I just acquired a Technodyne Cervelli built 951…

[turbokev]

A couple weeks ago I bought a nice 944S locally off Craigslist. It was listed with no picture, and it was short money ($2200) but I got in touch with the owner minutes after it was posted and was the first guy to see it in person the next morning. I bought it on the spot and had it on the trailer less than 12 hours after it was listed.

That ’87 S is my 4th 944.. but my first 16V so I was surfing around different forums after I got it looking for 16V specific info and getting help with a no heat issue.. Well I happened to be on a 944 forum last Sunday night (the 16th) when a new user made his first post.. looking for advice on what to do with his car, he wanted a new owner to take over the upkeep and enjoy it.

Sooo, Monday night after work, I met the owner at a foreign auto repair shop just outside Boston and trailered home this beauty. It's a Zermatt silver 1986 944 turbo... one of the few that was built up by Chris Cervelli at Technodyne as a street legal 400 HP monster.. I have all the receipts from the build.. just over $27,000 in total. That’s just the modifications… engine work, brakes, suspension etc.. and this was in Dec 2000.

The motor was built up when it had 65,000 miles on it, and now it has 105,000 but it has been well maintained over the years. It is unbelievable fast.. The 2 dyno sheets from the build have it at 401.8 and 403.5 horsepower at the rear wheels with 433 ft pounds of torque. It will spin the rear wheels under boost at 60 MPH.. Not for the faint of heart LOL

It does have a cold start issue I’m going to tackle once I get the tune up and chain tensioner finished on the S.. On cold start, it fires right up but sounds like its only running on 3 cylinders.. and it smokes a bit (light grey). If I bring the revs up to about 2000 the motor smooths right out, the smoking clears up and once the car is warmed up, everything is great. Once I’m ready to jump in to that I’ll make a video and give a better description.. The car has bigger fuel injectors and I suspect one might be leaking down overnight.

Here are a few pictures of it..








3 weeks ago it had been 5 years since my last Porsche.. Now I've got 2 great ones. Unreal...

[JoshB]

Wow - nice car! Any pictures of the engine? Unreal story!

[Slam]

See? There still are wonderful random acts of kindness done by people all over the world.

What a great story. Do you feel a sense of obligation? I would.

[DannoXYZ]

Awesome tale!
Personally I would ask if there's anything I could do for the guy in return.

[fiat22turbo]

Awesome! That is amazing! You should submit it to Flussigmagazine, it's all about the 924/944/968 and they love to write about stories like this.

Http://Flussigmagazine.com

As an example, here's an article they wrote on my 951S: behind the forum thread... - f l ü s s i g m a g a z i n e

It wasn't as good a deal as yours, but it's a pretty quick car!

As to your smoking on startup, it sounds like a possible valve stem seal or valve guide problem. Probably something to look into when you do a FOES.

[Lapkritis]

Payin' it forward. I hate to see cars that I've sold in the past go down the tubes so I can see where he's coming from. It's a funny thing when a car is not worth the value of its parts which is the case right before they become classics. Eventually, as was the case in the air cooled 911 world 12-15yrs ago, the remaining examples begin to appreciate due to scarce supply. Then fewer and fewer will be threatened with the knife.

[turbokev]

Here are a few more pictures.. not cleaned up yet.. just the way I picked it up Monday night.















and this list was with the car from the 2006 when the man I got it from bought it...
A couple things have changed.. the wide band O2 was more recent, I know that.






~

[TheRedSlantnose]

That's a pretty nice 951! The roll cage looks just like mine, I have the same wheels, and yours sounds like a clone of my 951 performance-wise. My car spins its wheels under boost as well. How much boost does it have?

[turbokev]

1.9 bar on the high boost setting.. Has 110 octane in the tank, PO told me that's required for high boost mode..
I can't see driving it around on the street at that level.. it's pretty ludicrous when boost comes on hard like that.


EDIT.. I have since talked to the man that had the car built out in Arizona.. The Dyno runs were done at 1.7
I have low boost dialed in to 1.0 and high boost to 1.5 (and I've only put 110 octane in it)

[TheRedSlantnose]

Is it actually safe to run that much boost without destroying the engine? My 951 has only 14 psi of boost, and I use 93 octane. Mine can also run on 110 race fuel, but I've never used race fuel in it before.

[turbokev]

Safe?? Daily?? I wouldn't. It's crazy power to be driving back and forth to the store..

There's high / low boost setting knobs in my glovebox.. I would only use the high adjustment at the track.

1 bar is plenty fun for driving around..

It's been looked after but I can't see driving around with the full capabilities turned on..

[ditch68]

What an awesome car, and a great story. That car is really special!

When my wife and I got a new (newer) minivan, we gave our old one to a neighbor who was struggling and trying to run a music school for kids, she had no car.. It felt very good to help someone out and know it was appreciated. She was very grateful! I think I felt better than her, though.

Love your car!!

Jeff

[guru944]

Turbokev:

What a Blessing. Thanks for posting the pics and sharing with us...
Great Car with 28psi Wow!

Later...

[333pg333]

Cool story and amazing buy! 1.9 bar is a little high unless crazy mods have been done and even on a car like this that is highly unlikely...so I'd wind it down a bit. 1.4-1.5 with the right tune is ok on a street car, but you do need to be careful. Even though our cars have good balance, when they snap with that much power available they're very hard to bring back and there are a lot more things to hit on the street.

[turbokev]

Originally Posted by 333pg333

Cool story and amazing buy! 1.9 bar is a little high unless crazy mods have been done and even on a car like this that is highly unlikely...so I'd wind it down a bit. 1.4-1.5 with the right tune is ok on a street car, but you do need to be careful. Even though our cars have good balance, when they snap with that much power available they're very hard to bring back and there are a lot more things to hit on the street.

Low boost is set at 1.0 right now and high at 1.5

The dyno pulls show over 400 at the wheels.. gotta be 475? 500? at the crank. I don't think 1.5 will make those numbers..

The head is ported, bigger turbo, injectors, fuel delivery upgrades, chipped etc..
It's not like someone just added a manual boost controller and cranked it up..

That said, the car was built 40K miles ago.. It's been well maintained but I have no need or desire to run it with super high boost.

[333pg333]

Crazy mods like dry sump, deckplated block, custom crank/rods/pistons, cooling mods etc...
Not doubting you can run 1.9 bar but how long it lasts is another thing. I've got most of those mods and I wouldn't run 1.9 bar.
A Time Attacking Porsche 944 Turbo

Still, you might just have the 951 bargain of the Century! Congrats. :-)

[flash968]

do not make the common mistake of trying to apply a percentage to the wheel numbers. it is a fairly fixed amount of loss (yes, i know that friction increases with load applied, but it does not translate to fixed percentage increase in loss). for example, the 968 is between 35 and 40hp, no matter whether you are putting down 200 or 350. it's not 15% or 17% or any such fixed number.

as for boost limits, there are a lot of things involved in maintaining boost that high. i have no idea if they did the things necessary or not, but it can be done, and chris was certainly the guy back in the day.

the cold start and smoking issues are due to the very large injectors, and not being properly tuned. this is a common issue on high boost engines. most guys don't tune anything but WOT.

[jamess2]

This is a great story I enjoy hearing stuff like this... Just wish it was me telling the story.

[turbokev]

I just had the pleasure of speaking to the man that had Chris build this car..

I had his information on receipts that came with the car so I took a shot and called him last night, leaving a VM and telling him I had acquired his old 944 turbo.

He called me back this afternoon and was more than pleased to chat about the car and the upgrades.

I told him what had been done to the car since he had it, and that it only had been driven 7,000 miles in the last 8 years..

He said before running high boost, get the car to a dyno tuner and have it properly set up.. He cautioned me to find a trustworthy shop that would work with the technology the car has in it.. He said Most shops, when they see 15 year old equipment, will try to upsell you to all the latest and greatest.. He said the technology might be 15 yearls old, but when tuned correctly, it puts out a legitimate, reliable 400 hp to the wheels and that there was no need to start throwing money at the car... it was built right.

It was cool to talk to someone with intimate knowledge of the car.. He told me he'd like to buy it back, but I politely declined..

[333pg333]

I agree with Flash re trying to calculate power figures. Too many variables. I've heard a range of 10%-32% for transmission losses. Our local Porsche club uses the 32% and while I think this is too high, they may have got this from the factory so, who knows. I saw charts of my motor that were done on the same night with massive variations just based on the ramp rates used on this particular dyno. Just know that your car is fast!

Does seem like antiquated electronics and I would agree with the p.o. in that you need to find someone that knows how to fly them. I can't tell how you can affect the tune apart from selecting different pre determined maps that they've made, &/or the FQS switch. Modern ECU's will be a lot more flexible but so long as you can sort out the cold start and ensure you're not running too lean anywhere, you should be good to go for now.

Actually, come to think of it, I'm sure I saw Chris Cervelli post on Rennlist not very long ago. Might be worth trying to find him?