Only one in the world, Air cooled, 3 cylinder Turbocharged Porsche

[porschyard]

So after 5 long years I can finally share this tractor and what I did to it with the Porsche/Pelican community. After I returned from RRVI in 2018 I walked in to my shop and looked up on the shelf where a half dozen or so old 3ldz’s, a couple of K27’s and a couple of 944 K26’s where sitting. I had this idea in my head for awhile but RR unleashed the idea and I went to work.
My first goal was to minimize the intrusion so if I wanted to return to stock it would be minimal work, check.

Next goal was to use as many Porsche parts as I could, check.

My last and most important goal was to make it look like that if Porsche had actually made a turbocharged tractor that’s probably what it would have looked like, CHECK.

I am not really a fabricator but I can fabricate, it just takes me a lot longer and I usually end up with a pile of parts I am not happy with and keep refining the parts I make until it looks the way I want.

I started off holding a K27 up in position and send oh hell no, next was a 3ldz and still it was way to big. I looked back up on the shelf and in the back there was 2 K26’s from a 944 and when I held one up in place I said, hmm that just might work.
So the hardest part of fabricating the kit was making the main bracket,
Have you ever tried bending 7/16 plate steel with a torch, a vise and a giant adjustable wrench by your self. I can confirm it is no easy task.

Once I got the (2nd) bracket how I wanted it was a matter of accumulating all the other bits and pieces, some I made some I bought. The manifold is a Frankenstein piece made from bits and pieces from a 944 turbo crossover pipe and a 75 thermal reactor heat exchanger, again I tried to use as many Porsche parts as I could. The exhaust down pipe was made from a section of a 944 turbo exhaust and was designed to mimic a 934 style exhaust and is bolted to the turbo with 911 cylinder head barrel nuts.
The turbo is bolted to the manifold with 930 axle bolts and the top gasket to the stock exhaust manifold is a early copper muffler gasket.

The air filter setup took me quite awhile to figure but when it finally popped in to my head I felt like a dummy because it was so simple. The original air filter setup is an oil bath which definitely was a no go with the turbo and I tried a few KN setups but it killed the factory look I was going for. Then one day all of a sudden there it was, gut the oil bath and put the KN inside, viola success. Now the old timers at the local tractor show I go to no longer said, well boy if it did not have that ugly KN air filter on there it could pass as factory.

I have had a long day today here at RRVII so I will post more info and pics about the build in the coming days. I hope everyone likes it and will enjoy the story and pics of what I did to make this tractor mine, if you want to see it person and here the turbo whistling and you are at RRVII this week stop by the tractor exhibit and check it out. I will also be racing it (if you call 15 mph racing) both Saturday and Sunday.
Please let me know your thoughts of what I have done and BTW it is the only 3 cylinder Porsche tractor in the world with a turbo on it.

Richard

[Discseven]

Nice work Richard. Does look like it all belongs.

[Uwon]

Love it. Especially the turbo tail pipe and the waste gate dump pipe. Reminds me of some of the 917s of yesteryear.
Johan

[cgarr]

Nice hay machine

[porsche930dude]

Looks great does it have more power how much boost does it make? So you can slap a turbo on a diesel without opening up the ring gaps or doing any other tuning stuff? Seems to me the mounting and hardware is the easy part. Getting it to work right is a whole nother thing. Maybe im wrong I know nothing about turbos.

[porschyard]

Well RRVII 2023 is in the books and what an event it was. I had a blast with the tractor sharing it with spectators and racers alike and every one of the hundreds and hundreds of people that stopped by to see it absolutely loved it, it was not the prettiest or the fastest but the Turbocharged Tractor was definitely the COOLEST.

A huge Thank You to the entire ALEGRA MOTORSPORTS team for your help and backing.
I also want to thank Weathertech Raceway RRVII coordinator Ardelle Lind for all her help.
Also a big shout out to Michael Zimmerman (CRGRacer92) and his incredibly talented motorsports artist wife Samantha for getting the tractor out to Monterey and back from central Fla. safely, you guys went through quite an ordeal but soldiered on and got it done.
Again thank you to all involved that helped make this experience a success.

Hope you enjoy the video of the Lemans start, that is the Saturday race and it was CRAZY. There was beating and banging and tire rubbing going on throughout the field, i got through unscathed but only by the skin of my teeth.

One of the coolest moments of the weekend was the Sunday Race, Jeff Zwart driving and filming from the orange P312 orchard tractor and Justin Bell and I racing side by side come up on him in turn 3 and split him for the pass. I am passing on the inside and Justin passing on the outside and then we "Drag Race" to the finish, I have never had so much fun at !5 mph in my life.

One sad note for me though, in May of 2022 i was doing a little business with fellow Pelican member Fred Apgar and i shared a sneak peak of the turbo tractor with him and his reaction was priceless and he said he could not wait to see the story and pics of the build, his last words to me were "very very cool Richard"
RIP Fred and i hope you are looking down on all of us with a big PORSCHE smile

Hope all that attended enjoyed the largest Porsche gathering in the world and had as much fun as i did.

Richard

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[porschyard]

How many people in this day and age can say that they have done a Lemans style race start anywhere in the world much less a Porsche tractor race at Weathertech Raceway, and it was CRAZY.


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[jac1976]

Originally Posted by porschyard

I am not really a fabricator but I can fabricate, it just takes me a lot longer and I usually end up with a pile of parts I am not happy with and keep refining the parts I make until it looks the way I want.

Sorry, I gotta call BS. You are a fabricator. Very nice work.

[porschyard]

Originally Posted by Uwon

Love it. Especially the turbo tail pipe and the waste gate dump pipe. Reminds me of some of the 917s of yesteryear.
Johan

Thanks Johan, I modeled it after the 934 but 917 works too. My next project is to get it to spit flames and then it will really be a crowd pleaser, probably have to use propane though.

Richard

[porschyard]

Originally Posted by jac1976

Sorry, I gotta call BS. You are a fabricator. Very nice work.

Thanks for the compliment Jac but what I did not show or even take pics of was the pile of parts I scrapped and started over because they just did not fit or look right.

I would guess true fabricators start with a blueprint or a drawing on paper or at least a picture. I scoured the internet for months and never found a pic of a turbocharged Porsche tractor so I really never had anything to go off of but a picture in my head of what I wanted it to look like and just started cutting, drilling and assembling parts until I got it to look like the pic in my head.

I eventually did find another turbocharged Porsche tractor in 2020 that a guy near Cologne Germany put together around the same time as I did mine but his is a 2 cylinder and does not even remotely look like mine.

Richard

[porschyard]

Originally Posted by porsche930dude

Looks great does it have more power how much boost does it make? So you can slap a turbo on a diesel without opening up the ring gaps or doing any other tuning stuff? Seems to me the mounting and hardware is the easy part. Getting it to work right is a whole nother thing. Maybe im wrong I know nothing about turbos.

So yeah I admit I basically just “slapped” a turbo on a diesal engine with no modifications to accommodate any significant boost pressure. The waste gate is adjustable from 4-25 psi with the spring kit that it comes with but due to the limitations of the 62 year old MFI that does not have any type of boost enrichment the system really does not have the fuel delivery capability to accommodate any significant boost pressure.

I have the wastegate set at 4psi which is borderline to actually need any extra fuel or make any additional power, from the beginning I have known that it would not be a wise idea to start pumping more power from a 62 year old 19:1CR engine W/O at least a full overhaul and some upgrades like rod bolts, valve springs and doing some magna fluxing and balancing at a minimum.

Also being that I just pulled an old core 944 K26 turbo off the shelf that has 170k miles on it and is not sized properly it is way to big for this application. I would like to think that at some point I would build the engine to be able to handle a power increase and have the turbo resized to the engine configuration so I could have the front wheels in the air and blowing black smoke out of the exhaust but for the time being I am enjoying the looks and loving the turbo whistling which draws people in like the Pied Piper 😎

Richard