Patrick's 1986 944 Turbo by 333pg333

9 minute(s) of a 137 minute read

Never been so happy to see my car on the back of a truck!! Off to the dyno. Hope to have some results by tomorrow this time...maybe early next week if we hit a glitch. Trackdays booked for the end of the month. Looking just a little bit forward to this.

3/20/12

Minor glitch. When we started the car in the shop and checked all the reference signals etc, all was well. Then it was started again at the dyno just to check that there were no signal corruptions. Again,100% fine. 

So I drove out to the dyno on the weekend (over an hour away) and he was just strapping it up and starting the tune proper. Signal errors. D’oh!!! The Motec unit is really precise when looking for clear signals and the 132 tooth is just too blurry. I actually went back and looked at your thread Bruce where you customised your alu Flywheel to run the 60-2 teeth. Pretty smart. Are you still using that setup? Did you ever get to test it yet? Almost wonder why someone hasn’t done a production run of a custom flywheel for the 944/951? So we’ve got a Clewett setup on it’s way here. Should bolt right up and we know they work. Just another delay. A bit costly too by the time we towed the car 1.5hrs either way…let alone the frustration of losing another 2 weeks…cancelling another 2 trackdays booked…missing out on the shakedowns before the 2nd Club event which means my season is toast yet again. 3rd wasted season. Gotta love it!!!

3/31/12

So after a very long 2 weeks which involved 3 long trips to the dyno late into the night. Heat issues, wastegate issues, rogue sync signal issues...we finally got an ok first tune. Picked it up yesterday morning from the dyno and went straight to the track which was chock full of cars practicing for the NSW Motor Race Champs Rnd1. They chucked us in with Improved Prods. So the builder goes out in the car 1st as I felt he would be more objective than me. Stoked to see it finally getting back on the track first time since 2010...not so stoked to see him pull into the pits after one lap and saying there's some ign cuttout going on. So we go back to our shed and plug in the laptop. Damn...the rogue sync error is back. It's appearing all the way from idle up through the range. At 540 btdc. So they check the gap on both cam and crank sensor. Disconnect the knockbox. Swap ECU's...still there. Damn!! They keep playing around with filters hoping to disappear it. Not having a lot of luck. When 2 guys who have worked on literally 1000's of motors look at you and say "Hmm, never seen this before" it's a bit disconcerting. Checked out the stock cam wheel to see if there's anything that could be creating a reason for this extra signal trigger. Can't see anything at all. Could a blind bolt or dowel behind it have become magnetised over years of having a distributor in front of it? 

So they've done what they can and he says, you may as well go out and see what happens. So in I jumped and hastily made my way down to pit lane. Sitting there I was feeling pretty excited...but also fully expecting to be back in next lap after the ign cut persisted. So off we go. All sorts of cars in this group. Commodore V8s, RX7s, Nissan Silvias, Civics, Old Holden HQs, Toyota Sprinters...So I go down into T2 car seems fine. Out of 2 into 3..still fine..down the hill. Seems kinda nice. Feels much lighter and directional. Lots of weight has come out of it and stiffness gone in. Around 4 and 5. Yep, I'm liking my 'new' car already. Hmm, what happened to T6? Somebody took it. Around 7 and up Corporate Hill. Car feels responsive and quite toey. Down the hill and into the hairpin. Plenty of turn in. Great! Up the hill give it a squirt. No sign of ign cut. Yay! Into 10-11-12...line up a Silvia and plant it. Whooshka...past him pretty easily. Nice. Down the main straight. Motor is revving nicely. Quite a bit of chop though...front to rear. Tippy toeing around T1 and into 2 again. Toss some salad while searching for the right gear and proceed around the track for another 1.5 laps before Red flag out. Everyone back into the pits. Damn again. Some one had put themselves off right at the top of T2 and onto the Grass. Seemed safe and easy to move him...but it took forever. By the time they finally waved us back out we did one more outlap and they flagged the session. Arghhh!! 

So all in all, the car felt great. Would have loved to do more laps but it was late in the day and I let Paul (the builder/racer) out in the next session. He concurred with me that the suspension was way out of kilter. The back end wanted to step out too easily and the porpoising was bad. He still managed a 1:43.8 which on old tyres was pretty good all things considered. Here's the most recent dyno chart. We will replace the wastegate and go back to the dyno. He will screw more boost and ign into it. Not sure if they've actually cured the sync error or just fooled it. That's what filtering is for but I'd rather know what's causing it too. 

Here's the only film we got. This is basically with a stock internal motor (except for bigger cam). This is Paul driving, not me.

Am hopeful that with new w/gate and sync error cured (fingers crossed) that we can put a little more boost into it and get a bit more out of it. The suspension needs to be setup half decently too. Add the wider new slicks, traction control and the wing and I think there is another couple of seconds to come out of the car.

4/16/12

Few more bits and pieces. Got the car weighed today. 1197kgs or 2630lbs and that's with OEM doors (stripped a little) and glass hatch. So a bit more to come out of it but wing to go on yet. 

Replaced the wastegate with a locally made TurboSmart version. Couldn't believe how much smaller it is compared to the LR modified stock version. When the builder took off the LR one he thought that it was a strange way of installing it as the exhaust gas push against the w/gate piston instead of blowing through that when it opens. Seems odd to me too. Note the welding skills. Few more shots of some custom pipework he did on one of his bikes. Those pipes took 3 days. 

Also decided to modify the front hubs to run the wheel speed sensors to give a cleaner read. Front shock pots on now too so we should be able to get some reads and dial in a bit of T/C. 

Found the rear RHS Banana arm bushing to have a bit of looseness in it. Does anyone know if you can just buy the inner part? 

First event this Saturday. They're predicting a heap of rain this week. Hope we at least get some dry laps with the new wider rubber on this week.

Don't have enough time on it yet to tell if it's over or understeering. Literally had a handful of laps without any proper shock settings. In fact thought they were all on full soft the other day but it turns out that they were except for the rear RHS...which was on full hard! So that wasn't helping any. To add, we only had 10" wheels all round with 265 / 285 older slicks on. So no real test. More just to see that nothing fell off or any leaks. As it turned out we had an electronic glitch for most of the day, hence the lack of laps / feedback. 

Now switched to 10.5"/11.5" wheels and 285 / 305 new slicks and set the suspension up half decently with a corner balance, so things should improve drastically from the last outing. Just hoping we have a clear day on the weekend. Tony, I don't have the corner weights to hand. It only got done late yesterday. I'll post when I have them.

I ran a staggered spring setup previously with square or square-ish wheel/tyre combos and didn't suffer too much oversteer. As you say, there is sooooo much to take into consideration. Even the size of your s/c pulley will have an effect. We can only try these ones as supplied by Moton. 

Interestingly, the engineer knew of the Motons even though they're hardly heard of out here. He said that while they were favoured in the U.S. he found them only 'ok' and that they'd take a little longer to setup. I've had them put on a dyno and while not totally conclusive, he did say that they had some good and not so good results...but all could be worked with. He is not a vendor for suspension.