I may need an intervention. Am I going too far?
The starter was all scraped up and looked like crap so I decided to clean it up and make it match the crossmember and oil pan.
The lighting is really bad under the car. The crossmember and oil pan are the same color powder coat and now the starter is painted a color that is a very close match.


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1701809087.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1701809087.jpg

What car did they come from?
Do you also have to take the switch and wiring from the donor car?

It is the starter that was in the car originally.

I have another starter that came with the replacement engine but it has more scratches, more rust, and is covered in more oil than my original starter.

I have two or more of most S2 engine parts now. I could sell a bunch of them but they are so nasty I don't want to touch them so they are my emergency spares. I will clean them up if/when i need them.

“Am I going too far?”

Yup. You just have to plan to bring a quick jack and mirror tiles to all concourse and cars and coffee meets. lol

Only 10 months until the next Phoenix Flight Concours!

I took your advice and ordered a new coolant tank.
About 4 years ago,I replaced a fuel hose back by the tank. I thought it was rated for gasoline. I was wrong. I kept smelling gas in the garage and one day I found a puddle and a leak. I finally took the cover off and this is what I found.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1702093845.jpg


Back to the question of going too far;

There are three kinds of coolant that are approved for our cars, they are pink, yellow and blue. Guess which one I picked. :confused:

I started looking on-line for replace gasoline rated fuel hose. They come in several colors. This hose will be back by the tank, under the car, under a metal cover. Guess which color I chose...
In my defense, it was the best deal I could find on any hose of any color but still...

The battery that was in the car is dead from sitting around for 3 plus years. I am thinking this would be a good replacement. SLI48AGMDP X2Power Premium AGM.

I need help, serious help. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/sad2.gif

I can't wait. I took First in Class the last time I entered it in Phoenix Flight.
When I get this thing done, I am going to be showing it at every car show I can find.


Of course, "Done" is a moving target.
When this round is done, I start on building the turbo engine. Once that is done and in and I've driven it for a few months, the whole thing comes completely apart for paint.
Then it will be pretty much "Done" and I can focus on the 914 in the back yard.

“Done” is always relative. But you have to set some type of closing milestone or you’ll never get to that 914. Much respect to what you’ve done thus far. If you end up painting car and then wrapping it in blue, then yeah…maybe you should seek professional council.

If you have ever dropped the engine out the bottom of a 944, you know how hard it is to get the car up high enough to slide the engine out under the radiator support. When I was taking the engine out of the car at the start of this rebuild/replacement process, I started looking at the radiator support. It is bolted in with four bolts. The funny thing is that even if you remove the four bolts, you can not remove the support, you can just move it around a little. It is held in it's location by some tabs on the side mounts that hold the ends of the support in a channel on each side mount. I decided to cut off one of these tabs so I could easily remove the support.

Once I removed it, I could slide the engine out with the car about a foot lower than before. It made things much easier. It slid out right between the radiator side mounts.


I just found that it has additional benefits.

A long time ago, I bought a thicker all aluminum radiator for my old 86 951 that was totaled in 2011.(I told you it was a long time ago). I did not install it because it was too thick to go in with the radiator support in place and the power steering pulley in place.

I finally got around to installing it with this replacement engine.

I've had to install and remove the fan and several hoses a few times to get them all to fit with the thicker radiator. I've had to trim several of the hoses. I am using the blue silicone 944 turbo hose kit from Lindsey. I've had to modify a few things and use the crossover coolant pipe from my old turbo to get it to work. After several days of installs, removals, trims, re-installs, rinse and repeats, etc, etc. I finally got it all done last night and added distilled water to do the first coolant flush of the replacement engine.

I finished pouring in the second gallon when...

Drip...




Drip...




Drip...



GREAT!!!!!!!(that may not be the actual word I used at the time)

All my hose connections are tight with no leaks.

The radiator has a couple tiny leaks at the rear facing weld on the passenger side.

Now I get to tear it all back apart, get the radiator fixed and put it all back together.

Sometimes I just want to buy a new toyota and never work on another car again.

On the bright side, with my support mod, I can drop the radiator straight down to get it out of the car. Here is a picture of the passenger side without the mod and the drivers side with the mod.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1702585426.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1702585493.jpg

My car spent part of it's life in Ohio so the underside has some rust and general nastiness. The radiator support was a bit rusted and generally nasty, so I cleaned it up and painted it. I don't have any Alpine White on hand so it now matches a bunch of the other newly refinished parts.

I've tried to get in touch with Witchhunter to have my injectors cleaned but I have not received any response.
So I went looking for replacements.

It is just a happy coincidence that they look better than the green tops.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1702588390.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1702588390.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1702588390.jpg

very interesting. on another note…did you buy an entire engine bolt kit or just a set of specific sizes?

any links? i promise i won’t get blue. ��

I ordered several hundred each of several lengths of 10mm hex head and cap head bolts. I also got washers and 10mm nuts. They are all anodized aluminum. I'm glad I got a lot of washers because if you are not careful when tightening the bolts down, they will tear up the anodizing on the washer. I wish I would have gotten some shorter lengths on the bolts. I've had to cut most of them down to a shorter length which is really time consuming.

I ordered them on alibab.com from a company called Wenzhou City Qide Hardware Co., Ltd. When I click on the link to the company page now, it comes up as a blank page and the person I was texting for my order no longer responds to message requests.

There were other companies that came up on alibab when I did my initial search in 05-2021.

I tried to find colored hardware from US vendors and they wanted crazy prices so I got them from china. I now have enough to last me for a LOT years or several builds, whichever comes first. Although if I do any more builds, they will probably all get their own color pallet.

I may sell some of my extras on amazon or ebay. If I charge even half of what other American vendors charge, I could easily recoup what I paid for them and even a some of what I have paid in parts for this build.

Last night I was starting another change at the back of the car which required the removal of the mounting board for my custom sound system. Since that was out, I decided to see why my fuel gauge never worked. I pulled the fuel level sender out and one of the wires was busted. So now I have another parts order in.

I was never happy with the square corners of the amp board. They just looked unfinished to my eyes.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1702929190.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1702929222.jpg

Since the amp board was out, I finished the corners. I thought about cutting it down even more but the contour cut on the passenger side locks it in place so it won't ever slide around. I have some brackets that lock the subwoofer in place as well. I just haven't put them back on yet.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1702929277.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1702929277.jpg

Now I have to wait until the fuel level sender gets here to put it all back together.
While I'm waiting I can finish the other project in the back.
More to come on that.

More metal work.

I started with a flat plate of aluminum.
I used a cut-off wheel, file, steel plate, clamp, block of wood, BAFH, and a drill and ended up with a new oil cooler mount.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1703226291.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1703226291.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1703226291.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1703226291.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1703226291.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1703226291.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1703226291.jpg

I am going to mount some kind of protective screen for the cooler and a block-off plate for the outer end to force the incoming air through the cooler.
The next step in the oil cooler project is to make a mount for the outer end. It is going to have to be longer but I think I can use a very similar design.
Then I'll make the block-off plate and screen. Then I have to build the lines from the engine to the cooler. I have the hose and connectors from Setrab, so I just have to figure out the lengths and put it all together.

I still have a lot to do to get it ready for the C&C on Jan 6th.

standard lighting in the 944 has separate power wires going to two separate filaments, one for lowbeams and one for high beams.

Happy New year everyone.

This is the year(and hopefully the month) I get this thing back on the road.

The new fuel level sender is in. The connector I need for the fuel line came in the mail today so It will go on tonight.


I finished the project I alluded to a few times.

Clear tail light lenses and LED bulbs.

Thanks to Kyle at only944 for the clear lenses and the inspiration to add more light to the back of the car.
His tail light mod instructions helped me put the extra LED in the unused space which coincidently sits behind the reflector portion of the tail light lens assembly.
In Arizona you are supposed to have a red reflector that is visible from 50 feet to 300 feet.
I tried putting red tint film on the inside of the reflector section and it doesn't work. It still reflects white. When the tail lights are on, you can see red for a lot further than 300 feet. I'm going to try running it as is. If it becomes and issue with the local PO-PO I will apply some red tint adhesive file to the reflector section when I am driving.

I used red, yellow, amd white bulbs from superbrightleds dot com for the LED bulbs.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1704243022.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1704243022.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1704243022.jpg

The bulbs are very bright but I wasn't. I could get all the bulbs to light up except for the inner most bulb on each side. I couldn't figure out what was wrong so I made a custom harness to attach them to the other tail light circuit. All three red bulbs on each side lit right up!!!! YEAH!!!

Then I took a better look at Kyle's instructions on 0nly944 and looked at the pictures where he showed the tail lights without his mod, with his mod, and with his mod and the...

brake lights...

Luckily my harness was easy to remove and with my son in the car pressing the brake pedal, those troublesome inner most bulbs came on.
Just like they were supposed to.

The pictures with everything lit up are with the ignition on, the transmission in reverse, and my son pressing the brakes. I picked up an LED compatible flasher relay and everything works perfectly.

I'm getting closer to finishing the oil cooler. I built the other mounting bracket and created some screens to try to keep the Arizona rocks from damaging my oil cooler, AC condenser and radiator.

The screens are currently the same pewter grey color as the cam cover, wheels, speaker grills, etc, etc, etc but they may not stay that way. I am thinking of painting them white to match the rest of the exterior.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1704244320.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1704244320.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1704244320.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1704244320.jpg

I need to trim another 3/8" off the bumper cover to get lined up exactly right with the oil cooler. I've already had it on and back off 7 times trying to get the fit to be perfect.

With the tail lights/bulbs done, and the fuel level sender done, I could put the carpet back in and put the reconfigured amp board back in place. I will reconnect all the wires/connectors for the amps tonight.

Old configuration.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1704245038.jpg

New Configuration

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1704296497.jpg


The new configuration curves in to meet the bottom edges of the sub box.

good work. love the creativity. *munching popcorn*

for some reason i’m not ready to switch to LED lighting in the car,, EXCEPT for DTRL’s and i have added 2 super bright LED bulbs in one of the rear reflector squares to be used as a rear fog light.