of them when they brought the 9 44 out.
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  In North America is an 83 model.
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  They were lined up around the building to buy it.
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  It still had the VW suspension components and the Audi transaxle and
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  all that stuff was still there, but it had a Porsche engine and the engine
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  was designed by the same group of engineers who designed the 928 engine.
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  So there is a urban legend that the 928 engine cut in half as a 944 engine.
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  It's not true.
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  There's really no interchangeable parts.
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  Although some of the part numbers do match up, but the engineers who were
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  building a five liter or at the time of 4.
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  5 liter V8 next thing you know, they're building a 2.
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  5 liter four cylinder that now they over engineered the hell out of it.
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  Unless you've ever had one of these engines apart, you don't realize
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  that drag racers with the V8s put a girdle on the bottom of the block in
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  order to keep the bottom of the block together when they come off the line,
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  because there's that much stress.
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  The 944 engine As a girdle that holds the crankshaft in place, and there's
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  32 bolts that hold a four cylinder, 150 horsepower crankshaft in place.
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  The bottom ends never go bad, and that's why, because it's way over engineered.
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  Porsche kept making the 924 for the European and British market.
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  After we got the 944, they quit sending the 924 here.
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  Well, in 1985, they're still making 924s with 2 liter Audi engines in
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  them, and Volkswagen came forward and said, Listen, we're cutting you off.
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  You can't have any more.
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  We're not selling you that motor anymore.
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  I'm sorry, but we're done.
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  The CEO at the time was Peter Schutz.
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  Peter is American.
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  In fact, he was from Central Florida.
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  Among other things, he saved the 911.
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  They were going to phase out the 911.
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  He said, you can't do that.
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  But when they got the notification from VW, and said, we're not selling you any
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  more of these Audi engines, he said, fine.
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  He told his engineers, figure out a way to put that four cylinder
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  944 engine into the old 924 shell.
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  Keep the interior the same, the old, what they say, square dash 924 interior.
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  Take all that, leave it as it is, slap the motor in it, and call it a day.
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  And we'll call it a 924S, and the Americans will buy the
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  hell out of it, which we did.
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  And that's where the 924S came from.
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  Now, curiously, in 89, the 944 was a 2.
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  7.
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  engine.
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  They bored it from 100 millimeter to 104 millimeter, and that made it a 2.
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  7, and then the next iteration was to stroke it and then
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  make it into the 3 liter.
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  The 89 944 engine, they said, was 165 horsepower, I think,
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  but it was a lot more torque.
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  People tend to believe that the horsepower ratings were even higher than that.
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  Porsche built 25 pre production 924S's with the 944 oval
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  dash interiors and the 2.
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  7.
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  And that would have been a hell of a car.
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  But, the exchange rate got all screwed up.
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  They cancelled the 924S program in mid year.
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  and the 89 9 24 s never made it to production and they made 25 of them.
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  They crash tested half of them and sold the rest of them
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  to employees at the factory.
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  And we don't think any of them survived till today.
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  And that's a real shame.
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  When you look at the entire history of the 944, how many they made over
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  the years, all the improvements and developments that they made over the
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  years, the fact that they made many more 944s than they ever made 911s in
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  that same period of time, the 944 took a financially troubled company and not
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  only brought it into the 80s and 90s With a liquid cooled engine and the front
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  engine rear transmission layout, but also taught Porsche how to do liquid cooling.
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  And then we end up with the Boxster and the 996.
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  So it is a huge piece of development history for Porsche.
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  When people say, it's not really a Porsche.
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  Yeah, it is.
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  It may not have started as a Porsche.
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  As a side note, when VW decided not to take this car, they instead built
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  the Scirocco, a good car on its own.
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  But how many of them do you see today?
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  That's actually brings up a really good point in that it's an interesting decision
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  making process when you look at VW and Porsche together, because You're right,
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  the Scirocco was the replacement for the 924 concept, but when you think about
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  it from a dollars and cents perspective, it was cheaper for them to produce
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  the Scirocco because it was built on top of the Mark I golf chassis, which
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  already existed, and they already had Giugiaro on the books designing the golf.
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  He had done the launch of Delta, which is a very similar
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  car that predates it as well.
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  And then you go, well, here, I'll pen the Scirocco really quick.
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  We're going to take the golf and kind of stretch it out
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  and make it into a lift back.
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  It sort of made sense, but then it kind of diverges because that Audi two liter only
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  ended up in a handful of Audi eighties.
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  Before it was almost immediately replaced by the five cylinder, which
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  is closer to the 944 engineering wise.
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  Again, it's so sort of intertwined and intermixed in all of this.
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  When you look at it kind of further down the pike, BW graduated away from
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  that Audi two liter when they developed.
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  Finally, the 1.
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  8, because the Golfs and the Chiracos came with the 1.
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  6, the 1.
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  7, then finally the 1.
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  8, and then the 1.
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  8 was replaced by the 16 valve, which it took the 944 evolution, how many years to
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  catch up with VW in the 16 valve realm?
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  Up to 87.
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  Yeah.
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  It sort of feels like this leapfrogging between the two companies.
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  In reality, they were probably sharing the technology back and forth.
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  You would think that they did share, and at least they were on the same
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  development lines the whole time.
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  Actually, when they were working on the 944, they were trying to
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  figure out what engine to put in it.
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  And they tried, and I don't remember the brand, could have been a Renault or some
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  European V6 that they wanted to put in it.
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  They're trying to decide if it was going to be a four cylinder or a six cylinder.
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  They put a six cylinder in the body of a 924.
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  And it was a wonderful performer.
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  However, when they got down to brass tacks, they couldn't assemble the car
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  in the factory the way they wanted to, because the engine had to come
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  in through the bottom and it wouldn't fit between the subframe rails.
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  And there was no way around it.
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  They had also worked with some bigger four cylinders.
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  I think they had a 2.
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  4 Rover or something.
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  And that's when they decided to go with the 2.
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  5 four cylinder and then designed up their engines.
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  But in early development, they really wanted a V6 would have been
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  a hell of a car with a V6, but they just couldn't shoehorn it in.
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  That said, you have the VR6 that would have fit.
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  So, you know, you kind of look and see how things develop, and maybe it was
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  Porsche's experience in the late 70s where they said, yeah, we can't shoehorn
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  a V6 in the way we want to do it.
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  And Volkswagen said, wait a minute, if we close it up a little bit,
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  maybe we can make one that will work.
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  It's some interesting stuff.
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  I mean, you, you start looking at the history of these things.
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  When you look at 75 to about 90, the engineering is absolutely
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  fabulous during that time period.
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  But The question is, are the sales numbers commiserate to all of that engineering?
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  And I would say, yeah, we didn't get the 924 until the 77 model
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  from 76 to 91, which 91 was the last year for the S2, the 924 S2.
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  Porsche built worldwide just over 325, 000 924s, 924s and 944s.
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  Now that doesn't include the special race models and all that, which only adds
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  about all total less than a thousand cars, but we can say 325, 000 is pretty close.
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  In the same period, from 76 to 91, they sold 217, 000 9 11s.
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  They bested the 9 11 sales by 50%.
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  Like I say, a friend of mine was a salesman here in Orlando.
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  When the 944 came out, they had a waiting list here for a year.
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  For 9 44, that's how popular they were.
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  When you look at how the production went with the 9 24, which we look
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  back at the 9 24 here in the United States, at first it was 95 horsepower
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  and then went to a hundred horsepower.
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  They sent 36,009 20 fours to North America between 76 and 82.
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  That doesn't include the turbos.
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  The 931.
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  The turbo in the U.
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  S.
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  was almost 7, 000 turbos.
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  When you look at those numbers, you're approaching 50, 000 cars that we look
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  back at today and say they're junk.
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  They were really something back then.
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  If you look and see how that worked out when The 9 44 came out for us in 83.
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  That was a big deal because the 9 44, let's face, it was a
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  much better car handling wise.
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  The looks were more aggressive and people were really, really, really fired
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  up about, so yeah, it was a big deal.
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  What was the price point back then?
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  But can we convert that to today's dollars?
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  The 9 24 in today's dollars was about 30 grand.
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  The 944 at the time was in the mid twenties in 19, say like 1984, you
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  can get a nicely appointed nine 44 for about 25, 27, 000, but at the same
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  time you could buy a Toyota Corolla.
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  You know, you look and see what the difference was.
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  Yeah, it was a pricey car at the time.
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  What happened with the 944 was that as it progressed through the 80s,
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  it got more and more and more and more expensive to the point where in
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  89, 90, 91, getting a, like an S2.
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  That could be in 1990.
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  That could be 70, 000 or 80, 000.
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  That was a lot of money.
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  The 968s were even more.
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  You could buy a 100, 000 968.
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  In 1993 94, that's a lot of money.
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  But the 911s had Earlier surpassed 100, 000.
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  So it still was cheaper than a nine 11, but the sales figures dropped off.
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  I think because of pricing, they had a lot of cool stuff.
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  They have a lot of options.
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  They have a lot of good technology in them.
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  My feeling is they should just kept it simple and gone from there.
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  And of course, then the Boxster came out with a 40, 000 price point.
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  When that happened, it was immediately snapped up because people wanted that
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  kind of a price point to buy a Porsche.
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  I think they kind of priced their way out over the years, which is
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  why when the 924S came out in the U.
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  S.
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  in 87, it was 19, 999.
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  Realistically, with the options and all, 25, 000 in 1987, 1988.
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  You can get a 924S with air conditioning, a radio, and power
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  carrying stuff and all that.
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  But 25, 000 was still a lot of money.
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  They say the Toyota was still 10, 000, 12, 000.
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  Yeah, it was a lot of money.
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  I actually looked at buying a new one, 87.
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  And we'll get more into buying 924s a minute, but a couple more
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  fact or fiction questions for you in the history of both cars.
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  I remember vividly a lot of magazines saying, especially when the 944 turbo
• 19:52
  came out, that it was faster than the 911, all things being equal.
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  Was that mostly because of the aerodynamics and how slippery the 944
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  was, or was there some sort of other magic to it that it was quicker than the 911?
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  The 944 turbo, 951, did have a little bit more power, it was better balanced,
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  it had better aero, and it was about 100 pounds lighter than a 911 at the time.
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  But if you want to look at and compare like an 86 turbo to an 86 911 3.
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  2 Carrera, the top speed for the 944 was 152.
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  The 911 was 152.
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  They were dead equal horsepower for the 944.
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  Was about two 20.
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  The nine 11 Carrera was 2 0 7.
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  The 9 44 went zero to 60 and 5.9, the 9 11 6 0.1, if you look at the
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  published figures, yeah, it was faster.
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  But the difference between the two cars is night and day because you're in.
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  A 944 turbo, especially a new one in 1986, the 944 turbo was more of a
• 20:58
  luxury car than the 86 Carrera, the 86 Carrera was like a driver's car.
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  You know, you got in it and it made noises.
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  And it was skitterish and it's handling.
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  I mean, you had to learn how to drive a 911 because of the
• 21:13
  weight distribution and all that.
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  A 944, you got in it.
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  It was fairly quiet, had very, very comfortable seats.
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  Although they were the same as 911, the cabin was well appointed.
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  It had nice air conditioning, which 911s.
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  Until they went to liquid cooled, we're not really known for their air
• 21:30
  conditioning, so, you know, the AC side was, uh, you know, was better.
• 21:34
  So you start looking at all those, and they're just different cars.
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  But to the person who didn't have a stopwatch, yeah, the 911
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  probably felt a little bit slower.
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  The 944 was more competent, maybe.
• 21:48
  But they're just different cars, and the 100 difference in weight is huge.
• 21:53
  In racing, we talk about 1 horsepower is 10 pounds.
• 21:57
  So if you can eliminate 100 pounds, it's like adding 10 horsepower, which
• 22:00
  makes the 944 even a better choice.
• 22:03
  That's why they sold a zillion of them, because it was.
• 22:06
  A much, much nicer car.
• 22:08
  Let's talk about Mazda versus Porsche, the RX 7 and the 944.
• 22:14
  Factor fiction there too.
• 22:16
  There's all these rumors about lawsuits and who stole whose design.
• 22:20
  And if you look at the original RX 7 versus the 924 and the second
• 22:24
  gen RX they're very similar.
• 22:27
  The legend is that there were a lot of personnel that were traded back
• 22:32
  and forth between Mazda and Porsche.
• 22:34
  It wasn't that they cooperated, quite the opposite, but that there were
• 22:39
  the same people in different parts of the design phases on both cars.
• 22:44
  That's the legend.
• 22:45
  Whether it's true or not, who knows.
• 22:47
  But, I will say this, we raced at SCCA in the same class with the first generation
• 22:54
  RX 7s, and they kicked our asses.
• 22:57
  Mostly because of top speed.
• 22:58
  They were just so much faster than you were.
• 23:00
  Oh, well, that's kind of the way it was.
• 23:02
  You go to a track like Sebring or Daytona, where you got long straightaways, and
• 23:07
  you just see them come up in back of you, and you say, well, okay, I've lost this
• 23:11
  spot, and sure enough, you know, about halfway down the straightaway, there
• 23:15
  they go, and it's just the way it was.
• 23:16
  But the 944s, especially the 924s, because they're even lighter, we could get into an
• 23:23
  infield course or into a twisty part and catch up with the 911s and with the RX 7s.
• 23:29
  When it got to top speed, we just didn't have it.
• 23:32
  I love the 924s and I'm always looking for another one.
• 23:37
  I had a brief stint of ownership with a non running 924 turbo
• 23:41
  because I was sold a bill of goods.
• 23:43
  What was told to me was just a battery problem was much more than a battery
• 23:47
  problem, but I'll just leave it at that.
• 23:49
  So for someone who's always looking for a 924 and lesser so a 944,
• 23:54
  I prefer the lines of the 924.
• 23:56
  Let's talk about.
• 23:57
  Some do's and don'ts from a buyer's standpoint, when you're looking for
• 24:01
  a car, are there ones to stay away from ones that are more desirable
• 24:04
  than others, things like that?
• 24:06
  Well, I've always got my eye out for the next project to have, or the
• 24:10
  next one that's going to come along.
• 24:11
  Like you, I like the 924, the 924 shape and the 924 lines.
• 24:17
  I think it's cleaner.
• 24:18
  I like it that it's lighter and that's what I raced.
• 24:22
  I, I really kind of got attached to the 9 24 shape and being that
• 24:26
  the 9 24 was my first one, kind of got taped to them pretty tightly.
• 24:31
  That said, the 9 24 s is the 9 24 body gauges, interior look and feel.
• 24:39
  The whole thing you get the whole 9 24, the early car, the two liter cars, you
• 24:44
  get that whole thing, but you get the 9 44 engine for which you can get parts.
• 24:49
  People know about them where the two leaders, I don't want to say
• 24:53
  they pretty much disappeared, but they pretty much disappeared.
• 24:56
  We don't see that many of them.
• 24:57
  And when they come up, they're either basket cases or they're half taken
• 25:02
  apart, rusted because they've been sitting in a field for 10 years.
• 25:06
  They're not that many good ones out there and finding parts, even
• 25:11
  things as easy as main bearings or rod bearings for the engine.
• 25:15
  It's just not very easy to do.
• 25:17
  Even though the 924 two liter engine is pretty bulletproof, unless you can get
• 25:23
  the parts you need, you can't build it.
• 25:25
  The fuel injections are the old mechanical fuel injection systems.
• 25:29
  They're easy, but they're finicky.
• 25:31
  Things like the fuel distributor, you can rebuild it.
• 25:35
  I've rebuilt several.
• 25:36
  They all leak.
• 25:37
  They're a pain in the butt, and it's unfortunate with the way it is, so you
• 25:41
  can get one that's been professionally rebuilt, and hopefully it won't
• 25:44
  leak, but they're really expensive.
• 25:46
  The value of an early 924 just isn't there.
• 25:50
  Not now, and I have to think we've probably passed that prime at this point.
• 25:54
  There's one or two that come up over once in a while with 7000 miles on them
• 25:59
  and this and that they'll come up on one of the auction sites and they'll
• 26:02
  pull 12 13, 000 to get one to that condition is going to cost you 25 or
• 26:08
  30 restoration just doesn't make sense.
• 26:11
  That's why the 924S makes all the sense in the world, because you get
• 26:15
  the same look and feel and all that, but at the same time, you don't
• 26:19
  get the headaches that come with that 2 liter engine and that setup.
• 26:23
  Parts availability is the big question when it comes
• 26:27
  to what are you going to get.
• 26:28
  When I say availability, I say both, can you get it?
• 26:32
  And then how much is it gonna cost to get it?
• 26:34
  For the most part, the early nine 40 fours, the series one cars from
• 26:39
  83 to mid 85 and the 9 24 s share a lot of the early 9 24 suspension
• 26:48
  pieces and rack and steering and all this stuff that you would have.
• 26:52
  And there was a billion of 'em out there.
• 26:54
  So used parts are pretty easy to find.
• 26:56
  I kind of like those cars because they're much simpler.
• 27:02
  The most complicated computer on my, on Sparky is a radio.
• 27:06
  The computer that controls the engine, you could probably put on
• 27:10
  a chip the size of your toenail.
• 27:12
  But it's in a box, you know, it's the best 80s technology you could buy.
• 27:16
  There's still a lot of analog.
• 27:18
  that goes with that.
• 27:19
  You know, I like having the availability of computer control,
• 27:23
  but it's very simple computer control, but it works really well.
• 27:27
  There's a handful of sensors on the engine that reads, and it's all good.
• 27:31
  As you get into the more recent cars, the Series 2 944s, the S2s,
• 27:37
  they get more and more complicated.
• 27:39
  Porsche was really good for pushing the envelope.
• 27:42
  On things like the 944 S2s have things on them that for the day were revolutionary.
• 27:49
  Today we look at it and go, man, there's got to be a better way to do that.
• 27:52
  Because the electronics were primitive, the mechanicals in some
• 27:56
  of these things, some of the oil fed adjusters and things like that.
• 27:59
  The variable valve timing stuff and all was by today's standards archaic.
• 28:04
  Trying to get that stuff to work right can be problematic sometimes.
• 28:07
  So I like to stick with the Series 1 944 or 924S just because
• 28:13
  parts availability is there.
• 28:15
  I can buy a control arm for an 86 944 aluminum control arm
• 28:20
  with the glued in ball joint.
• 28:23
  is 250 bucks a side.
• 28:25
  I can buy a control arm for 87 924 s with the ball joint and with new rubber
• 28:33
  bushings in place for less than 50 bucks.
• 28:35
  If that's the case, I would rather go with something that I can.
• 28:39
  For one, I can Work on myself and for two is not going to break the bank.
• 28:43
  500 versus a hundred is a lot of money, especially when you're talking about a
• 28:46
  car that in most cases you're going to buy today for five or six grand, maybe
• 28:51
  10 at the outside, you're not going to put big, big, big, huge money into it.
• 28:55
  So I liked the earlier cars, but when you're looking for one, what you want
• 28:59
  to look for is things like history.
• 29:02
  Is there a history to the car?
• 29:04
  Is there good paperwork on the car?
• 29:06
  Is there a good record of for one mileage?
• 29:08
  Cause the odometers are all broken at one time or another.
• 29:12
  So you really don't know how many miles they have on them.
• 29:14
  So if you have a car fax, or if you have a stack of receipts, I just sold a nine
• 29:19
  44 that I bought from the original owner.
• 29:23
  And he had every receipt of everything from oil changes on up.
• 29:27
  So I was able to track the mileage and know that the mileage was correct.
• 29:31
  And that makes for a big deal.
• 29:32
  Another area to look at is paint work.
• 29:35
  None of the paint after 30 some years is going to be perfect.
• 29:39
  But you want to not have to have the car painted if you can help it.
• 29:43
  It's expensive.
• 29:45
  You can sometimes be as much as you pay for the car to get a paint.
• 29:48
  Even if you're going to do the work yourself, you're
• 29:50
  going to pay it in the garage.
• 29:51
  It's still expensive.
• 29:53
  Paint is a very expensive thing.
• 29:55
  So you look for decent paint and you might be able to clay bar and work it
• 29:59
  and bring it back to a presentable level.
• 30:01
  The front seats, the driver's seat always has split seams.
• 30:05
  A decent upholstery shop can fix that for a hundred dollars or so.
• 30:09
  But you can also get reupholstery kits, the front seats, 400 bucks, you get brand
• 30:14
  new reupholstery for both seats, you take the old upholstery off, put the new on,
• 30:18
  it's not difficult and it looks great.
• 30:20
  There are some things that you can do, obviously if it needs everything.
• 30:26
  You're going to do the maintenance that has been neglected because that's why
• 30:29
  you're buying it is because somebody couldn't keep up the maintenance
• 30:33
  or didn't keep up the maintenance.
• 30:34
  So you're going to do timing belts and you know, you do all that kind
• 30:37
  of stuff and check the brakes and change the fluids and all that.
• 30:40
  And you're going to put some money into that.
• 30:42
  You just figure that into your purchase price and, you know,
• 30:45
  a lot of them will come to me.
• 30:46
  I'll pick up and they'll have really good tires and then, you know, they'll put in
• 30:50
  the head, you know, tires are great and go look at them and they're 13 years old.
• 30:54
  So you don't really want to go driving around much on 13 year
• 30:57
  old tires and you can help them.
• 30:58
  So there are a lot of things to just to look at and see what's what.
• 31:02
  You want to, though, see through a good presentation, and you want
• 31:06
  to make sure you check everything.
• 31:08
  At this point, there are steering wheel that grab the wheel and it goes up and
• 31:11
  down about a quarter inch in the column.
• 31:14
  There's a plastic bushing that costs 5 that takes about an
• 31:19
  hour to replace that fixes that.
• 31:21
  But it can take 500 bucks off the price of the car as you're negotiating,
• 31:26
  you know, steering is loose.
• 31:27
  So there are a lot of things that you can do when you're looking at these,
• 31:30
  you know, tires, wheels, brakes, what has to be done to make it presentable.
• 31:35
  You're never going to get one that's Concorde perfect.
• 31:37
  It just doesn't happen.
• 31:38
  But you can get them presentable so that you can go to a local
• 31:42
  event and go to the grocery store.
• 31:44
  I take Sparky to the grocery store because you can, because it has a hatch.
• 31:49
  Rarely get out of the parking lot without somebody coming over
• 31:52
  and wanting to look at the car.
• 31:53
  To me, that works out well.
• 31:55
  I just enjoy that.
• 31:56
  What should we be looking for?
• 31:57
  What are some of the known common issues?
• 32:00
  With these cars, and then what are some things that need to be
• 32:03
  revisited or fixed immediately?
• 32:04
  I know you mentioned the steering column and the brakes and things like that
• 32:08
  things that can go wrong on any car that's been sitting around for several years.
• 32:12
  But before you answer that, I'm just curious.
• 32:15
  How come.
• 32:17
  You should stay away from the 924 turbo.
• 32:20
  You've touched on the turbo a couple of times, but it doesn't seem like it's,
• 32:24
  you know, a car that you favor too much.
• 32:26
  It's not that I don't favor it.
• 32:28
  In comparison, this is simply, you know, in my sicko mind,
• 32:33
  a 931, which is a 924 turbo.
• 32:36
  makes about 150 horsepower and 924 S and a makes about 150 horsepower.
• 32:42
  The suspension look and feel the driving experience and all
• 32:46
  is almost exactly the same.
• 32:47
  However, the 9 31 engine, while it is not a bad engine, Getting parts and getting
• 32:55
  it to work properly and all is extremely difficult and it can get extremely
• 33:02
  expensive when you start replacing the turbo parts and having parts rebuilt
• 33:07
  that you can't actually get anymore.
• 33:09
  Things like the headers on those cars crack, you can weld them all
• 33:13
  you want and you can't get them back.
• 33:15
  To seal, you can't get them to work right.
• 33:17
  There's just a myriad of issues with the 931.
• 33:21
  When it comes to performance, I can get the same thing with a NA 924S.
• 33:26
  So that's kind of why I've stayed away from them.
• 33:28
  And people I know who have had them and have them now,
• 33:32
  they're always fixing something.
• 33:33
  There's always something up.
• 33:34
  There's always a problem.
• 33:36
  And even my friend's 924 Carrera GT, which was a 931, it had some serious
• 33:42
  issues that needed engine outs and a lot of replacement of things and all.
• 33:47
  And I just, that's something that I just don't need that kind of aggravation.
• 33:50
  In any of these cars, the 944 engine is an interference engine.
• 33:54
  If you break the timing belt, you're going to bend valve, most of them exhaust valve.
• 33:58
  If you're lucky and it breaks at an idle, you'll bend one, maybe two valves.
• 34:03
  I had one guy brought me a car.
• 34:05
  It just quit running.
• 34:06
  Well, he had it around 6, 000 RPM when the timing belt broke and it
• 34:11
  bent every valve, intake and exhaust.
• 34:15
  That thing was destroyed.
• 34:16
  Things like the pistons, the rods, the crank, they all went
• 34:20
  in the dumpster because you don't know what kind of damage it did.
• 34:23
  If you don't have an actual history, if the timing belt's been on there more
• 34:28
  than a couple, three, four years, or more than 30 miles that you can document
• 34:33
  when you buy one, just replace it.
• 34:35
  When you're doing that, everybody says, well, you do the time you build
• 34:38
  through the water pump at the same time.
• 34:39
  Water pumps are cheap.
• 34:41
  You're there, you're looking at it, change the water pump.
• 34:43
  Especially if you're in the south, like we are here, it gets hot here in the summer.
• 34:47
  We put a 160 degree thermostat in it.
• 34:50
  So it opens up a little sooner, and that way we can keep
• 34:53
  the car a little bit cooler.
• 34:54
  The front of the engine also has four seals on it.
• 34:56
  Crank seal, balance shaft seals, cam seal.
• 34:59
  That kit.
• 35:00
  With the seals and all in it, it's a hundred bucks, replace them too.
• 35:03
  You replace all that stuff, seal up the front of the motor, timing belt's not
• 35:07
  going to be an issue, you're all set.
• 35:09
  Make sure you get it timed back properly.
• 35:11
  Make sure you get the balance shafts timed properly.
• 35:13
  If you off one or two teeth on the balance shafts, it'll shake like the
• 35:17
  balance shafts aren't even there.
• 35:19
  Very violent.
• 35:20
  So you want to make sure you get all that done.
• 35:22
  Come across a few lately, but very few of them have the original clutch disc.
• 35:26
  But a clutch job, if you're going to have it done at a shop, can be 8 to 10
• 35:31
  hours of labor, plus 600 or 800 in parts.
• 35:35
  So you're looking at 2, 000 to get a clutch done.
• 35:38
  And if it's the original rubber clutch, it's 30 some years
• 35:41
  old, it's going to break.
• 35:43
  So keep that in mind.
• 35:45
  That said, looking at a car to buy and it's got a recent clutch job on it, you've
• 35:49
  got the paperwork on it, that's all good.
• 35:52
  When it also comes to a car that's been sitting for a while, the clutch
• 35:56
  slave cylinder tends to go bad.
• 35:58
  You replace the master and the slave together.
• 36:01
  Those two parts have gone up lately.
• 36:02
  They're in the 150 to 180 range each.
• 36:07
  But You replace both of them because they never get bled.
• 36:10
  To bleed the clutch slave, to do it right, you really have to take the
• 36:13
  starter out to get to the bleeder.
• 36:15
  And so nobody ever does it.
• 36:17
  So all the debris and all the crap from the fluid and all, maybe they
• 36:21
  change the fluid, bleed the brakes, but they don't touch the clutch.
• 36:24
  All that debris goes down in there and eventually fails the slave.
• 36:28
  So you have that going on.
• 36:29
  Common issue.
• 36:30
  Everything else is pretty well straightforward.
• 36:34
  It's normal car stuff.
• 36:35
  Do the lights work?
• 36:36
  Does the A.
• 36:37
  C.
• 36:37
  work?
• 36:37
  Are the tires okay?
• 36:39
  Do the brakes stop the car?
• 36:40
  When you turn the wheel, does it actually steer?
• 36:42
  I mean, these are all the things, you know, you look at the rear shocks,
• 36:46
  you can't see the front struts, but you, you know, you can't see
• 36:49
  what kind of condition they're in, but you can see the rear shocks.
• 36:52
  And if they look like they've been there since the Carter administration,
• 36:56
  then you probably need to replace them.
• 36:58
  There are two choices when it comes to shocks.
• 37:02
  There are KYB shocks that are inexpensive, about a buck and a
• 37:06
  quarter, you get all four corners.
• 37:08
  Do those, there are good street driving around going back and forth
• 37:12
  to work, shock, or you can spend 800 and go with Kony or Bilstein
• 37:17
  and get a performance shock.
• 37:18
  You can upgrade with bigger sway bars if you need to.
• 37:22
  You can put coilovers on the front fairly inexpensively.
• 37:25
  The rear to change the torsion bars is a pain.
• 37:28
  Highly, highly, uh, labor intensive.
• 37:31
  So you may not want to do that.
• 37:32
  The front suspension is where all the magic goes.
• 37:35
  Anyway.
• 37:35
  You don't need to have a limited slip transaxle.
• 37:38
  People say, you know, you gotta have it, gotta have it.
• 37:40
  Unless you're going and doing track days or racing, you don't need a limited slip.
• 37:44
  So don't worry about it.
• 37:45
  Come out of a turn and you lift the inside rear wheel without limited
• 37:49
  slip, you're going to spin that wheel.
• 37:51
  I've done it.
• 37:52
  I've been on track days with open differentials and doesn't really
• 37:55
  make all that much difference.
• 37:56
  You know, the things like the paint, the upholstery, and you
• 37:59
  want to make sure that the lights all work and the gauges all work.
• 38:02
  If there's anything weird going on with the gauges, you want to look into that.
• 38:06
  Oil pressure should be at an idle between two and three bar.
• 38:11
  And between four and a half and five at RPM, you want to make
• 38:15
  sure it's not leaking anywhere.
• 38:17
  Rear main seal is like doing a clutch, so getting to it is tough.
• 38:21
  All in all, they're pretty bulletproof and they're pretty reliable.
• 38:26
  I would not shy away from any of these cars that I have brought back to life,
• 38:31
  especially my special edition or Sparky.
• 38:35
  I'm driving cross country tomorrow.
• 38:36
  No problem.
• 38:37
  They're just that good and they're reliable.
• 38:39
  So on the other side of that, there's a bunch of special models in there to
• 38:43
  include the 924s special edition, 944s2s, people gravitate towards the turbo cars.
• 38:50
  Are there some other ones in there like that we should be aware of?
• 38:53
  There's even the champagne rose metallic or special rose edition
• 38:56
  of the 944, some of those.
• 38:58
  Well, there are some special editions, and Porsche was really
• 39:02
  good for special editions.
• 39:03
  They took the model from Harley Davidson in some cases, even with
• 39:07
  their 911s, where you take things off and then you charge more money for it.
• 39:12
  Harley had a, uh, a model where they took all the chrome off of it, they
• 39:16
  took a lot of other stuff off of it, and they charged you an extra five grand.
• 39:21
  Doesn't make sense to me, but it's a business model that seems to work.
• 39:24
  If you think of some of the 9 11 Special Editions, they would take
• 39:27
  out the interior stuff, door panels, sound insulation, all this stuff, and
• 39:31
  then charge you twice as much for it.
• 39:33
  You know, whatever works.
• 39:34
  I mean, that's all good.
• 39:35
  There were several Special Edition 924s.
• 39:38
  There was a Sebring Edition, there was a Martini Edition,
• 39:41
  there was a Special Edition in 79.
• 39:44
  And all these are great, but they're disappearing.
• 39:47
  Finding one that's in fairly original condition, because some
• 39:50
  of them had some really special stuff on it that you can't find.
• 39:53
  I mean, you just can't do it.
• 39:54
  I mean, the martini edition is one of my favorites.
• 39:56
  77.
• 39:58
  It was a white body with the martini stripes on the side and martini
• 40:01
  stripe down the hood and the roof.
• 40:03
  They had white wheels and the carpet was bright red.
• 40:07
  I mean, bright red.
• 40:08
  It wasn't maroon, it was red.
• 40:10
  And the seats were black with blue piping and red accents.
• 40:16
  And you can't get that interior anymore.
• 40:18
  You can't get a replacement unless you have it custom made, because now you
• 40:22
  start talking about a lot of money.
• 40:24
  So if you find a Martini that's out there, most of the time they're just worn out,
• 40:28
  and you need to do everything, and you're going to put 20, 000 or 25, 000 into
• 40:33
  it, and it's going to be worth 10 grand.
• 40:34
  So the earlier special editions really don't carry that same kind
• 40:39
  of value that you would have.
• 40:41
  In another later mock, the Silver Rose edition of the 944
• 40:46
  is absolutely beautiful car.
• 40:48
  The Silver Rose was a silver color with a hint of raspberry, what they said.
• 40:54
  They only made a few of them, but the Silver Rose had a lead interior that
• 41:00
  was kind of a gray, maroon, and red plaid that was absolutely beautiful.
• 41:07
  You can get that material as a replacement, but again, if you
• 41:12
  get the material, then you have to have an upholsterer actually make
• 41:15
  the seats, put that all in and do the door panels and all of it.
• 41:19
  It costs a lot of money.
• 41:20
  The silver rose editions, they didn't make very many of them.
• 41:23
  I don't know what the number was, but I think it was less than a thousand.
• 41:26
  If you find one in really good condition, they're a lot of money.
• 41:29
  They're big, big, big bucks.
• 41:31
  But it's one of the few special editions that you can find.
• 41:35
  It's a nice Turbo S, you know, the best you can get in a Turbo in a
• 41:39
  unique color combination with a unique interior, which is what they did with
• 41:43
  most of their special edition cars.
• 41:45
  They would take the base car and they would make it a little bit better
• 41:49
  and then make it look Fantastic.
• 41:51
  And I've earned a lot of money for it.
• 41:53
  The 924S, in 87, they sold a lot of them.
• 41:58
  They sold something in the neighborhood of, I want to say, 13, 000 total.
• 42:03
  The first run in 88 was 980 Special Edition.
• 42:08
  The first 500 of them that came off the line came to the U.
• 42:11
  S.
• 42:11
  Now this special edition was kind of a club sport sort of thing.
• 42:15
  They were all black.
• 42:17
  Very few of them had sunroofs.
• 42:19
  It seems like the later it got in the production run, the more that one
• 42:23
  would pop up with a factory sunroof.
• 42:25
  But it wasn't supposed to have a sunroof.
• 42:27
  It had crank windows, plastic manual mirrors, kind of like out of a Golf.
• 42:32
  Even the passenger side mirror was an option.
• 42:35
  The little cassette tray in the middle between the front seats, they didn't put
• 42:39
  that in there because it was extra weight.
• 42:42
  We have to save weight.
• 42:43
  But the black with the maroon carpet and then gray with maroon pinstripe cloth
• 42:49
  seats is probably one of the nicest interiors that you'll see in a Porsche.
• 42:54
  The cloth that they used in the seats was really thin.
• 42:57
  It was really light and it didn't last.
• 42:59
  Even in cars that have been garaged and didn't have many miles on them,
• 43:03
  they still, the stuff just fell apart.
• 43:05
  But that cloth is also available in the aftermarket.
• 43:08
  You can buy the cloth and have it made into your car.
• 43:10
  But they also put bigger sway bars.
• 43:13
  They went wild.
• 43:14
  All the 924S's had 6x15 wheels.
• 43:17
  They put 7 inch wheels on the back.
• 43:20
  They put a little bit bigger tire.
• 43:22
  They put 215 60s all the way around, even though the wheels
• 43:26
  were two different sizes.
• 43:28
  Same tire went front rear, but with the bigger sway bars, it was
• 43:31
  lower by about a half an inch.
• 43:34
  They put Kony nonadjustable sport shops, heavier springs, 250 pound springs
• 43:39
  on the front one or two millimeter bigger portion bars in the rear.
• 43:43
  They handled really, really, really well.
• 43:45
  I have one, took a lot of soul searching, but I decided to sell.
• 43:49
  Gonna be up for sale and it has 29, 000 miles.
• 43:52
  It's almost all original, but the interior fell apart on it.
• 43:56
  So I had to redo the interior.
• 43:57
  To redo an interior on a special edition 924S is about 2 grand.
• 44:02
  But these cars have more value.
• 44:03
  So it's okay.
• 44:04
  The engines are the same.
• 44:06
  They're 160 horsepower.
• 44:07
  There's a 944 engine.
• 44:09
  But they do handle really well, you know, a little bit lower, better
• 44:12
  suspension, all that they handled quite nicely and very comfortable.
• 44:16
  They have all the air conditioning and all that stuff that you want.
• 44:19
  And they were about 26, 000 in 1988 out of the 500 that came to the U
• 44:27
  S we're thinking that there may be.
• 44:30
  200 or 225 out there.
• 44:33
  I am actually in the process now.
• 44:35
  I have a friend of mine who's putting together a online registry
• 44:40
  for the special edition 924S.
• 44:42
  So we can try to track these cars and figure out where they are.
• 44:46
  I would say that being obsessed with these 924S's is something that I do.
• 44:52
  I have six 924S Special Editions here at my shop.
• 44:56
  I did buy one up in the Florida Panhandle about a year ago.
• 45:00
  That is a 924S Special Edition with the automatic transmission.
• 45:05
  We believe they may have made a dozen with an automatic.
• 45:09
  Now the automatics are not great.
• 45:11
  Three speed automatic.
• 45:12
  They're not fun at all, but to have a special edition car anyway, and then
• 45:17
  have the automatic transmission in it.
• 45:19
  This car needs everything, but it's complete.
• 45:21
  Everything's there.
• 45:22
  That's a project down the road for me, and I'll probably keep that
• 45:25
  one just because it's so weird.
• 45:27
  But I've got these special editions, and if I see one and
• 45:29
  it's reasonably priced, I buy one.
• 45:31
  I'll buy it and bring it home.
• 45:32
  So the special edition 924S is worth about twice of what
• 45:36
  a regular 924S would be worth.
• 45:38
  And they're going up as they get more and more rare for a stock as delivered model.
• 45:44
  If it's been modified or anything, it drops the price, but the special
• 45:47
  additions, the silver rose, the nine 24 S special additions,
• 45:51
  they're gaining value and they're not that many of them out there.
• 45:54
  It's a good thing to have.
• 45:55
  If you can find one.
• 45:57
  And then I could drive my car.
• 45:59
  We took mine, I took it on a trailer.
• 46:01
  I live in central Florida.
• 46:02
  We towed out to the Dakota regions, to Rapid City a year ago, and
• 46:07
  participated with them in a weekend drive through the mountains.
• 46:11
  It was great.
• 46:12
  Had the special edition.
• 46:13
  Went out to 944 Fest the next weekend.
• 46:17
  in Ohio and went to Blowing Rock, North Carolina the next
• 46:20
  weekend to a PCA event there.
• 46:23
  I always marvel at going to these events, especially the PCA events, and people
• 46:28
  look at my car and say, what is that?
• 46:30
  I've never seen one of those.
• 46:32
  Had one guy peeking into the hatch and saying, it's the engine in the back.
• 46:35
  So, you know, it's kind of cool.
• 46:37
  It's kind of fun.
• 46:38
  There was always a poster on my wall that I will never forget, which
• 46:41
  is the Hugo Boss 924 Carrera GT.
• 46:44
  So the question is about that car being the rarest of the rare.
• 46:48
  Is it like the Audi Sport Quattro or the Lancia Delta or things
• 46:52
  like that, where they had to build homologation versions of the race cars?
• 46:57
  So do street versions of the 924 Carrera GT exist?
• 47:01
  Yes, they do.
• 47:02
  They made 406 of them, and most of them still exist,
• 47:06
  although they exist in museums.
• 47:07
  Rarely see one out there in the wild, although a buddy
• 47:11
  of mine here locally had one.
• 47:13
  He bought it, he drove it for two or three years, doubled his money on it.
• 47:17
  I got to drive it, and it was magic.
• 47:20
  The thing was wonderful.
• 47:22
  But one of the things that you can do these days, and I've done a few of
• 47:27
  them, is you take a 924 S, which is the same body as the early 924, and
• 47:33
  you buy the flares for the rear and the 944 front fenders, because that's
• 47:39
  what they were, and a fiberglass nose piece and a hood scoop to put on it, and
• 47:44
  you turn it into a Carrera GT replica.
• 47:48
  And I've built several of them.
• 47:50
  If you want to put real Fuchs on it, you can, but they're pretty
• 47:53
  expensive, so you get replicas.
• 47:55
  And you make a look alike.
• 47:57
  944 engine, air conditioning, radio setup with your, tethered into your phone
• 48:02
  and all that, with a four point roll bar and race seats, and here you go.
• 48:07
  They were great.
• 48:08
  They looked the part, they look really cool, and people look at it and go,
• 48:11
  now that's something I've never seen.
• 48:13
  But the 406 that they made were for racing, so that they could
• 48:17
  actually race that car, and the GT turned into the GTR, the GTS.
• 48:23
  The other one that people don't really know about is the 924,
• 48:27
  normally aspirated, deproduction.
• 48:30
  SCCA car.
• 48:31
  It's a Porsche kit car.
• 48:33
  You got the kit from Porsche and they sent all the stuff that you
• 48:37
  needed and you turned it into an SCCA deproduction race car.
• 48:42
  There were 16 of them total.
• 48:45
  Al Holbert in 1980 and 81, they went out and kicked ass in SCCA with this car.
• 48:51
  And what's funny is that you, there's actually a video on
• 48:54
  YouTube of the entire race.
• 48:57
  Final at road Atlanta, where you have the nine 24 deep production cars going
• 49:03
  against triumphs and such of the day.
• 49:06
  There's a TR six racing with them.
• 49:10
  And the Porsche is just killing them.
• 49:12
  The commentators going, yeah, this nine 24 is like the latest engineering.
• 49:17
  It's like the best thing ever.
• 49:19
  And it's, it's really kind of funny to hear that, but it was
• 49:21
  an NA cars naturally aspirated.
• 49:23
  It wasn't a turbo.
• 49:24
  They made 16 of them.
• 49:26
  At the Porsche Works reunion two years ago up in Amelia Island, one
• 49:31
  of the original ones was there.
• 49:33
  Of course I got to crawl over and take all kinds of pictures
• 49:35
  of it, but cool race car.
• 49:37
  Early on you mentioned things about, you know, the development of the 924 and
• 49:41
  944 where they talked about putting six cylinders in there and things like that.
• 49:45
  But it begs the question, I've always wanted to do this and I've seen
• 49:48
  it done like once, which is a 1.
• 49:51
  8 turbo swap from a later Volkswagen in a 924.
• 49:55
  And on top of that, we've seen all these renegade V8 swaps.
• 49:59
  So what are your thoughts on taking some of these well built,
• 50:02
  well handling cars and putting different power plants in them?
• 50:05
  Well, I've done a couple of V8s with LS motors.
• 50:08
  In my opinion, they're undrivable.
• 50:11
  I met a guy out in Houston at a track day.
• 50:13
  He had a twin turbo LS, 650 horsepower.
• 50:17
  He knew how to drive it.
• 50:18
  He could actually drive the car.
• 50:20
  I don't have that kind of time to dedicate to learning how
• 50:23
  to drive a monster like that.
• 50:24
  It just comes down to it.
• 50:26
  If you're going to do a 350 horsepower LS1, those you can drive,
• 50:32
  but there is a big weakness and it comes down to the engineering.
• 50:36
  You could put the LS in.
• 50:38
  It's similar in weight to a 944 turbo motor, so you're not
• 50:41
  losing handling or anything.
• 50:43
  But what you do have going on is the gearing in the transaxle.
• 50:47
  A 944 turbo transaxle that is in good shape.
• 50:52
  Handle the torque and the horsepower.
• 50:54
  The legend is that a Porsche Transaxle can take twice the horsepower
• 50:59
  that it was originally mated to.
• 51:02
  So if you have a 300 horsepower engine on a transaxle, it can take 600 horse.
• 51:07
  So that's not really an issue.
• 51:08
  The problem is that when you're going 70 miles an hour down the interstate.
• 51:13
  In your turbo 944, your 924S, you're tackin 36, 3800 RPM.
• 51:20
  LS motors don't like that.
• 51:22
  They like 1700 RPM, 70 miles an hour.
• 51:25
  Because of that, that LS is just singin the whole time.
• 51:31
  I have to think it's probably not good for it, you know, not as a car that
• 51:36
  you're going to drive three or four times a week and go to the grocery store.
• 51:40
  It's probably not a good idea when you put all that together.
• 51:43
  It's like, yeah, I, I don't think I'm going to plus the expense, the kit, all
• 51:48
  the stuff he needs, you're going to 8, 000 and then you got to have an engine.
• 51:53
  You got to find a gearbox that'll handle it.
• 51:55
  I mean, there's a lot that goes into it and you'll never
• 51:57
  see that money back again.
• 51:58
  That's for sure.
• 51:59
  But, like I say, I've done a couple, I've driven a few, I've drove one on
• 52:03
  track, and it's fun, don't get me wrong.
• 52:06
  But, I like driving my cars, I like to be able to get in my car and
• 52:09
  drive it wherever, whenever, and a V8 conversion just isn't the way to go.
• 52:13
  Now, you may have seen, and I may have this wrong, but I think it's M.
• 52:17
  A.
• 52:17
  Motorworks in Atlanta, and they're doing 1.
• 52:20
  8 turbo conversion, and they are awesome.
• 52:24
  I've not seen one personally, and I have not driven one, but they weigh nothing.
• 52:29
  That one eight turbo has with just a chip, you can get close to 300 horsepower.
• 52:36
  It weighs 60 percent of a turbo motor.
• 52:40
  It fits.
• 52:41
  Almost entirely behind the front axle, so it brings the weight back even farther.
• 52:46
  It's a good dependable motor.
• 52:48
  You know, they say, well, yeah, you can tune one up and you can
• 52:51
  get 600 horsepower out of it.
• 52:52
  If I could have one with 300 horsepower, that's all you need.
• 52:56
  and the transmission will be happy, the car will be happy, and yeah,
• 53:00
  so that is a good alternative, I think, to the V8 conversion.
• 53:04
  Plus, the V8 really fills up the engine compartment.
• 53:06
  That 1.
• 53:07
  8 does not.
• 53:08
  You have lots of room to do things.
• 53:09
  I also belong to the 924 owners group in Great Britain.
• 53:13
  Those people are crazy 0L 924s.
• 53:16
  They have great events and all this, and just a wonderful group.
• 53:19
  And they do all kinds of stuff with different engines in their cars.
• 53:24
  They do four cylinder, V6s, Rover engines, V8s, small V8s, but they don't
• 53:29
  have, you know, the monster V8s we have, but they do all kinds of things.
• 53:33
  And one of the things I noticed about them is that they're not scared
• 53:36
  of fabricating plates and adapters and motor mounts and all that.
• 53:41
  They just make whatever they want and make it work.
• 53:43
  And that's really a cool thing.
• 53:45
  So I kind of keep my eye on them too and, and see what's going on over there.
• 53:49
  But the 1.
• 53:49
  8 turbo conversion looks to be probably the next big thing when
• 53:53
  it comes to the engine swap.
• 53:55
  So one of their technical questions, since we're talking about motors, can
• 53:58
  you explain the whole floating cylinder design that the 924S and the 944 share?
• 54:04
  It's strange because when you first open up an engine, you've never
• 54:07
  done one of these engines before.
• 54:09
  What you're used to seeing is a solid block with holes building.
• 54:13
  You just think of it that way.
• 54:15
  Where when you open this up, you see a case that's open and the cylinders
• 54:21
  are sticking up inside the case and all the area around it is cooling
• 54:26
  jacket, which is kind of cool.
• 54:28
  That's kind of a neat thing because you get a lot more volume of
• 54:31
  coolant through the engine than you would in, say, a standard Toyota
• 54:35
  drill holes in the block sort of.
• 54:38
  Because of that design, the cylinders can regulate their temperature a lot better.
• 54:45
  They've got so much fluid around them that they're able to cure any hot spots,
• 54:50
  at least that's what I've been told.
• 54:52
  Now the other part of the 944 cylinder system is that the inside
• 54:57
  of the cylinders and the pistons are coated with something called nicosil.
• 55:01
  It's got some other names too, but, you know, Nikasil is basically
• 55:05
  nickel silicone and works so well.
• 55:08
  Of course, in the 90s, Germany, the government outlawed it,
• 55:12
  so they can't use it anymore.
• 55:14
  But that is why the 944 blocks, the cylinders tend not to wear
• 55:19
  like you find with other engines.
• 55:21
  I have had engines with 150, 000 miles on them where the cylinders are in
• 55:25
  stock spec, no boring, no sleeving, none of that stuff, and not even recoding.
• 55:30
  Put a very, very, very light hone, just for the new rings,
• 55:33
  put it all back together, get the head redone, and off you go.
• 55:36
  It's an amazing system, but the way that they built it, I have to think
• 55:41
  that their engineers were thinking 9 11.
• 55:44
  Piston sticking out you put the cylinder over the top of the piston and you put
• 55:48
  the head on top I'm thinking that that was their model that they were going
• 55:51
  after and they they have a box that needs cylinders in it So you have a box and
• 55:56
  then you glue the cylinders down inside of it I mean, that's the only way I can
• 56:00
  I kind of think of it I've heard that there's an achilles heel to this design
• 56:03
  and this goes back to us talking about Known problems and issues with these cars.
• 56:08
  It stems from if they sit for a long time, not running because there is so
• 56:12
  much surface area of the head gasket touching water because the water jackets
• 56:17
  are so much larger than a conventional engine that the head gaskets tend to blow.
• 56:21
  Almost just looking at them now, is that truth or is that fiction?
• 56:25
  I've not seen that except in turbos.
• 56:28
  Normally when a head gasket goes on a 944 turbo, it's because
• 56:32
  they've changed the wastegate or they've changed the turbo or both.
• 56:36
  And now they're pushing a lot more pressure than they should be
• 56:39
  when they blow the head gasket.
• 56:40
  On the other end of that, I had an 83 944 with 110, 000 miles on it.
• 56:48
  It had been well cared for.
• 56:49
  The paint was good, the interior was good, you know, just needed
• 56:53
  some updated maintenance.
• 56:54
  for some reason, and I got to think it was a head issue that did a leak
• 56:59
  down and a couple of valves seem like they were needed to head done.
• 57:03
  So I pulled the head on it and the head gasket, as you said, where it was
• 57:07
  touching the water was rusted through the head gasket itself was a rusty mess.
• 57:13
  Okay, it still ran.
• 57:15
  Well, it's still What you're saying is probably true in some cases.
• 57:20
  It is not what I've seen as being normal.
• 57:23
  If this thing would run with this rusty head gasket, I'd
• 57:26
  never see anything like it.
• 57:27
  And I pulled it off the block, and I'm looking at it, I'm holding
• 57:30
  it up to the light and seeing, you know, looking through it.
• 57:32
  There's no way this car should run.
• 57:34
  And it ran well.
• 57:35
  Got the head done, put it all back together, and it's
• 57:37
  still out there running today.
• 57:38
  That was Five or six years ago, guy's still driving it today.
• 57:41
  So Kevin, you mentioned in the beginning too, how there was a lot of
• 57:45
  back and forth between the Volkswagens and the Porsches during this time
• 57:48
  period, whether it was the 914 or the 924, even the 944 in some respects.
• 57:53
  You talked about the availability of parts, how much cheaper it is to own
• 57:56
  and operate a 924 and 24S versus a 944.
• 58:00
  Are there even some cheaper ways to maintain these cars?
• 58:03
  Is there things that you can cross match against the Volkswagen parts
• 58:07
  been maybe from a Scirocco or GT?
• 58:08
  EI that you could still even pick up on Rock Auto.
• 58:11
  That would be a cheaper alternative to the, you know, Porsche branded part.
• 58:14
  As you're trying to maintain these, are there some tips and tricks for making
• 58:17
  ownership of the vehicles even cheaper?
• 58:19
  Well, there's not a lot of crossover that you can say, go to the Rocco
• 58:25
  list and get the control arm from Rocco rather than from Porsche.
• 58:30
  Where the difference is, is if you have to buy a genuine Porsche
• 58:34
  parts box for the part to come in.
• 58:37
  And then you're looking at huge, huge difference.
• 58:40
  With Sparky, I needed a new wiring harness because the
• 58:43
  engine wiring harness was burnt.
• 58:44
  One of the reasons they told me is in 2015, this is, the wiring
• 58:49
  harness was 2, 600 from Porsche.
• 58:51
  And when you start putting in all the other rubber stuff and
• 58:53
  everything from the Porsche parts list, the parts bill was over 7, 000.
• 58:59
  And in 2015, that's about what the car was worth.
• 59:02
  Immediately they told, of course, I've got parts cars, so I just pulled the
• 59:05
  harness off another car and this and that, and I was able to cobble it together.
• 59:08
  We used some new parts, but for the most part, I took stuff off other cars.
• 59:12
  Yeah, it was at one point that you could go and crossbreed another car,
• 59:19
  but you mentioned rock auto with Rock Auto and even Pelican Parts
• 59:24
  and all these other places that are good parts suppliers for us.
• 59:27
  They're all getting their parts from the same folks.
• 59:30
  Unless you're getting a genuine Porsche parts box to go with
• 59:34
  it, the prices are the same.
• 59:36
  With my 78 924, I went down to the local battery shops.
• 59:40
  I needed a battery and there was, you know, a local shop here.
• 59:43
  And the guy looked it up and he said, do you want the VW
• 59:46
  battery or the Porsche battery?
• 59:47
  Porsche battery number and the VW battery number were exactly the same, but the
• 59:51
  Porsche battery was twice as much.
• 59:53
  That really doesn't happen anymore.
• 59:55
  You buy a control arm from rock auto and it's a control arm for a golf.
• 1:00:00
  It's a control arm for a rabbit.
• 1:00:01
  It's a control arm for a Scirocco.
• 1:00:03
  It's a control arm for a nine 24, a 78, nine 24, or an 87, nine 24,
• 1:00:08
  all the same, it's the same part, same part numbers, incorrect.
• 1:00:10
  And that's a good thing for us because we don't have to go searching for all that
• 1:00:14
  junk anymore, trying to find what's what.
• 1:00:16
  Brad, let's switch gears.
• 1:00:17
  Let's talk about the future of ownership of a 924 and all the
• 1:00:21
  cool things you can do with it.
• 1:00:22
  To start, I mean, you got to get into one first before you
• 1:00:25
  can think of all that stuff.
• 1:00:26
  You're right.
• 1:00:27
  And I was looking earlier today and personally, I think people
• 1:00:30
  have lost their damn minds because there was an 87924S on AutoTrader
• 1:00:35
  that somebody wanted 36, 000 for.
• 1:00:38
  To me, that seems like a bit much, but is that what the market price
• 1:00:43
  is for one of these cars these days?
• 1:00:45
  Yeah, he's an idiot.
• 1:00:48
  They'll never sell for that much.
• 1:00:49
  If you see a car on bring a trailer or p car market, an 87 924 s really clean, low
• 1:00:56
  miles and good records and all that stuff.
• 1:00:59
  It might go for 20 maybe more like probably 16 or 17 and that's high end.
• 1:01:05
  That's as much as it goes.
• 1:01:07
  I have sold a few rescues that I've done.
• 1:01:11
  And again, when I do a rescue, it's not a full restoration or anything.
• 1:01:14
  It looks decent.
• 1:01:16
  Everything works the way it's supposed to.
• 1:01:17
  The interiors aren't falling apart.
• 1:01:19
  The gauges aren't hanging out of the dashboard.
• 1:01:21
  It's a decent driver level car.
• 1:01:24
  A 924S, 87, 10 grand is a good price.
• 1:01:28
  A 944 is going to command a little bit more.
• 1:01:31
  If it's got an automatic, it's probably going to go down.
• 1:01:35
  As much as 20 or 30 percent used to be, we couldn't give away an automatic
• 1:01:40
  these days, the automatics have seen a little bit of a resurgence
• 1:01:43
  and I've had a couple of them here that I've picked up and sold around
• 1:01:48
  town, as much as I hate to admit it.
• 1:01:50
  They're really kind of nice, but when you get on the interstate and you
• 1:01:55
  start going 70, 75 miles an hour, they're tacking above 4, 000 RPM.
• 1:02:01
  Cause that three speed gearing just doesn't work.
• 1:02:03
  If you're in 1984, the best you're doing is 60 miles an hour.
• 1:02:08
  They're great.
• 1:02:08
  They're wonderful, but you get above 60 and they get a little scary, but it's
• 1:02:12
  still, it's a nine 44 and if you can't drive a five speed, that's what you got.
• 1:02:15
  That's what you do.
• 1:02:16
  You know, just the way it is.
• 1:02:18
  A decent 944, 5 speed, 12 13, 000, really, really nice, great paint, Fuchs, good
• 1:02:25
  options, you know, sport seats and that.
• 1:02:27
  You can get 17 18.
• 1:02:29
  I see cars that pop up that are asking prices of 7 and the paint's terrible,
• 1:02:36
  the interiors are falling apart, and it hasn't been serviced in 10 years.
• 1:02:40
  No way.
• 1:02:41
  That's a 3, 000 or 4, 000 car all day.
• 1:02:43
  However, six or seven years ago, that was a 750 car.
• 1:02:47
  You're going to have to put money into it just to drive it.
• 1:02:50
  So that's kind of where the values are today.
• 1:02:52
  And you're right, people have gone crazy from these cars.
• 1:02:55
  And if you're in the kind of business I am, where you're rescuing and restoring,
• 1:02:59
  it's like, yeah, this is great.
• 1:03:00
  I mean, it depends.
• 1:03:01
  We've seen 924S's on Bring a Trail and such go for 20, 000, 22, 000.
• 1:03:06
  That, there's no way.
• 1:03:07
  But online auctions, that's what happens.
• 1:03:10
  And from the conversation we've been having so far, you've mentioned several
• 1:03:13
  times low mileage options, but also you said the car's got service records,
• 1:03:17
  if it's been maintained, if you do those immediate things that need to
• 1:03:21
  be taken care of, you shouldn't shy away from a high mileage 924 either.
• 1:03:26
  So you can pretty much go in any direction.
• 1:03:28
  It just depends on, I guess, how much elbow grease you want to put it into it.
• 1:03:31
  Yeah.
• 1:03:31
  And that's the thing is it's, you got to look at the total picture.
• 1:03:34
  You can't just say, well, it's got 140, 000 miles on.
• 1:03:38
  I'm not interested if it's been driven regularly and it's been maintained
• 1:03:42
  regularly and you have records on it, you know, compression and leak down
• 1:03:46
  tests will tell you everything you need to know about the engine in most cases.
• 1:03:50
  And it's got good compression.
• 1:03:51
  It's not, the valves aren't leaking.
• 1:03:53
  Hell yeah, go for it.
• 1:03:54
  You know, you may still have to do some things to update it and fix
• 1:03:58
  the little things that are wrong.
• 1:03:59
  For the most part, yeah, just go for it.
• 1:04:01
  Above 150, I start getting a little leery because, like they say in
• 1:04:05
  the aviation industry, the airframe starts to get a little nasty.
• 1:04:09
  You look for bends, you look for door gaps that aren't lining up, things like that.
• 1:04:13
  And then you see what you can do about that.
• 1:04:15
  But for the most part, under 150, 000 miles, none of that scares me.
• 1:04:19
  When I'm ready to buy another one, obviously, I'm just going
• 1:04:22
  to call you and I'm just going to say, what do you have available?
• 1:04:24
  Or what do you know of in the market?
• 1:04:25
  But for your average Joe, who doesn't have direct line to Kevin Duffy, they
• 1:04:30
  don't want to go to bring a trailer.
• 1:04:32
  What is a good resource?
• 1:04:33
  Where can people go to find a reasonably priced car from
• 1:04:37
  someone who's not a complete.
• 1:04:39
  The go to place these days, as much as I hate to admit it, is Facebook Marketplace.
• 1:04:43
  In that you have that price point car.
• 1:04:47
  The under 10, 000 needs a little work car.
• 1:04:50
  And so there's been a lot of good deals that have popped up there.
• 1:04:53
  I used to go around Craigslist quite a bit, but not anymore.
• 1:04:57
  I just don't trust them anymore.
• 1:04:59
  The word of mouth has a lot to do with it.
• 1:05:01
  The Porsche Club had a reputation for decades that, you know,
• 1:05:05
  the 924, 944 people need not apply, and that's not true.
• 1:05:10
  I go to these events with my cars, people crowd around it, either they've
• 1:05:14
  never seen one up close because they're so old, or I get, I had one of these in
• 1:05:19
  college, I had one of these, my first Porsche was one of these, and it was a
• 1:05:23
  great car and I wish I'd never sold it.
• 1:05:25
  So you get that kind of stuff too, but just going and asking around, Hey,
• 1:05:29
  you know, I'm looking for a nine 44.
• 1:05:31
  What can I, can I find, you know, the other thing is that there are Facebook
• 1:05:35
  groups for nine 44 is nine 24 asses.
• 1:05:38
  I belong to probably 10 or 15 of them.
• 1:05:41
  And there's always people buying and selling.
• 1:05:43
  And plus there's a lot of advice.
• 1:05:46
  The one thing, though, that I caution folks about is that if you are adverse
• 1:05:52
  to picking up a screwdriver or a wrench, you don't need to buy one of these
• 1:05:55
  cars, because when you start paying people to do all the work, it's going to
• 1:05:59
  quickly outstrip the budget very fast.
• 1:06:01
  That said, I mean you're not going to, unless you've got the facilities and
• 1:06:05
  the tools and the knowledge, you're not going to do your own clutch.
• 1:06:08
  Maybe not even do your own timing bell.
• 1:06:10
  You can do all the other little things that come up on
• 1:06:13
  jack stands in the driveway.
• 1:06:15
  And there's a lot of reference, there's a lot of help, there's a lot
• 1:06:18
  of videos, there's a lot of everything.
• 1:06:20
  To try to learn how to do what you do with basic tools.
• 1:06:24
  You really don't need anything special.
• 1:06:26
  You know, you can replace your own starter.
• 1:06:27
  You can place your own shocks.
• 1:06:29
  You can even do your struts in your driveway.
• 1:06:32
  There's enough YouTube on there that you can figure it out.
• 1:06:34
  That said, these are old cars.
• 1:06:36
  The newest 944 S2 is 32 years old.
• 1:06:40
  That's the newest one you can get your hands on.
• 1:06:42
  And as we say, You're one broken bolt away from a three hour job
• 1:06:47
  turning into a three week job.
• 1:06:49
  And that's any car.
• 1:06:50
  I don't care, Porsche or not.
• 1:06:51
  When we open our gaze a little bit and we think about the 924 and 944 for
• 1:06:57
  more than just cruises and shows, We want to do something fun with this car.
• 1:07:02
  Let's say autocross or even using it on the B roads in a spirited way.
• 1:07:06
  Or we want to take it to a DE or even to your point, there's some
• 1:07:10
  944 cup cars still out there.
• 1:07:12
  There's 924 deep prepared cars out there that you can still race in SCCA today.
• 1:07:17
  There's classes for them.
• 1:07:18
  You have raced 944s and 924s yourself.
• 1:07:20
  Tell us all about that.
• 1:07:22
  What does it take to get it to that level?
• 1:07:24
  What are the things you got to do?
• 1:07:26
  Expectations?
• 1:07:27
  What are they like to drive at that limit?
• 1:07:29
  The one thing about the 924, 944 series is that they do handle really well.
• 1:07:35
  They're a real driver's car.
• 1:07:36
  In thinking about how cars handle and how suspensions work and how cars
• 1:07:42
  turn and all on a track, there are three axes that go through a car.
• 1:07:46
  Front to rear is a roll axis.
• 1:07:48
  It rolls left and right.
• 1:07:49
  You have a yaw axis that goes straight down through the middle
• 1:07:53
  of the car from top to bottom.
• 1:07:55
  And that's where the car turns.
• 1:07:57
  You have a pitch axis which goes through the center of the car.
• 1:08:01
  It either pitches forward or backwards.
• 1:08:03
  Okay, so you have all three of those and where they meet is
• 1:08:05
  called the center of gravity.
• 1:08:07
  In 944, that center of gravity is in the tunnel at your hip.
• 1:08:12
  So when you say, when I'm on track, I can feel where the car's doing, where
• 1:08:17
  it's going and what it's up to in my ass.
• 1:08:20
  That's true because that's where the center of gravity is.
• 1:08:23
  All the rotation is going on within two or three inches of your butt.
• 1:08:27
  And so you know where the car is going to go.
• 1:08:29
  You feel it.
• 1:08:30
  I had a stock 924S, stock tires, street tires, up at Roebling
• 1:08:35
  Road in Savannah early on.
• 1:08:37
  That's probably been 20 years ago.
• 1:08:38
  We drove through a hurricane to get to the track, which is what you do
• 1:08:42
  when you have diseases like we have.
• 1:08:43
  Drove through a hurricane, got to the track.
• 1:08:45
  The next morning, the end of the hurricane was leaving.
• 1:08:48
  It was still, the track was wet and it was still some rain.
• 1:08:51
  We opened the track, you know, people were saying, well, I don't know if
• 1:08:54
  I want to go out there in the rain.
• 1:08:55
  I don't want to, you know, spin my car and hit something, or I don't want
• 1:08:58
  to get it dirty or whatever, because I'd never been on track in the rain.
• 1:09:01
  And I said, okay, well, I'm going to take my car and I'm going
• 1:09:03
  to go out there in the rain.
• 1:09:04
  I'm just going to see what happens.
• 1:09:06
  And so I went out there and drove like grandma, hitting the brakes
• 1:09:09
  halfway down the straightaway.
• 1:09:10
  I mean, I was scared to death that, you know, the car is just going
• 1:09:13
  to go skitter off into the sunset.
• 1:09:15
  And every lap, I went a little bit faster, a little bit more aggressive,
• 1:09:18
  a little bit more, brake a little bit harder, just doing all that stuff.
• 1:09:23
  And by the time the session was over, in eight or nine laps, I
• 1:09:26
  had come down to within a couple of seconds of my dry lap time.
• 1:09:31
  in that car because they handle so well and they're so predictable.
• 1:09:36
  And as a DE car, we see these folks come to our region's DEs and they'll
• 1:09:42
  show up with a 2021 911 Turbo and they've never driven anything
• 1:09:48
  faster than a Toyota Corolla.
• 1:09:50
  They'll go 125, 130, 140 miles an hour down straightaway, and the rest of
• 1:09:55
  the track they'll go 30 miles an hour.
• 1:09:58
  A 944 will teach you how to drive because one of the things about these cars is
• 1:10:03
  they're old enough that they don't have all the things that make you into a hero.
• 1:10:08
  I had a Boxster for about a year.
• 1:10:10
  It was a great car, loved it.
• 1:10:11
  Had it up at Rolling Road in Savannah on two occasions in the middle of a turn.
• 1:10:15
  It saved me.
• 1:10:16
  Too aggressive, too hot, back end started to come out, car fixed it for me.
• 1:10:20
  To me, that makes me a hero, but actually the car's the hero.
• 1:10:23
  944, you don't have any of that stuff.
• 1:10:26
  You have brakes, you have clutch, you have gas pedal and steering wheel,
• 1:10:30
  and that's all you have to go with.
• 1:10:31
  And you learn how to drive.
• 1:10:33
  We always say, and of course it's the 944 guys who say it,
• 1:10:37
  but it's more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow.
• 1:10:41
  Horsepower will get you out of a lot of trouble.
• 1:10:43
  At 150, 160 horsepower, we don't have horsepower.
• 1:10:46
  The gas pedal in a lot of situations is an on off switch.
• 1:10:49
  You're either flat out or you're off the gas.
• 1:10:51
  But they're so predictable and they work so well.
• 1:10:54
  In SCCA, we have stock brakes.
• 1:10:57
  We don't go with big aftermarket brakes and all because the
• 1:10:59
  stock brakes are so good.
• 1:11:01
  Another thing too is these guys go out here in these DEs with these 911s
• 1:11:04
  and Boxster Ss and Caymans and all.
• 1:11:07
  And they're going 160, 170 miles an hour.
• 1:11:10
  With no cage, no other protection other than the body of the car.
• 1:11:13
  My stock 944 might be good for 120 miles an hour.
• 1:11:18
  And if I go off track and I hit something and scrub off
• 1:11:22
  speed from there, I'll survive.
• 1:11:24
  But somebody in a 911 at 170 miles an hour.
• 1:11:28
  May not because they don't have the protection.
• 1:11:30
  Now I'm to a point in my life now where I will go on track unless I'm in a car
• 1:11:34
  with a full cage and five point horses, Hans device and all that only because I'm
• 1:11:39
  married and that has a lot to do with it.
• 1:11:41
  I've been on track.
• 1:11:43
  I've raced at Daytona at Sebring, you know, Daytona international
• 1:11:46
  speedway is a great place to race.
• 1:11:49
  Kind of boring because you're flat out all the time, but it's a historic place.
• 1:11:52
  Sebring same way.
• 1:11:53
  It's historic.
• 1:11:53
  You go out there, you do the best you can, but the cars are
• 1:11:57
  so solid and they talk to you.
• 1:12:00
  And because of that, they're a great starter car for DEs because
• 1:12:04
  you have to learn how to drive it.
• 1:12:05
  And there's nothing more fun than going into a turn.
• 1:12:09
  And the turn, all of a sudden, you feel the car take a set.
• 1:12:14
  It just sits down.
• 1:12:15
  And then you get a nice, controllable four wheel drift as you're coming out.
• 1:12:20
  The car straightens out, and you're rocketing down there, and you think, wow,
• 1:12:24
  you know, that was really pretty cool.
• 1:12:26
  I want to do that again.
• 1:12:26
  And then you try the next three laps, and it doesn't work.
• 1:12:29
  DE is the way to go, and then you can go to PCA Club Racing.
• 1:12:33
  They're very competitive.
• 1:12:34
  They have their own class.
• 1:12:35
  Three levels in PCA Club Racing.
• 1:12:38
  SCCA, you're either in ITA or ITS or e production.
• 1:12:43
  IT, which is improved touring.
• 1:12:45
  The cars are basically stock with a cage, seats, and harnesses, and a fire bottle.
• 1:12:50
  Relatively cheap racing.
• 1:12:52
  My race car, if I get 130 mile an hour in a back straight in Daytona, it's
• 1:12:56
  because the wind's blowing from the west.
• 1:12:58
  The RX 7s go 150, as we were talking about earlier.
• 1:13:02
  You know, they go right by you.
• 1:13:03
  So that's kind of where I stand on the whole DE racing thing.
• 1:13:07
  So that being said, for somebody that might have a 944 or 924 sitting around
• 1:13:11
  now, any setup tips or longevity items you recommend for somebody that's going
• 1:13:16
  to take it from their street, from their cruise, from their cars and coffee?
• 1:13:19
  And do a D E with the car, or maybe decide to get into racing some
• 1:13:23
  things that you can pass along.
• 1:13:24
  Brakes of course are imperative because if you're going to go
• 1:13:27
  fast, you need to be able to stop.
• 1:13:28
  Check every system, make sure that the suspension, the Coney
• 1:13:32
  adjustable shocks are the hot ticket.
• 1:13:35
  I love them.
• 1:13:35
  Big sway bars.
• 1:13:36
  Coilovers on the front, because the front springs on a 944 are really weak.
• 1:13:41
  They're 160 pound, 200 pound.
• 1:13:43
  We run 275 and a big sway bar on the front, 18 or 20 millimeter sway
• 1:13:47
  bar in the back, and that tends to tighten up the rear enough.
• 1:13:51
  The original 924s didn't have a rear sway bar.
• 1:13:54
  They didn't need it.
• 1:13:55
  You know, you still don't see really big sway bars on the rear, but an 18
• 1:13:58
  or 20 millimeter is about all you need.
• 1:14:00
  The stock torsion bars, you don't really need to beef anything up.
• 1:14:03
  Put a couple of KONI adjustable shocks on the back, set them full hard, and
• 1:14:08
  then adjust on the front is where you go.
• 1:14:10
  A four point roll bar in a track car, for one thing, it allows you
• 1:14:14
  to run race seats and a five point harness, and that's important.
• 1:14:17
  But the four point roll bars, the legs bolt in to the floor right next
• 1:14:24
  to the rear suspension pickup points.
• 1:14:27
  And as long as the roll bar has a diagonal in it, it makes the rear
• 1:14:31
  end as solid as you can ever make it.
• 1:14:33
  Because it takes any twist that might be incurred by the rear suspension.
• 1:14:38
  It takes that and keeps it twisting the car so that with a strut bar and the
• 1:14:42
  engine compartment and that car is tight and solid, decent tires can experiment
• 1:14:47
  with different size wheels, depending on what track you're at, what they allow.
• 1:14:51
  But you know, a good street tire with a low tread wear rating, 200
• 1:14:56
  that you can drive to and from the track with those tires, you know,
• 1:14:59
  everybody says, I want more horsepower.
• 1:15:01
  No, you know.
• 1:15:02
  Take weight out of it if you can and beef up the suspension, make the
• 1:15:05
  suspension really work really well.
• 1:15:08
  And then you can use the horsepower you have more
• 1:15:11
  efficiently and more effectively.
• 1:15:13
  So we've talked a lot about the nine 24 and the nine 44.
• 1:15:16
  What about alternatives?
• 1:15:17
  What about the nine 28 or if you can afford it, the nine 68, which
• 1:15:22
  is the grand baby of all of them.
• 1:15:24
  Well, the 968 was actually supposed to be a 944 S3.
• 1:15:29
  When it was under development, that's what it was supposed to be.
• 1:15:31
  But then they realized that about the only thing that it shared with
• 1:15:34
  the 944 was the main body shell, from the firewall to the tail.
• 1:15:39
  And even the tail was different, and the rear suspension pickups were different.
• 1:15:43
  So they said, we're just going to give it its own number.
• 1:15:46
  I'm sure the marketing department had a lot to do with that too.
• 1:15:48
  The 968 is a great car, don't get me wrong, but they didn't
• 1:15:52
  make them in great numbers.
• 1:15:53
  It's a three liter, which is a huge force on it.
• 1:15:56
  It's a 104 millimeter bore twin cam.
• 1:15:59
  It's got variable valve timing that's oil controlled.
• 1:16:02
  There's a timing belt that drives the exhaust side cam, and then a
• 1:16:07
  timing chain between the two cams.
• 1:16:10
  It's really complicated.
• 1:16:12
  And one of the things about the twin cams, the 944 s twin cam, as well as the
• 1:16:18
  three liter cars, is that if you don't get the timing chain between the two cams
• 1:16:24
  exactly perfect with the right lash and all that, and it's dial indicators and
• 1:16:30
  all the stuff that you have to do to get it right, it's going to run horribly.
• 1:16:34
  And most of us aren't capable of doing that kind of thing.
• 1:16:37
  So you've got to get it, you know, you got to hire somebody to do it.
• 1:16:41
  And since they didn't make very many of them, finding somebody
• 1:16:43
  to do it is kind of tough.
• 1:16:44
  The 928, I had a student in a DE that had a 78 928 and it was wonderful.
• 1:16:50
  What a car.
• 1:16:51
  Oh my goodness.
• 1:16:52
  It was a, an early one.
• 1:16:54
  It was a 4.
• 1:16:54
  5 liter V8.
• 1:16:56
  The thing handled well, was comfortable, was powerful.
• 1:16:59
  It was a great car.
• 1:17:00
  However, when you look at a 928, you open the passenger door, you get down
• 1:17:05
  on your knees and you pull down the foot well that your passenger is going
• 1:17:10
  to put his feet up against at the front of the interior and a little leather
• 1:17:14
  strap there and you pull that strap down and that entire area, which is probably
• 1:17:20
  16 by 10 inches is all wires, relays, and connectors and jumpers and stuff.
• 1:17:27
  I've yet to see one that was unmolested because somebody had gone in there and
• 1:17:32
  say, well, this isn't working right.
• 1:17:33
  So I'm going to fix it.
• 1:17:34
  And once you start screwing with the electronics on a nine 28, you're done.
• 1:17:39
  The other thing, too, about a 928 that we didn't know until my friend's shop almost
• 1:17:46
  burned to the ground was that the ABS pump for a 928 lives under the driver's
• 1:17:52
  side fender, which is aluminum, of course.
• 1:17:55
  It has a direct connection to the battery that is unfused, so when the
• 1:18:01
  pump shorts out, goes bad, and overloads, which it can do sitting in the shop
• 1:18:07
  overnight or your garage overnight.
• 1:18:10
  It will burn and when it does it burns everything.
• 1:18:14
  He had one in his shop that they were doing a restoration on.
• 1:18:17
  The pump caught fire and the fire was hot enough that the fender in
• 1:18:22
  that area actually caught fire.
• 1:18:26
  That takes 3, 300 degrees for aluminum to actually burn.
• 1:18:31
  Again, the 928 was way ahead of its time, but a lot of the things
• 1:18:35
  that they made it do, that made it ahead of its time, were done in a
• 1:18:39
  way that we would call today crude.
• 1:18:41
  It was mechanical, it was crude electronics, it was relays,
• 1:18:45
  microswitches, things like that.
• 1:18:47
  And because of that, I'm not a big fan.
• 1:18:49
  If you haven't figured out by now, I like simplicity.
• 1:18:51
  I love that the 944 has a steel tube connected to the shifter.
• 1:18:57
  That steel tube goes down on top of the driveshaft tube, and that steel tube
• 1:19:01
  connects directly to the transaxle.
• 1:19:03
  That's what you shift with.
• 1:19:05
  It's simple, there's no cables, there's no nylon, pulleys, none of that stuff.
• 1:19:10
  It's just a piece of steel, and I like that, so I'm not a
• 1:19:14
  fan of the 928 because of that.
• 1:19:16
  They did a good job, and in the day it was a wonderful car, but they
• 1:19:20
  really messed up in some of the stuff that today it just doesn't work well.
• 1:19:24
  Let's talk about if somebody needs your help, Kevin, and they visit 924S944.
• 1:19:30
  com, what should they expect to find there?
• 1:19:32
  What kinds of products and services do you offer?
• 1:19:35
  Tell us a little bit about what you do here now in your retirement
• 1:19:38
  specializing in these vehicles.
• 1:19:39
  When I started it, I started it because I wanted to send out information
• 1:19:44
  and just make information available.
• 1:19:46
  Things that I had learned over the years that I couldn't find anywhere else.
• 1:19:50
  And so now there are over 200 articles about these cars that you can search.
• 1:19:56
  For instance, there's several articles on the hatch and how to adjust
• 1:20:00
  the hatch so it'll actually work.
• 1:20:01
  When you turn the key in the back, will the hatch actually open?
• 1:20:04
  Without having to jiggle it or play with it and all that, there's some
• 1:20:08
  secrets that I've learned on how to adjust the latches to make it right.
• 1:20:11
  And there's a couple articles on that, things like that, that, you know,
• 1:20:14
  I just couldn't find anywhere else.
• 1:20:15
  And if I have a project I'm working on and I find something unusual,
• 1:20:19
  I have one article on there right now where I had a car with one of
• 1:20:23
  the cam followers actually broke.
• 1:20:26
  into two pieces and then shattered into other pieces in the camp tower.
• 1:20:29
  I'd never seen that before.
• 1:20:31
  So I put that out and then I put it out on Facebook and I said, you know,
• 1:20:34
  has this happened to anybody else?
• 1:20:36
  And what's the reason and what's the fix?
• 1:20:38
  So that's the kind of stuff that I put on the site.
• 1:20:41
  I also, if I have cars for sale, I put those up, I have
• 1:20:43
  parts for sale, I put those up.
• 1:20:45
  I get people that email me and call me and they'll say, I have this going
• 1:20:49
  on and I'm not sure what to check.
• 1:20:52
  I'm not sure where to look.
• 1:20:53
  I'm not sure what to do.
• 1:20:55
  And it does take some of my time, but I really enjoy talking to these folks
• 1:20:58
  because it allows me to kind of stretch my brain a little bit and say, okay.
• 1:21:02
  It's always a good day when my shop's in back of my house, my
• 1:21:06
  commute's about a hundred feet.
• 1:21:08
  It's pretty rough some days because, you know, it may be a little bit cold.
• 1:21:12
  Like this morning it was 57 degrees.
• 1:21:14
  It was terrible.
• 1:21:16
  We're in Florida, you know, 57 is cold, but I'll go to work in the morning and
• 1:21:20
  my wife kicks me out and tells me to go to work and I'll go out to the shop.
• 1:21:24
  And somebody will call me and say, this is what I have going on,
• 1:21:27
  and I don't know where to start.
• 1:21:28
  I don't know where to look.
• 1:21:29
  I'll go through a series of four or five questions and say, okay, do
• 1:21:33
  this, try this, and look at that.
• 1:21:36
  Invariably by afternoon or the next day, I'll get a call back.
• 1:21:39
  Hey, I did this, like you told me, and I found that, and I replaced this, or I
• 1:21:44
  adjusted that, and now it's working fine.
• 1:21:47
  And I just want to let you know that, you know, it's working and it's fine.
• 1:21:50
  And I'll go in the house at the end of the day, and I'll tell my wife.
• 1:21:53
  I fixed a guy's car in Michigan today by phone.
• 1:21:56
  That's fun.
• 1:21:57
  I have a good time with that.
• 1:21:58
  A lot of people email me, you know, I don't know how to make my hatch work.
• 1:22:01
  Okay, well here's three articles.
• 1:22:03
  Take a look at it.
• 1:22:04
  Here's the links to them.
• 1:22:05
  And somebody needs parts.
• 1:22:06
  Some of this stuff is no longer available.
• 1:22:08
  It's hard to find wiper motors right now.
• 1:22:10
  Calipers are hard to find right now because the rebuilders like A.
• 1:22:15
  A.
• 1:22:15
  Cardone does a lot of the rebuilding of import stuff.
• 1:22:18
  They don't have any cores to do rebuilds with.
• 1:22:21
  And now we're seeing that the rebuild kits are also hard to find.
• 1:22:25
  If I see that, I'll write an article and let people know, Hey, you
• 1:22:29
  know, it's finding a wiper motor is almost impossible, but got somebody
• 1:22:33
  who's 70 years old and has a small electric motor shop in your town.
• 1:22:39
  Take your motor to him.
• 1:22:40
  He could probably fix it.
• 1:22:42
  You can put a set of bearings in it and you can clean the electrical stuff
• 1:22:46
  inside and you'll make it work again.
• 1:22:47
  We'll just throw it away.
• 1:22:49
  Also gives me a sense of kind of giving back and saying, here's
• 1:22:53
  some things that, you know, that I learned some on the hard way.
• 1:22:56
  I learned with my 78 that putting in a clutch on jack stands on the carport was
• 1:23:02
  something I never wanted to do again.
• 1:23:04
  You know, you got to learn that the hard way sometime, you know, that's what I do.
• 1:23:07
  And 924S944.
• 1:23:09
  com kind of says it all.
• 1:23:11
  My big focus these days is on the special edition part
• 1:23:13
  because they are very special.
• 1:23:16
  Putting together this registry to try to track where these cars are, you
• 1:23:20
  know, how many of them are there and try to connect people who are trying
• 1:23:24
  to do restorations and make them right.
• 1:23:26
  That's a big deal for me, preserving some of that past and
• 1:23:29
  not letting these cars sit in a corner somewhere and just rot away.
• 1:23:32
  So that's where I've been and where I plan to go.
• 1:23:34
  I've stopped doing service work because I've got too many other things to do.
• 1:23:38
  And I am retired and it's just me.
• 1:23:40
  I don't have a crew out here to help me out.
• 1:23:42
  Are there any other shout outs, promotions, or anything else
• 1:23:45
  that we didn't cover thus far that you'd like to mention?
• 1:23:47
  Got a real good friend of mine, known him forever.
• 1:23:49
  He's up in North Georgia and he's got a three acre farm
• 1:23:53
  cover with 944s and sells parts.
• 1:23:55
  And if I don't have it, Elliot does.
• 1:23:57
  Elliot Grafton, what a guy, nice guy.
• 1:24:00
  And he's up there in Blairsville, Georgia.
• 1:24:02
  And he services our customers all over the country and even overseas.
• 1:24:08
  One really important one, and that's my wife, Barbara.
• 1:24:10
  Barbara, although she will never admit it openly in public, is a gearhead.
• 1:24:15
  She's as bad as me.
• 1:24:17
  She's had a couple of Miatas.
• 1:24:18
  She's had a couple of MGBs over the years.
• 1:24:20
  We just celebrated our 47th anniversary.
• 1:24:24
  And when I retired, we have a house with two and a half acres
• 1:24:28
  here and out in the country.
• 1:24:29
  And when I retired, she said, well, now it's time to build your shop
• 1:24:34
  and do your thing with your cars.
• 1:24:36
  We know as gearheads, we know how rare that can be.
• 1:24:39
  That you have that kind of opportunity when you say, yeah,
• 1:24:42
  I got a shop in my backyard.
• 1:24:44
  You think of a single bay with a roof that's half caved in
• 1:24:47
  and a door that almost closes.
• 1:24:49
  I have a, at this point, three and a half year old 2, 700 square foot steel
• 1:24:55
  building with two lifts, an outdoor lift.
• 1:24:58
  And the only thing I don't have is air conditioning,
• 1:25:00
  but I've got everything else.
• 1:25:02
  And I have my tools and my equipment.
• 1:25:05
  I can do my own tire mounting and balancing.
• 1:25:08
  I'm in my shop right now.
• 1:25:09
  You kind of see what's behind me.
• 1:25:11
  I've got my office out here with my computers.
• 1:25:13
  It's just amazing to be able to have this kind of facility in my backyard.
• 1:25:20
  For me to do what I really, really want.
• 1:25:23
  It couldn't happen without her.
• 1:25:25
  Then I have my son, Chris, and my grandchildren.
• 1:25:28
  Oldest grandchild is Beth and she's 17 years old.
• 1:25:33
  And we're working on a 924S automatic for her.
• 1:25:36
  She's doing all the work on it.
• 1:25:38
  So, you know, it's kind of the whole family.
• 1:25:40
  I couldn't do it without her.
• 1:25:42
  For me, it's always been about cars for someone that can check their ego
• 1:25:46
  at the door, enjoy a spirited drive, and doesn't need to look flashy or
• 1:25:50
  brag about horsepower while doing it.
• 1:25:52
  And that's why I love the 924 specifically, but I guess also the 944.
• 1:25:56
  To learn more about 924s and 944s, be sure to visit Kevin's site.
• 1:26:03
  www.
• 1:26:04
  924S944.
• 1:26:04
  com or reach out directly to Kevin via email at krduffy at me.
• 1:26:09
  com or by phone at 386 547 9625.
• 1:26:15
  Thanks, Brad.
• 1:26:16
  And thanks again to Kevin.
• 1:26:18
  I can't thank you enough for coming on BreakFix and sharing your passion
• 1:26:22
  for the 924s and 944s with our audience, with everybody out here.
• 1:26:27
  It's really awesome to talk to subject matter experts about, especially
• 1:26:31
  what we would consider nowadays.
• 1:26:33
  Classic cars and collector cars like 944, especially from the Porsche world.
• 1:26:38
  And you know, when you think about these cars, obviously they're iconic.
• 1:26:42
  It's always been on our honorable mention list to this day as a starter
• 1:26:47
  track car for somebody to cut their teeth in the motor sports world.
• 1:26:50
  It is probably one of the best, if not the best handling vehicles on the
• 1:26:55
  planet, but we shouldn't shy away.
• 1:26:58
  From the 924s, especially the 924s.
• 1:27:01
  So for those of you out there that are considering your first collector
• 1:27:04
  car, or maybe your next DE car, think about the 924s and give Kevin a call.
• 1:27:10
  And I do appreciate you guys, um, calling me up and, uh, wanting
• 1:27:14
  to, uh, reach out and see what I might be able to offer for you.
• 1:27:17
  It's been a privilege and it's been an honor and I do appreciate it.
• 1:27:20
  Thank you for coming on.
• 1:27:21
  It's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:27:22
  Thank you all very much.
• 1:27:31
  If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM,
• 1:27:34
  be sure to check us out on www.
• 1:27:36
  gtmotorsports.
• 1:27:38
  org.
• 1:27:38
  You can also find us on Motorsports.
• 1:27:42
  Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you
• 1:27:46
  can call or text us at 202 630 1770.
• 1:27:51
  Or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.
• 1:27:53
  org.
• 1:27:54
  We'd love to hear from you.
• 1:27:56
  Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
• 1:27:58
  We really hope you enjoyed this episode of BreakFix, and we wanted
• 1:28:02
  to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal
• 1:28:07
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• 1:28:12
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• 1:28:44
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