Quote:
Originally Posted by jjeffries
Jon, that's bad-a$$. Did you do the LS conversion as a result of the original turbo motor failing, or just in search of more power?
Many years ago I had an 89 944S2 for about a year. It is my favorite body style of the whole - and very long lived - family.
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I made the mistake of heavily modding the turbo, to the point where leaving for the track in the morning i always wondered if the car was going to make it home. The turbo engine is reliable to about the 300whp range, anything more than that and i think the reliability goes down exponentially. The worst part of the engine swap was working out all the bugs. The LS1 just runs, and very well at that. Getting the engine in and running is seriously easy. Getting the power brakes power steering, cooling system...etc is the hard part. It took about a year of driving it to get it dialed in. The 944 chassis is great... handled the power (and torque) with no issue. It seriously felt like it was meant to have that much power.
The S2 is the perfect iteration of the 944 with the big 3.0. With the LS1, its basically the S2 with twice the HP and torque.
One thing i noticed between the 924S, 944, 951 and my '88 3.2. The g-body is more akin to the 924S and early 944. Just what you see as far as cable / lever operated HVAC, wire harness covered with sticky / gooey friction tape and the type of connectors used, for example under the dash.... lots of the white molex connectors. Amazes me that the g-body ran this way through '89. In '85.5 when the 2nd gen 944 came out it had electronic hvac, a nice wire loom and the black pin connectors. The '85.5+ 944 is more akin to the 964.