The Engine Whisperer

[txhokie4life]

I've completed the top end rebuild of my RSR Replica.

I took a 90 964 engine and used the long block from and
performed a top end overhaul.

I then bolted on all the go fast parts from the original RSR engine.

The Replica has a Motec48 ECU management system and after some
heartache I was able to reverse engineer how it worked and got
the engine up and running.

I had a local guru come by to perform a pre-inspection to see if
it was ready to be properly tuned.

I will dub him the Engine Whisperer.

He checks over the build, the engine compartment, and the Motec setup.
Gives me a thumbs up and asks if we can fire it up.

I light it up and she idles fine, abet a bit high. The previous tuner
had wrung the snot out of the tuning and eventually melted the heads.
It was also a 12.8:1 CR 3.8L.

The street engine is a stock 11.3:1 3.6L, however, not having any 964 base maps,
I was using the previous setup.

So he continues the inspection by standing behind the engine, flicking his fingers in
the exhaust, occasionally walking over to rev the engine a little and then resuming
his flying flngers posture.

I stand idlely by wondering my fate. This was my first engine rebuild, and while it
sounded good to me -- I had no reference. I had never had witnessed first hand a 911 air cooled engine in anger

He walks back up and starts fiddling with the fuel injector wiring and strides back and forth to finger flight mode.

He then stops and says -- "One of two things, she's really out of tune, but she sounds way too good for that, or you have one or more left bank fuel injectors stuck open"

I was mystified -- I asked "How can you tell that?"

He replied "your left bank is about 10-20 degrees cooler than the right, pull the fuel injectors, get them cleaned and reflowed and she'll be ready for tuning next week!"

Forgive me if this is just an accepted practice for the grognards -- but for me it was a surreal experience.

Mike

[cgarr]

It's like giving birth. I guess!


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