Barn Find Porsche 962-106b...

[intakexhaust]

Quicksilver- Interesting about the DME. I can only imagine the frustration of keeping modern era historic racers running to its original form. And the cost of those boxes?? Wow! Even this Bosch 'tid-bits' site has disappearing links Bosch Diagnostic and Tech References

My curiosity is only of great appreciation for those who keep these things running. Also, my brother has been a DAQ and elect. engineer for some top tier-teams of a different venue, so obviously its fun for me to be inquisitive but realize what a challenge for Wayne and this 962. Out of privacy and respect, I won't reveal too much but a very well known owner has a warehouse racks full of cars of the same era (not GTP) and with mixed-up wads of wire looms, black boxes, partial log books, it drives my bro nutz to see it like that. Nobody knows what goes with what and back then, stuff was always canibilized for another car, etc. Eventually, the cars will be sold off but what a nightmare it will be for someone who might want to run it again. No doubt most will be rollers.

Wayne - Truly enjoying the site and thank you very much for sharing your ambition and projects. This story as it unfolds is too cool!

[tmsautoart]

Didn't know when I read the first few posts that this would become such an interesting story. Very cool. I love this stuff.

[intakexhaust]

Originally Posted by Quicksilver

The support for the 1.7 DME is real close to, "You're on your own". They were basically a sealed unit and the way it was intended was: Bosch would show at the races with the box needed to read them and all the programming changes would be supplied back by Bosch.

962-170 that I have referred to earlier is also a Trust car and when the DME on it was examined they found "an unknown ROM" in it which has lead me to believe that Trust had someone, probably on their team, who was making custom chips for them.

Bosch owned the reader/analyzer that was used with these DMEs and it seems that they are close to truly unobtainium. As far as I have been able to locate there is one of the Bosch tools in the US (Florida) and if I remember correctly it is on loan there. I did a number of internet searches for any information on the readers and I came up with zilch.

I recently priced out a replacement 1.7 DME and the price in euros worked out to $45K to $50K. Because of the expense of these cars and these computers combined with the rarity of them you aren't going to see someone reverse engineering these things. To ease tuning of these cars it was actually suggested to me by a reputable OC Porsche shop, to gut the 1.7 DME and put a Motec unit inside it.
Adapting a Motec (without the camouflaging DME case) is likely the best choice for the missing unit in Wayne's 962GTi-106b. It would be easy to support but it would fail the original look test. Not even sure if the car would have had the 1.7 or 1.2 DME in it at the time when it was last ran. It will be interesting to see how he proceeds.

I read somewhere of Alwin Springer, then of Andial (and co-founder) cracked the mapping from the 2.8 to use with selected pieces out of the Porsche bin in Germany and build up the torquier 3.2. The rest is history and no doubt Mr. Springer was the breaking DME guru.

[NaplesBound]

Very cool story indeed. I, for one, am jealous. Hehe. But you deserve it with all your hard work. Nice stable now for sure. Will you be attending the RM auction at Amelia? I'll be there for both Gooding and RM. I believe RM has an original 935 and RSR up for sale.

Chris

[Quicksilver]

Originally Posted by intakexhaust

I read somewhere of Alwin Springer, then of Andial (and co-founder) cracked the mapping from the 2.8 to use with selected pieces out of the Porsche bin in Germany and build up the torquier 3.2. The rest is history and no doubt Mr. Springer was the breaking DME guru.

At that time ANDIAL was officially Porsche Motorsports North America so they had complete factory support and resources. It wouldn't be that much of a technical stretch for them to work with the DME because they were Porsche's racing outlet in America.

The reason that ANDAIL isn't still acting as Porsche Motorsport North America is the dealers complained loudly because there was 'this independent Porsche shop' acting as the motorsports division.

[URY914]

[URY914]

[URY914]

[Mark at Pelican Parts]

Great news fellow Pelicans! We've embarked on the restoration journey of this ex-Richard Lloyd 962 which is the original car run during the 1987 Group C season. As mentioned earlier in this thread, Porsche 956/962 specialist Trevor Crisp will oversee the entire project at his world-class restoration facility, Katana Ltd, in the UK. So let's get started!

Engine Swap & Off To Katana
As you've read about earlier in this thread, RLR 106b has quite a history and eventually ended up in Japan where it underwent a partial restoration with attention to the chassis itself. Additionally, a water-water engine had been installed but that wasn't the engine which powered the car in '87. The goal now is to restore the car back to its RLR Liqui Moly livery including the period correct air-water MP1.2 specification engine.

Since the car was located here at Pelican HQ post-purchase, Trevor came out and swapped the engines before shipping 106b back to the UK.

Here's a quick shot of the water-water engine before it was pulled:




Changing an engine in a 962 isn't the easiest of projects as the rear end and floor need to be removed:






Lower a-arms have to be removed as well:




Finally, ready to come out:




Nice and clean rear bulkhead; pretty simple isn't it? You'll notice the shift linkage popping through the bulkhead on the right side:




Trevor shown here removing the engine mount:




Great shot of the 'new' bullet with the all-important (and rare) engine mount pre-installed by Trevor:




And here we have the period correct engine installed:




With the correct engine installed and car back together, it was time to load her up for the trip to Katana!




Stay tuned as we'll report next time from the UK!

[totle]

Great:-)
Thanks for the update ��

Great to follow and learn about these great cars :-)

[Wayne 962]

Update - we've been very remiss on the reporting of the progress - more coming soon. One very interesting thing that transpired recently was the discovery of what engine was used in this car. Here's a little background. There are basically three different types of engines used in the 956/962 over it's career:

- An air-water type first developed / used with "Moby Dick" in the late 1970s.

- A more developed version of the air-water engine that used no air cooling at all (water-water)

- A fully air-cooled engine that was used in the IMSA racing series over here in America.

As I mentioned above, the air-water engine started out life as a development for the "Moby Dick" 935:



Running a displacement of a little more than two and a half liters, it had the traditional Metzer-style engine bottom end with new water-cooled heads. I believe the reasoning behind going to the four-valve heads (as opposed to the two-valve heads on the air-air motors) was to allow for more air intake and better efficiency during each intake cycle. Doing so then facilitated the need for water (antifreeze, etc.) to be used to cool, as I don't think there was a way to design a four-valve head that would cool adequately, etc.

On a side note, the IMSA air-air engines were really nothing more than a 935 engine that was transplanted into a 962. I generally call these 935 engines, and the 962 engines name I leave for the air-water engines. As most everyone knows, these air-air engines were highly successful in America too (we have the 1987 and 1988 Sebring winner which has one of these engines).

Back to the car featured in this post - 106b. So, in 1987, Porsche introduced the "new" water-water motor, and installed it in their factory cars (which gave the factory teams an edge). (Side note - they also used the first PDK automatic transmission that year which performed very well on the track, but was not yet reliable enough for endurance racing.). So, back in 1987, you could only get one of those water-water motors if you were a factory team. Or so we thought.

Trevor Crisp of Katana LTD in the UK (the chap restoring 106b for us), found this very entertaining photo from the 1987 season:



So, if you look carefully, you will see that this is a water-water engine, being raced by the RLR LiquiMoly team in 1987! Not sure how or where they got the "newer" engine, but someone must have known someone at Porsche. Photo-documented evidence, otherwise, I would not have believed it. You can also tell from the coil mounted at the rear of the engine, the air-water engine coils are mounted on the fan housing (no fan on this one).

So, a very rare breed indeed. Back in March of last year, I bought a *ton* of extra engines and 962 parts left over from Dahmen racing. As part of the deal, we were having two air-water engines assembled. But, we decided mid-stream to change course and have the 2nd engine rebuilt as a water-water engine. This would make it very unusual and also now historically correct. Here are photos of the engine, almost complete (this photo has the wrong fuel rails on it, as we are going to be using the older-style fuel injection, which is what they ran in the car in 1987 - newer long block, with the older-style 1.2 BOSCH Motorsports Motronic system). I think the factory ran one or two cars in this configuration, but no one else:






So, there you have the update on the engines. I saw our email newsletter went out with a nice fancy picture of the old engine, and I thought I would update with the new info!

-Wayne

[Wayne 962]

Oh, in case you missed the previous thread from March, here is about 20% of the stuff we bought:





-Wayne

[ridgebk995]

Wayne, have you tried contacting wolfgang Hustedt, he was the Bosch Racing guy in the staes for decades and recently retired in the Raleigh, NC area. If anyone knows where DME's or readers might be, its him. I have his mumber somewhere if you need it, let me know. QUOTE=Quicksilver;6559469]The support for the 1.7 DME is real close to, "You're on your own". They were basically a sealed unit and the way it was intended was: Bosch would show at the races with the box needed to read them and all the programming changes would be supplied back by Bosch.

962-170 that I have referred to earlier is also a Trust car and when the DME on it was examined they found "an unknown ROM" in it which has lead me to believe that Trust had someone, probably on their team, who was making custom chips for them.

Bosch owned the reader/analyzer that was used with these DMEs and it seems that they are close to truly unobtainium. As far as I have been able to locate there is one of the Bosch tools in the US (Florida) and if I remember correctly it is on loan there. I did a number of internet searches for any information on the readers and I came up with zilch.

I recently priced out a replacement 1.7 DME and the price in euros worked out to $45K to $50K. Because of the expense of these cars and these computers combined with the rarity of them you aren't going to see someone reverse engineering these things. To ease tuning of these cars it was actually suggested to me by a reputable OC Porsche shop, to gut the 1.7 DME and put a Motec unit inside it.
Adapting a Motec (without the camouflaging DME case) is likely the best choice for the missing unit in Wayne's 962GTi-106b. It would be easy to support but it would fail the original look test. Not even sure if the car would have had the 1.7 or 1.2 DME in it at the time when it was last ran. It will be interesting to see how he proceeds.[/QUOTE]

[Wayne 962]

Oh, and after reading what Mark wrote (which I should have done originally), I guess the question would be "why not put the original engine back in the car?". Well, for one, that's not an original engine. Secondly, we didn't build it ourselves. Thirdly, the car and the other engine are both in the UK, and the original engine that came with the chassis when I bought it is here in California. So, it just makes sense to use the nice, new, known, shiny water-water engine in the UK.

-Wayne

[Wayne 962]

Originally Posted by ridgebk995

Wayne, have you tried contacting wolfgang Hustedt, ...

Hi there, and thanks for the suggestions. I have one of the BOSCH VM readers, and two of the earlier ones used for the 1.2 prototypes, along with a handful of chips. On 106B, we're not missing an ECU, and I have access to a spare one if I need it. The 106b car didn't run the 1.7 injection in 1987, but the 1.2, as can be seen by the photo above. So, sorry for not being clear, this was / will be a water-water engine running on the earlier 1.2 system, which is what you see in this photo here. The later-style injection had different fuel rails, injectors, throttle-bodies, etc...

-Wayne

[wilsonlaidlaw]

None of this story comes as a great surprise to me. It became increasingly common a few years ago, for valuable Ferraris to be cloned if after a major accident a new chassis was required. The less scrupulous repairer sells off the damaged chassis to another restorer who then creates another car around it for a fraction of what it might be sold for, were it believed to be genuine. I understand that Classiche (Ferrari's own classic restoration and provenance business) will now only provide a new chassis or a major part of it on an exchange basis. I assume they destroy the badly damaged original or maybe store it securely. I know from experience, that court cases to prove that your car is the "real" one can get very messy and expensive (250LM).

Wilson

[Wayne 962]

This was more of a case of a damaged chassis in a race, and it was quicker and cheaper to get a new one or use a spare, rather than repair the old one. That happened quite a lot in the days of racing. The good news is that this one is pretty well documented by this time!

-Wayne

[masraum]

Spectacular. You need to combine all of the stories from all of your wild cars, 959, 962, 962, etc... into a book of sorts. I'd buy it!

[stephenacworth]

Very cool and ongoing story... thanks for sharing your great detective work with us!!! A Steve (#98) mentioned, this would make a great book if combined with all the stories of other cars you have!

[stephenacworth]

Very cool and ongoing story... thanks for sharing your great detective work with us!!! A Steve (#98) mentioned, this would make a great book if combined with all the stories of other cars you have!