Braving the wrath of the Porsche 944 Jihad (Page 1 of 2)

I enjoyed how Nick put it last July at gingerman:

"What could you possibly do a car that already has one of the worst reputations in Lemons history to make it even less reliable?  How replacing the engine and transmission with something from an even less reliable car; like a Ford Turbo Coupe..."

As one of the hapless participants of the "Great ECR bent-valve snake-egg-infested junkyard motor head rebuild of 2011" (and I'm gonna be driving that car in a couple days at the real '24' ECR craziness) I can attest to the German 'why use one fastener when 7 will do?' engineering process...

50/50 weight balance means dealing with a rear-mount transaxle and swizzle-stick driveshaft and woe be to those who have to replace any of those driveline parts. Similar to Phil's quote in the article- 'Normally a rwd clutch job takes an hour or so, but I think the factory 944 swap time is 8 hours...'

I bought a 924S when i was 19 for a very lemony price for the purpose of teaching myself to work on cars. That car taught me that car designers are evil and purposely plan things so that easy maintenance jobs become awful to perform. Took me over 3 days to get the engine out the first time. I almost used the car as a lemons car, but wised up to the fact that it was probably a horrible idea.

What can i say, i'm a bit of a glutton for punishment. The daytona's been fun. The fact that we turned laps this year was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

Yup. I can have the engine out in an hour if it's cold. 2 if it's hot, 1.5 if i don't care about getting burned. Even when i knew the porsche engine bay inside and out it took over 5 hours to pull the engine the last time.

But that green layer- that's not guacamole.

Oddly enough, my daily-driver E39 isn't hard to work on.  Everything is generally accessible and makes sense.  It's problem is not how hard it is to service, rather how much service it requires.  Parts costs alone are breaking me.  I'll never own another german car.

German car manufacturers believe that only qualified mechanics with proper credentials should work on their cars, so they don't bother making them easy to fix (see: all-gray wiring harness in Porsche 928). Detroit manufacturers know that most car repairs are done by dudes armed with a suitcase of Milwaukee's Best and a big rock, and they design accordingly.

Yeah.  I've been using the discount/cheap stuff.  It's volume, not cost that is killing me.  Problem is the whole damned car is made of plastic in one form or fashion.  I'm convinced the Germans lost WWII because they don't know how to make plastic.

Valve Cover?  Plastic!
Cooling fittings?  Plastic!
Fan?  Plastic!
Every bit of intake piping?  Plastic!
Idler pulleys?  Plastic!
Water pump?  Plastic!
Vanos oil seals?  Rubber! - but a really crappy kind of rubber.

Every bit of 10yr old southeast summer exposed plastic just crumbles when you touch it.

I think the logical swap is:

1) take out slant 4 2.5l 151ci Porsche motor and overly complex transaxle

2) drop in slant 4 3.2l 195ci Pontiac motor and 2 speed Powerglide transaxle

3) make it rain nickles at the local club

What could possibly go wrong?

*shudder* Optispark

you miscreants need to step up to Mercedes.  The have found the trade off to be Money=design and longevity.  The cars ware way easy to work on and built rock solid, but you better get a second mortgage. I need new rockers and cams for the for the 560, ca-ching, 1,400 smack-a-roos right there.  IN PARTS ALONE.