rat swap

[962porsche]

so i started work on the bavarian b1tch rat racer .
the car looks like hell but the chassis is straight and because the bones are good we got thinking it was time to get rid of the old tired motor and because we need to replace the motor why not do a motor swap . then we got to thinking if we are going to swap the motor why the hell not move it back in the chassis more .
then we got to thinking why not move the fire wall back , then the drivers seat and then even more weight gets shifted to the rear of the car .
i loaded all the info of the cars specs into a design program and found for a 6' driver we could move every thing back 10.25" in the chassis .
so the old motor came out along with the sawzall . because i didn't want to have to screw around with the peddles i also cut the mounts for them out with the hole firewall . the 10.25" moves the front of the motor back so it sits in line with the center line of the front axle . we now have very little over hung weight on the front .
the radiator also gets moved back the 10.25" or so i may not move it back that far just to have a little room between the front of the motor and the radiator ?
i did have to cut the under side of the cowl and box it back in and because of this we lost the stock wiper motor and linkage . i used a rear wiper motor and arm from a 944 . this give a full sweep of the wiper across the windshield . i did have to also bend the 944 wiper arm some and use a 2" shorter wiper blade .
i'm thinking we will also use the 944 brake booster and master for the car .
the swap still has the same problems as it does if i was not moving it back in the chassis . from what i'm finding to swap this motor into the E30 you have to rotate the motor about 15 degrees to the right ????
i had hopes not to do this and i really want to go with dual masters and in car brake bias adjuster but the car owner doesn't want to spend the money on that at this time .
todays bit of fun will be seeing how the front cross member fits into the car .

[Luccia at Pelican Parts]

Very interesting project. Hope you keep this thread updated. Good luck!

[962porsche]

thanks the e30 forums seam to be a little dead ? but i will post more as the rat racer comes along . thanks .
i'm still running into the same clearance problems as every one else does with swapping a M52 motor into the E30's
the 944 brake booster i'm using still hits the intake . i rotated the motor about 14 degrees over to the right side to clear it as much as i can . but in my case it still just touched the booster so i moved the booster over by 10MM and down about the same

[962porsche]

i used the old backing plate from the 944 . i cut it up some to weld it to the e30's fire wall .
the reason i did this is because the upper right hand nut was just on the edge of the old hole for the e30 booster. if the car wasn't going to be raced i would not have reinforced it .

[962porsche]

did a little more work to the BB . moving the floor back by 10.25" split the support rails from the center tunnel to the inner rockers .
that one support rail used to support the ends of the front frame rails and the cross member for the trans mounts ( i think it is ?) so by cutting it in half and moving it i now need to have two support rails .
because of this i boxed back in two support rails tying them both into the rockers and center tunnel .

[tomgalloway1]

You are one hell of a craftsman.

Tom

[962porsche]

because the fire wall gets moved back the ends of the frame rails no longer reach the new location of the fire wall . i boxed the rails in to reach the new fire wall and then finished welding in the right side floor .
if your wondering why i stopped the fire wall part way up that is because i'm going to make an access panel to get to the back of the head that is under the cowl . the game plan is to hold the access panel in by quarter turn fasteners ( some call them dzus fasteners but dzus is a brand name and not what the fasteners are really called as dzus makes all types of fasteners ) .