Nice to see the progress on this! One day (hopefully soon) I can do this too. Odd question for you, are you using Metric or SAE tools on this? Just curious if you had to get more SAE tools or not.

Thankfully everything on the LS1 is metric :). Alot of the same sizes as the Porsche also.. 10, 13, 17,19..etc.

Looks good man,
I'm looking to doing this on my 88

Forgot about this thread..

After like 8 months i finally finished the engine,

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...p/IMG_0276.jpg

Decided to have a local shop complete the engine swap for me. They do top quality work and i think they are going to do an awesome job. This year was just normal busy and it took me most of the year to finish the engine. At this rate i would never finish this car. Next year ill be flying between NY and South Korea for most of the year so its going to be even busier. Dropped the car and everything off last week, hope to have it back and ready to go by spring :).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...p/IMG_0286.jpg

cool love the headers, I look forward to seeing it finished, I just finished a LY2 vortec install in my Jeep TJ, now its got me thinking of doing the same to the 944. Here this link to the build if ya like
2.5 to 4.8 swap - Jeep Wrangler Forum


I haven't been on this board in a while its good the the regulars are still here. :D Be careful with all that traveling your doing.

techno, that is gorgeous.

Nice write up, plus it will show peoples that dropping a V8 in a 944 is not all that easy if done properly even for one so mechanically incline as you.Think you did the rigth move getting the install done by shop that can do quality work less headache for sure.:)

it's incredibly difficult to do right. it's even harder in a 968. the 968 ECU controls a lot of things that are disabled with installing a V8, due to being removed and a standalone installed (interior lights, alarm, speedometer, central locking, yada yada). the hydroboost you have to install to replace the brake booster feels like crap too. i know a guy who paid nearly $30k to have a brand new LS installed, and then yanked it out and went back to the 3 liter, because the car drove so badly. everything that made the 968 the car it is, was gone. gobs of torque and all that, but it felt like an old vette, and nothing worked. sad. another $9k to put it back the way it was before the whole mess began.

i hope techno has a better experience.

:rolleyes:

After many years of reading your posts i get it, the 968 is the best car ever made. Please save your endless knowledge and experience for another thread.

For the 944...

Interior lights have no connection to the DME. Alarm (Which my car does not have) can be bypassed and will make no difference with the LSx engine harness. Speedometer works off the trans-axle, not the ABS like on the 968. Central locking has no connection to the DME.

Boosted brakes feel like crap? Well when you compare it to the best car ever made, the 968; i am sure even a GT3's brakes feel like crap.

i have built many of the LS swaps and SBC swaps in the last 3 years on average about 4 a year i have done . one into a 968 there is so much info out there that doing what needs to be done to the ECU's to make every work and work right is very ez .
two of them are my own cars one is a tube chassis with a full fiberglass body running a LS7 motor with a quaife 6 speed sequentail 997 gear box putting out over 700 HP with weight just over 2100 LBS.
the other is just a little SBC 350 motor putting out 400 HP and about the same in tork .

there is in no way the feel of a old vett !
if they pulled the motor and replaced it with another porsche motor because of problems i would have to say the people that worked on the car maybe should not have .

as for the brakes and the hydroboost set up for me was a waist of time and money to do i ran it in my SBC car twice at the track and went right back to the twin masters i had . to make a twin master setup work is also very ez to do you have to have every thing in the system match and work together .
if you complaining about to much peddle effort that your just not using the right size masters .
i run a 12" wide front tire and a 15" wide tire in the rear ( full slicks ) on my LS7 car the brakes have no more peddle effort than my street driven 944's and with the twin masters there is better peddle feel .

as for weight of the motors i have scaled out the 944 motor to the LS1 motors fully dressed out and the weight deferents is only 48 LBS between the two motors . the 944's motors are a very over weight motor they are to costly to build and offer nothing great once you do build them .
years ago in one of my 944's i did a totaly nuts full build to it .after all said and done with the build stand alone , individual throttle bodys and on and on 20K spent what did i have a motor that only put out just over 300 HP . you can drop in a SBC motor and out of the box stock you get that for less than half the cost for every thing .
now don't get me wrong i love the 944's hell i own 13 of them right now well one is a 968 . they are great cars ! the down fall is the crap motors in them it's funny most of the parts are VW,AUDI when porsche designed the motor they really should have done some thing else .

I was in LA recently at a Chumpcar race and ran into a guy who had done the LS1 swap into his 951. It looked nice, but he did mention that he still had to convert from manual to boosted brakes on it, and that with manual brakes they were not as good as before (obviously).

He knew Tony G who has done this conversion as well.

Keep us updated :)

lol - i definitely do not think the 968 is the best car ever made. if i did, i would not have spent $150k trying to make it like i wanted. there are a bunch of cars i put way above the 968. i like our SL550 better than the 968, and think it's a better package overall. i was merely saying that the complications were there, and the result was very disappointing.

the shop that did the conversion is arguably the most known for this, and when i drove the car, i couldn't get out of it fast enough. it was total crap. all of the smoothness of the car was gone. it twisted like nobody's business, was very "on and off" when it came to power application, and there was no "feel" left at all. when you hit the brakes, you had no idea if it was going to stop or not. the pedal feel was completely gone. it was a brute, pure and simple, and no longer the smooth and balanced package.

but all some guys care about is raw power. that's fine. i've built cars like that too. i was young too, and didn't care about things like quiet cabins, smooth rides, balanced cornering, solid braking, and the simple creature comforts like AC, heated seats, nice stereo, yada yada. now i'm old and cranky and want those things. everybody has their own idea of what a car should be like. i don't want to drive a cobra anymore either, but i sure did when i was younger. things change.

again, i hope techno's experience is better than the owner of the one i just drove.

xD

Jeez that post calls for the double eye roll.

:rolleyes::rolleyes:

There are a few options for improving the pedal feel. The manual brakes i think are the biggest complaint from everyone and one of the things that kept me from doing this swap a few years ago. On the 944Hybrid forum here are some of the solutions guys are using with some notable cons of each,

1) Dual master cylinder setup - Places extra stress on the firewall which can cause cracks. Bracing the firewall to the strut tower is the fix though. Also figuring out the right master cylinder sizes to get the bias right can be some trial and error, but there is enough first hand experience now to go off.

2) Tilton pedal box - $$$ and changes the driving position a little, so if your tall this may not be a good solution.

3) Ford hydroboost - Everyone using this on a track car says the rear bias is too much, a Tilton bias valve solves this though. This is the setup i am going to try on my car.

4) BMW 'H31' brake booster - A few guys are in the process of putting these systems in, but havent read any track experience yet. The really nice thing about this setup is that you can use the original 944 master cylinder, so you preserve the brake feel (and bias) as with the original booster.

I am personally going to try the Ford hydroboost setup. I considered the BMW setup but decided against it. My reasoning is this setup was used on E32 BMW's (basically the '80s 7-series).. the parts for this setup are still available but a little harder to come by than the Ford Hydroboost parts. I ordered a brand new hydroboost unit and master cylinder from ******** for under $350 shipped, mind you these were new and not rebuilt parts so you can knock around $100 if you go rebuilt!

i'll see if i can find out which one was in the car i drove. i know it was a "hydroboost" i just don't know which model.

Curious to know the cost of your local shop when you are said and done...

IMHO…it seems as Flash968 can not stand the simple truth that he wasn’t the person that started and/or embraced this movement from the beginning and he will no doubt continue to object to any of the obvious reasons these swaps are a great ‘bang for the buck’ solution when done correctly. His position just confirms that he is worried about being marginalized on this forum and I would expect that soon he will resurface under a new user ID unless he stops slandering these perfectly sensible swaps.

not at all. frankly i would love to see one of these actually get done right. i keep hearing about them but every time i see one, it's poorly done. the last one was a nightmare, and this was supposed to have been done by an expert, with a huge budget.

perhaps i just have higher standards in what i think a car should be like. i expect the same thing from a conversion that i expect from a manufacturer in stock form. first it is that everything works, with no compromises or excuses. next it is that it does not reduce reliability or increase maintenance. after that, i could really care less. unfortunately i continually find these things to be lacking in one or both of the areas. they either don't run right, or "need a little tuning", or have something rattling, or something doesn't work like original.

i applaud those who step outside the box, and hope to someday see and drive one of these that works.

i like the idea so much that i came extremely close to doing this myself a couple of months ago. i had my engine out, and had plenty of money to do this. i spent $20k on building that motor, so it's not like i wasn't fully prepared in budget to do the conversion. it just didn't work in the car i drove, and it was done by somebody who does these all the time, so i figured it was a hopeless concept. i mean, if they guy spent a bucket of dough, and hired the expert, and it still came out like that, what different result could i expect? after driving the other car, i went back to the supercharger instead, just as did the owner of that car. now i have almost the same power, but it works, and is smog legal. i think i made the right call. we'll see.