[DFWX]

There is an internet listing for 928 performance that promotes (sells) a V-8 swap kit for a 928. One 928 (motorless) I now have was from an abandoned V-8 swap project of someone else and I have a spare 928 Euro motor from still another person who started - never finished - another 350 Chevy 928 swap project.

I am not a restoration purist and see no value in never-driven restorations. If a car show is all about restored cars, I pass it by. I see value in customization and advancement as that is creative. Restorations are just exercises in spending money to reduce a car to a trinket on a shelf. Cars should be driven and improved, rather than restoration inhibited - my view.
So I have no objection to a motor swap in any purist sense whatsoever.
Thus, my view of a Chevy 350 motor swap into a 928 is...


Put a small block Chevy into a Porsche 928?
Are you nuts?
This is dumbheaded, particularly in relation to the 16 valve motor - that you can buy replacement motors for in the $500 range.
The "peak" horsepower of a 928 motor does not tell it's story. They have an incredible horsepower and moreso torque curve.
Unlike an cast iron American V-8, for which the torque drops off dramatically at mid range and horsepower is a mountain
shaped peak, the torque line on a 928 just keeps going up and the horsepower curve is flat, not pointed.
Probably for the cost of the swap kit, you can buy a good, excellent turbocharger on ebay and do some welding plumbing
that will work well with the 8.5 compression ratio of early 4.5 928s, and install 42# injectors from Fords. Eliminate the rear
muffler. Put in cheap lightweight racing seats. Relative to a 350, you have well over 400 horsepower, 6,500 redline and
a car that flies around corners or zips up to 150 - 200 if you go for a longer geared model year 928.
If the 350 Chevy motor is superior, why did 928 Porsches blow away 350 Chevy Corvettes?
By the time you are done with the motor swap, you will have over $5,000 into it even with a used motor. If you can ever get it running. If you can figure how to marry the electrics to each other, if you figure routing the exhaust, if you get it under the hood, if you, if you, if you...
For that money, instead go to 928 Motorsports and buy a supercharger kit. Takes one day to put it on. Add a $700 Borla exhaust. Bingo, you are blowing away anything with a 350 Chevy in it.
And you will have a jaw dropping, awesome under the hood show piece. A supercharged 16 V 928 motor (even more than the 32 Valve) is an awesome appearance motor.
Want to go faster as in drag racing? Add NOS. Now you got 500 horsepower, it took 2 days to do, and you have your fast and furious car. A supercharged, alum alloy double overhead cam, 8 ram manifold, supercharged, NOS Porsche motor. Or a pickup truck iron V-8?
Remember, you are starting with the fastest production car in the USA. You have a great low ratio, but still 150 mph
redline top speed. And, relative to the USA V-8, even in non-turbo form you are making 300 horsepower due to the superior
horsepower and torque curve - plus that spider 8 ram intake is stunning.
If you have never done a cross-model engine swap, do not fool yourself into thinking dropping in a v-8 is going to be easy. Things like the exhaust, electrical system, engine management, hooking up the throtle, all the stuff at the front of the motor, marrying it to the transmission, not messing up linkage, no contact to burn wires or heat to burn the paint job, hoses - try to keep air conditioning, and it goes on and on and on.
And, if you do get it done, what do you have?
It certainly will not increase the value - look at Jaguars with 350s in them.
350 Chevy motor swap-in are as common and as dull as dirt. There is exactly nothing interesting, creative or noteworthy of it.
If that is what you want, go by a 1980s Camero and save your money.
It also is bizarre. It would be like buying an early Triumph Spitfire, then, after a swap, lifting the hood and declaring, "LOOK,
I PUT A GEO METRO MOTOR IN IT, NOW IT IS RELIABLE."
If you just do not like the 928 motor, at least put something notable in it, like a Boss 302, side oiler 427, or an aftermarket aluminum American V-8 such as an SVO, not the most ordinary, mass produced cast iron motor of all - a Chevy V-8.
The marketeer of the kit declares you can buy a new 350 for under $3,000. Really? You can buy a long block with intake for that - and if you put that in? You have the slowest 928 on the road.
I am not a purist in terms of restoration in any sense. This has nothing to do with not altering a Porsche. Rather, putting
a Chevy 350 in place of a Porsche 928 V-8 is just stupid. The 928 even has a deeper throat rumble than a 350.
The end result car you have will not be cool and it will impress no one. The fast and furious crowd will just see it as an
ancient, cast iron hybred of a dunderhead. Exotic car people will see it is indicating you are a low IQ, low income loser.
And muscle car people will recognize it as a cheap car project.
Mostly, once you pull that 928, the odds are 95% that your 928 will never see the road again, and someone like me, years from now, will buy it for a few hundred dollars for spare parts.
Maybe a 350 Chevy in fiberglass repo old roadster makes sense. It is just stupidity in a 928.