With Overcrest in the rearview and the avocado back in the garage, I set my sights on just being a dad for a bit and enjoying the fall weather and color change.
With a few weeks recovery time, I started to come out of my cocoon a bit. Over the last few years I’d started to accumulate so much stuff that we weren’t using the same when we were in Los Angeles (I've driven the C10 1,700 miles in three years) so I started a purge. Finally detailed and put the Q5 TDI up for sale (which has since sold), detailed and put the C10 up for sale (November is a terrible time to sell something like that here, not currently sold), and in a commitment to getting the cup engine in the car, I put the 3.6, 915, and the other G50 up for sale as a “hot rod starter pack” in the classifieds, link here:
https://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-used-parts-sale-wanted/1169812-fs-hot-rod-starter-pack-964-3-6-engine-swap-rebuilt-915-rebuilt-g50-goodies.html
3.6 coming out for the last time:
The 3.6/915 sold relatively quickly, but it was still in the car, so I had a mad dash in November to get it torn out, cleaned up, and packed up. This also meant we got to see what carnage ensued on the rally with the starter ring gear…
I will say that I have run into so many dumb things while building this car. Also, aftermarket parts that have been on the scene for probably decades, so how am I now just the one experiencing these problems? Unanswerable…
I’m using a Patrick Motorsports Clutch, Flywheel, and Presssure Plate which is designed to be used with a shortened G50. As expected, once the engine/trans were separated, you could see that the brand new starter ring gear failed at one of the holes machined for the pressure plate limit pins (that an OEM Sachs clutch needs to function).
Dumb thing #1: when installing the starter ring gear onto the pressure plate, none of the limit pin holes lined up with the limit pins on the Patrick Motorsports pressure plate.
Dumb thing #2: I was later told that I had the starter ring gear mounted upside down (even though this way the ring gear limit pin holes were at least near the pressure plate limit pins. If I had mounted it the other way, the limit pins would have been completely blocked.
Dumb thing #3: I was then told that you need to first line the limit pin holes and then only use 6 instead of 9 bolts to mount this to the flywheel… that doesn’t seem right.
Dumb thing #4: I was then told that dumb thing #3 was actually incorrect, the limit pin holes for the early sachs pressure plate are irrelevant for the patrick motorsports pressure plate, which means you can actually use the later 930 starter ring gear, which doesn’t have the limit pin holes, and gets rid of that failure point. Even typing this right now is starting to make me feel extremely frustrated again. The advice/misinformation cost me enjoyment of a fun weekend with my car, thousands in transporting my car back home, and a giant groove ground into the bellhousing of my brand new transmission.
They’re all things that could have been avoided with the correct guidance to begin with. So for any of you reading this that may be embarking on installing a shortened G50 into your G-body, just use that later starter ring gear and avoid the headache the early one may bring.
The day after I removed the 3.6, I installed the flywheel, clutch, pressure plate, and later 930 starter ring gear to the cup engine, mated the G50 to it, and put it back in the car.
That’s how it’s sitting as of today, I’ve looked at it a few times but have had trouble building the motivation and finding the time to work on next steps, which I feel are:
- Mounting the radiators into the front of the car, which requires fabricating brackets and may require cutting/trimming/massaging the inner fenders for clearance.
- I picked up two CSF Drag King coolers which should have enough capacity for this engine if I can figure out a way to mount them and route air toward them.
- The drivers side has the battery box in the way which may need to be trimmed, I’m not super keen on cutting the car up and considering using a King cooler on the passenger side and finding something else for the drivers side. It won’t be symmetrical but it would probably be functional? Idk.
- Decide on/build cooling lines from engine to front of car
- Hard lines make the most sense, I’m not sure how difficult it would be to make my own hardlines, or another idea is to use new OE hardlines and repurpose them for coolant.
- Then AN fittings and lines to go the rest of the way to both the coolers and to the engine.
- Decide on fueling. The cup engine uses a returnless fuel system so I either need to convert the engine to return style or the car to returnless. I haven’t figured out the best path forward for this step.
- Wiring the car.
- I have the entire engine/chassis harness from the cup car, the oem Bosch motorsport ECU, OEM Cosworth PDM, and the OEM Cup dash. I’d like to see how the car runs utilizing all of those systems.
- If that doesn’t work, I’ll have to go with a standalone again.
- And then little things like mounting the DBW throttle pedal, figuring out how to clearance the decklid for the oil filter neck, or using the ducktail I have.
All this to say, I was initially super happy to sell the 3.6/915 but now I’m regretting it a bit. Like I mentioned above, I’m finding it hard to find the motivation/time to do all of this. I’m a different person in a different place than I was when building the majority of this car. Even when I initially picked up the Cup engine, I wasn’t even a dad and had no idea what sort of effect that would have on my time.
I find myself pining for a water-cooled chassis to swap all of this into (or honestly just sell it all and search for a GT3). I have pretty much all the parts (less a GT3 transmission) to swap this into any 996/997 chassis. I really enjoy the dynamics, look, and slightly more modern appeal of my 997.2 C4S now that I’ve owned it for a while.
I waffle back and forth on a day to day basis and that alone is pretty exhausting. Chris and I have discussed this quite a bit, these cars are so much fun and we’ve made so many friends as a result but the constant need to improve the damn thing to suit our desires is pretty exhausting. And it was honestly a pretty great car as it was but I couldn’t help myself when that cup engine popped up for sale locally, ugh.
Anyways, who knows? thanks for listening/reading. Part of building the car and this thread is to just put my thoughts out there as a form of therapy. If Gabe at 10 years old were looking at his life now, he'd slap him for considering making all these changes, just because.
So yea, this is where the car sits as of today. I’m open to thoughts, opinions, and general discourse. Cheers.