Génial Spencer !!! :)

Monsieur Pomme De Terre,

To quote Etta James, "At Last".... So cool that this ice blue 965 is now not only past all the nail biting stuff ("Will it blow up?") but also proving itself as a useful means of transportation, albeit one with Lockheed Starfighter-like performance. I now command thee to commence forthwith a trip to the continent, take in Spa and the 'Ring, then some Alpine passes, all with the GoPro rolling. I look forward to more driving impressions. Be well, John

Congrats! What a journey!

Thanks lite!

Merci mon ami! Cela a certainement été une "aventure" monumentale :eek:

Thanks brainz! Yeah, not a journey I ever want to repeat either!

Hahaha!!Lol @ Monsieur Pomme de Terre!

I have to say, when Matt and I were talking a few months ago about what we were looking to achieve from the engine rebuild, he did say "you don't want any more than 500hp do you? That'll be scary crazy on our roads! No, seriously Spence, you don't want any more than 500hp, trust me..." (or words to that effect)

I thought at the time "No, bollocks to that, I want ALL the horsepower, thanks all the same. 544hp on Engine #1, I definitely want more than that this time please"

Upon reflection, no, you really don't need more than that here. Wide open boulevard roads or autobahns? Yeah, go for it, but as all the magazine journo's have said for years, British roads are unique in their variety and quality (not great quality, especially after winter has had it's game with the surfaces).

Also, despite it being slightly less than engine #1, it actually feels WAY stronger once the turbo's lit. Of course, it's still one of the unknowns as to what caused that engine to smash its rings and to ovalise the cylinders so quickly. Neither do we know when it did this - so its absolutely likely that those few last runs I did were probably not 544hp at all.

It would be interesting to now look at the turbo itself; I was quite surprised how it didn't reach full boost until about 4,000rpm. I was expecting it to spool up a little quicker, although neither do I want it to feel like a twin turbo motor; that kick in the back from a single pump is (after all) half the appeal of going for teh last gen single turbo's 911's. The way it boosts could be a function of the headers I'm running, but I also know that the GT35R which I'm using has moved on somewhat in the last 8yrs, so perhaps a mini-phase 2 projectette some time in the future?

ETA - I'm taking Rachel on a surprise long (birthday) weekend break over the summer Bank Holiday in late August, to Bruges. As we live on the coast we're going to road trip it via Eurotunnel. My natural inclination was to go in the M5, but what the hell, the 964 makes for a far more memorable journey! So, we won't get to Spa nor the 'Ring, but it will be going to Belgium in a few weeks. I'm excited already!

Hi Spencer,

I am very happy for you, I also hope to have mine finished this year! To replace your "old" GT35R turbo you could in the future put maybe a GTX3584RS, Chris knows it well he could give you advice about it. :)

Hey Pat,

Yes, I may well look into doing this at some point once as "Phase 3", once all the suspension is refreshed, geometry done, etc.

I am quite surprised how high up the rev range the boost comes in actually; it's not "laggy" in the 80's old skool sense, but I think it would be interesting to get it making that boost a little earlier. Potentially not *that* expensive to do either.

Just a quick update.....

A week or two ago, Troy from Northampton Motorsport very kindly dialled back into the car to make some changes to the idle strategy.

[background as to why this was necessary...]

Myself and Rachel had an absolutely great weekend over in Belgium (in fact it was so great, we've booked up again to stay in the same hotel but this time a few weeks before Christmas; should be very cold and festive with their Christmas markets). We didn't use the car much once we arrived into the centre of Bruges, we parked at the hotel and then walked everywhere until it was time to return on Monday evening. We certainly got some very nice comments as we were driving through, rumbling along the cobbled streets in 1st gear (slowly of course with all the pedestrians and cyclists). What wasn't so good was the return journey. The weather was super hot all weekend, so the AC was on full-blast, however, one little finishing job from the dyno was the idle control. We enabled some settings in the calibration to smooth out the throttle application (it was already very good though), but this seemed to then cause the engine to go into a "hunting" cycle - or what Troy referred to as a "hysteresis condition" where it simply couldn't catch itself, sometimes getting steadily worse until it stalled. Despite spending over an hour trying different things, we couldn't fix it a few months ago.

With the AC on (creating more load) the engine was stalling extremely easily, especially with the single-mass flywheel. In the long Eurotunnel queues at Calais this became embarrassing - absolutely no warning and no way to catch it, at one point it stalled 4 times just trying to leave the passport desk (also with the AC off).

So...Troy was great, carving out a couple of hours during the day a few weeks ago. Some calibration comparisons between idle control in the running-in map and the final map revealed that we actually didn't change that much, so we reverted back to those original settings, disabling one of the filters used on the eGas settings.

It now idles beautifully, back to how it was, and I have to say, if the throttle is more sensitive, then it's perhaps my imagination. Rachel and Lucy say it feels as smooth to them from the passenger seat.

My next job is going to be to finally get the tacho working. This has been a perennial pain in the bum. The MBE ECU from a few years ago worked out-the-box, simply connecting the tacho input wire to the ECU o/p, no hassle. Not so the Syvecs. Looking at the electrical diagrams for the MBE, it appears there's a built-in 1kOhm pull-up resistor, so I'm going to try this on the Syvecs and see what happens (it seems to be the common consensus from various people as to being the likely fix).

A quick job I did the other day was another oil change. I had plenty of oil which I bought for the dyno day, so thought I'd flush it through and make sure everything looks ok (it does) and open the filter casing. Not that I'm paranoid, or anything.

Just waiting for some nice autumnal days so that we can take it out for another drive, but at the moment it very much looks like wet and windy weather is here for a while.

Hi Spencer,

It’s great that everything is going well now, your story had at one point cooled me down a bit to spend one day my Titine at the EFI, there it gave me confidence again!
Being surrounded by very competent and friendly people helps a lot and especially you had a good dose of temerity!
I want to personally thank you for taking the time to explain everything here in almost every detail, your progressions, your failures and successes, thank you very much, Spencer! :)

Hey Pat!

I know, this saga must make very strange reading to everyone, a rollercoaster of success and frustration. I have to be honest, I'm still not considering this a "completed project" for a long time yet - I want many thousands of miles completed, a number of oil changes done and some borescope inspections made. Only then will I relax and consider it complete.

No need to thank me buddy, although I'm glad a few of you are enjoying the read. I started documenting this hoping that somebody out there can take my thoughts and experiences and apply them to their own projects. You never know, even if it's just one bracket that somebody re-uses, then it's been useful. It's also very therapeutic for me to sit down and brain-dump the updates; it's a very valuable way to spend some time thinking things through, and on numerous occasions I have had that "Eureka!" moment whilst typing, and gone back into the workshop at 1/2/3.00am to do something!

At some point, I'll pick it back up and start documenting the chassis refresh and upgrades. Not sure when that will be, I need to save up some £££'s first. My time these days is also extremely limited, with a new (very demanding) job and spending as much time as I can with Rachel....and actually enjoying driving the car!

Good stuff Spenster. Got any cool pics from the Belgium run? John

Hi John, argh, alas I don't I'm afraid - well, I have lots of pics of Bruge, but not with the Porsche. Rach and I went up to Brands today for the final showdown, title deciding rounds of the British Superbike championship (which was excellent, and the result we were both hoping for....Scott Redding doing the business, a man from yours and Rachels neck o'the woods in Gloucester)....anyway....we were talking about the upcoming return weekend back over to Belgium and did kind of wonder why we weren't going in the Porsche. Hmm, good question...I just assumed it'd be better to go over in the M5 with its winter tyres fitted - but I don't think the chances of snow there is very high at all...so I may have a second bite of the cherry to get some pics in a few weeks time.

Car again ran faultlessly. I'm coming to the conclusion its definitely a "happier" engine running on max boost; it just seems to spin up nicer and sounds smoother. I don't think the wastegates dumping to atmosphere directly is a great thing; when they start dumping, it's quite a coarse noise and I'm not convinced that it's particularly befitting of the car. I may well look into either feeding them into some kind of silencer, or just bear it in mind for when I do eventually order a new exhaust system from Chris, and see if he can route the exit into the overall system. Again, over the last 5/6/7 years or so, in the UK there's a real hatred of anything loud; much as I like stuff loud, neighbours are really starting to give me crap over the noise this car makes. Overtaking cars on full-chat and wastegates screaming I think is also going to start attracting the wrong kind of attention.

I had some time playing with the car yesterday...finally...I've been considering swapping back to the OE amber indicator/repeaters/reflector panels on the front. The original units have been sat in my workshop for months; I swapped them to aftermarket clear units approx 2 weeks into owning the car. That was a long time ago now; as well all know, the affection for aircooled cars since then has risen massively, as well as the whole culture of "Young Timers" happening (well, it has over here in Europe anyway). So...I spent about an hour switching them back....and ABSOLUTELY love them, a decision unanimous with my buddies and Rachel. Chris was ever the diplomat and said he liked both, hahahaha!!

Some pics snapped on my way up to Brands early this morning..

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...d/IMG_8201.jpg

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...d/IMG_8207.jpg

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...d/IMG_8204.jpg

...to me, I think it gives the car some definition, a few features that make it look proper old skool.

After then washing the car, it sat in the nice dry and warm and well lit garage...it was too much to resist for me to then clay bar the bodywork and give it a fresh coat of Dodo Juice carnuba wax (Dodo Juice is my pal Dom's company, great products). That ended up being a 2.30 am finish, with a 7am alarm call for the trip up to Brands Hatch....zzzzzz

Going to start turning my attention to the suspension soon; it's feeling so nicely planted with the Guard differential - night and day different, and that's with the original Boge dampers (!!!), and some unknown geo setup. If the car feels pretty damn good now, I can only imagine how good it'll feel with the KW V3's installed. I want to get all the parts together before I even start tearing stuff down, otherwise it'll become yet another protracted project. The decision now is whether to go Elephant Racing bushes (expensive and the wrong side of the world, but I think undeniably excellent?) or Super Pro, which I have used to some degree on my old GT3 (but iirc only to replace two bushes in the coffin arms)...a LOT cheaper and readily available from many vendors here in Blighty. It's easy to go OTT, but I have to remember that this is a road car - I want it to be sharp but not bone crashing. I can soften things right off with the KW's, so perhaps I'm overthinking the bush and bearing changes?.....thoughts welcome.

Hi Spencer,

What happiness! You have to change your neighborhood but don’t change the personality of your Titine! :)
For the suspension might need to do a mix of Elephant racing and KW V3, if you do things thoroughly (as usual :) ) It’s going to cost you a lot of money. The parts are not given and even less the customs fees, I have already researched it well And it got me cold!

Hi Pat! Hahaha, Rachel (who speaks some French) and I were Googling at 3am this morning, what "Titine" translates to....am I correct in saying it's kind of an unofficial and affectionate alternative for referring to a car? Less formal than using "voiture" perhaps? (and very different from tetine, haha, which caused us to raise our eyebrows and laugh)

On the suspension discussion, yes, Elephant is a brand I've been looking casually at for a couple of years, in fact I got lucky 3-4 years ago and bought a set of new ER adjustable top mounts from a guy in the UK who had changed his mind on 911 ownership when the values started to go up....however, I'm not convinced they're going to work with the KW's despite Elephants website saying they can be used with aftermarket coil-over dampers. There's simply no way of centralising the damper without using the top spring mount. If you use that, then the damper rod isn't long enough to go through the spherical bearing on the top mount. If you remove the spring perch, then there's no way to locate and hold the spring centrally, and it's interfacing directly to the underside of the top mount - not good. I think I have two options:

1) Make something to get it to fit; a new design top spring perch perhaps?
2) Sell the Elephant Racing top mounts again, and buy the KW top mounts. They're not as adjustable as the ER setup, but perhaps good enough.....oh, and they're bright purple (which is not a good thing)

Maybe now is the right time to start posting up some initial pics....

Take a look at the lower bolt sizes on your front struts spencer .
I remember reading the 964/5 kws where really designed for 993 models , or the previous generation running 993 evo front uprights .
Ask the question first , to avoid any down-time .

With regards to the tops , iirc they’re shorter struts and designed for rs type monoball top mounts which put the joint lower in the chassis . (Same as all aftermarket adjustable top Mounts)

I have an h&r kit running stock top-mounts and a jrz kit running rennline topmounts if you need any pics .

Hi Ian,

Thanks, yes, I had read about the bolt diameters, and from what I gather, KW have (somewhat begrudgingly) supplied sleeves to accommodate the difference. Worst case, I'll spin up some sleeves out of stainless on my lathe ;)

If you are able to send across some pics, that'd be super useful, thanks; the Rennline setup is perhaps more relevant, as I'd like to see how the tops of the springs interface with the top mounts. Thanks!

Hi Spencer,

Yes, you and Rachel clearly understood the meaning of the word "Titine", phew! :D
On my 930 I had to manufacture for my rear shocks "aluminum bilstein handsets" custom top heads. :)

Hmm, I'm going to have another look at the top mounts and the dampers and perhaps do something similar. I'll see what grades of aluminium billet are available to buy to ensure something suitable for this purpose. Did you use a particular grade of aluminium for your custom top hats?

Hi Spencer,

It was made to measure by a specialized company, I don’t know if it was a special aluminum. :)

Does Rebel make parts for the 964? I used their stuff on my ye olde SC and its luvverly.
I've forgotten from the beginning of this thread but has the car been repainted or is that original paint? Sure looks nice. John

Hey John,

Thanks! I'm sure that almost all of the paint is original, but I can see evidence where somebody has had a go at fixing the usual scuttle panel, where the 964's (and others?) start to rot at the base of the windscreen. It needs doing again to be honest, a little bubbling starting to come back - no worse now than when i bought the car, as it's always kept in a dry garage.

I''l look into the Rebel stuff, thanks for the tip ;)

Cheers
S