Porsche 944+Chevy V8

Did you decide to go with throttle by wire? Probably the path of least resistance if that is how the engine was setup previously.

Having full recharged the battery on the Genesis (1.92v) and desulfating. I spent a leisurely hour chasing down that electrical leak in the under hood switch from genesisowners clues. Yes, the Tau v8 engine is just the best. One extra coffee break, ran the dog in the golf cart the enjoying the sun and I am exhausted. You have more energy than the battery ad bunny and I demand to know what drugs you are on.

Rob R. wrote: ↑

Sun. Sep. 22, 2019 7:53 pm

Did you decide to go with throttle by wire? Probably the path of least resistance if that is how the engine was setup previously.

That is the plan for now, throttle by wire. I don't like it but I'm pretty sure the later model ECU's don't have the hardware to drive an old Idle Air Control (IAC). The IAC is what keeps the engine idling with a throttle by cable system.

-Don

WE HAVE A TORQUE TUBE!!!

I finally got to drive out and pickup the good used torque tube. I also got a bunch of other nice goodies used that I was planing on buying new. It's about time I got to save a little money on this project!

Torque tube.
Front adjustable Koni shocks/struts.
Rear adjustable Koni shocks.
30mm rear torsion bars.
Steel nose panel to replace the crappy fiberglass one.
Hood, more on that in a minute... .
So, Why the hood???

The wiring involved in doing a fuel injected LS is this car is not too hard. The problem is the initial programing and then the dyno tuning. This could very easily leave this car stranded in the garage until a computer tuner type guy make a house call. Or, it might have to be towed to the tuner for the initial start, that could lead to all sorts of problems.

All that gets expensive quick! When I added it all up, suddenly swapping a carb onto this motor looked a lot cheaper! The only expensive part of the carb swap is the MSD ignition timing controller, about $350. GM has never used a distributor on these engines so the MSD is needed to fire all those little coils at the right time.

Back to the hood...
There is no way a carb will fit under the hood on one of these cars. I didn't really want to cut up the original hood on this car so I got this nice, Silver Rose Metallic hood to cut a hole in and mount a hood scoop on. I want the car to look stock but unfortunately there is no way around this if we are using a carb.

I'm temped to just put the torque tube in as is. This little adventure has already put this project a moth behind.

-Don

Don, I would call around on the tuning before you give up on the fuel injection.

I would expect an experienced tuner to be able to send you a baseline tune via email, and fine tune it based on datalogging once the car is running.
Buying an intake manifold, good carburetor, and an ignition gets expensive as well...and won't have the driveability of a well tuned EFI system.

Thanks for the advise and I will likely switch over to the fuel injection in the future. For right now the tuning thing and all the problems I can see with it,,, theirs just too many "if's" that will over complicate the conversion process.

I have checked and checked again, the nearest tuner is about a 45+ minute drive. The car would have to run good enough to make it there. Not a risk I am willing to take on a completely un-sorted car. Remember, we are doing full suspension, steering and drive train. It would be nice to test drive it and correct the inevitable problems before taking any trips.

I have done the math and the carb swap is a whole lot cheaper. Even after buying a hood and a scoop. The key is, you can get this stuff used.

I prefer the fuel injection but, I know I can tune a carb and I can twist the dial on the MSD.

-Don

We have entered the cleaning phase of this project. Today we power washed the cross-member, steering rack, control arms, front struts and transaxle. The trans was filthy. It took a lot of power washing with coal fired hot water to get it this clean! In carburetor news, earlier this week we got the rebuild kit and the tuning kit. The short shift kit for the trans also came in. yesterday the carb arrived too. The carb is in really nice shape. I can hardly believe I got this nice carb for so cheap! It probably doesn't need to be rebuilt, just float bowels, jets and float valves cleaned. The intake manifold will be here on Monday.

Yesterday, we shipped the torque tube down to Black Sea R&D for the rebuild. It will be back in 2.5 to 3 weeks. In the mean time we will be doing a lot of cleaning under the car and working on things like the pedals and doing the clearance work. This is all stuff that has to be done before the engine goes in.

-Don

Don, is that a Carter carb? I think I have a set of jets and needles for a 750 out in the shop.

Rob R. wrote: ↑

Sun. Oct. 06, 2019 8:48 am

Don, is that a Carter carb? I think I have a set of jets and needles for a 750 out in the shop.

Pretty much, it's an Edlebrock. It's basically their version of a 600 CFM AFB.


-Don

I have some time off this week so we will be trying to get a few things done on this project. Bolted all the front suspension and steering back together temporarily. We are going to wheel it outside, jack it back up, remove the wheels and pressure wash the engine bay and as much of the underside as we can get to. First thing to do is cover and plug up everything that we don't want water getting into. We used tape, bolts in hoses and of coarse some green gloves. In the back we put a green glove on the CV joint flange to keep the grease in it. The drivers side axle had a bad CV joint so I removed the whole axle. Removed the cover that hold the fuel pump to the bottom of the tank. We want to get that area all clean then it will be easy to replace the filter and any suspicious looking fuel lines. Now we are all ready to roll it outside. I might try to get this done tomorrow morning. If not it will be Thursday or Friday. It's great to have it back on the ground looking like a normal car again! I shot a couple short videos, we will get them uploaded tonight.

-Don

Some videos of activities earlier this week.


-Don

Today was power wash day.

We pushed it outside. Pressure washed the engine bay. Then we jacked it up, sprayed SuperClean all up underneath, and in the wheel wells and on the suspension parts. Then power washed it all off. The frame, floor, fuel tank, suspension, wheels and the area back where the trans-axle lives are all nice and clean now! We also power washed the hood, and we did a little truck power washing while we were at it. Then we pushed it back in the garage. We lost one pair of boots in the process. These were my old "coal bin boots". I guess the water and coal dust were too much for them. One of the other reasons progress has slowed on this project is the white truck needs some attention too. It has rust in the drivers floor than needs to be repaired for it to pass inspection. Today we pulled the seat and mat out to have a better look at it. Ouch! That looks worse than I though it would!

Tomorrow the truck goes to the local welder to get a new floor cut in. The price was reasonable and there is no other rust on the truck, so it is worth fixing.

-Don

We added a couple videos of power washing activities with a short description of the truck rust.

-Don

A little bit of Fun!

This afternoon I decided that instead of doing the dull, boring cleaning and taking more stuff apart, we are going to do a first start on this 6.0 V8! First we carefully removed the original wiring harness and intake manifold. This thing has some big intake ports. Cleaned up the gasket surfaces with a razor. Then bolted the carb intake manifold on. I sat the carb on it with 2 bolts, then removed the rods and screws holding the top on. Then we had a look inside the carb. It doesn't look bad at all. Just sediment from sitting. It looks like we can clean it up, install new needles and seats, set the float levels and run it. Next was the MSD.

Surprisingly, this is very easy. One harness goes to the driver/passenger coils and the coolant temp sensor. The other goes to the crank and cam sensors. There are three wires coming out of one harness for Launch, Boost Retard and Tack. The black and red wires coming out of the other harness are power and ground. Pretty dern simple! The only problem I ran into was I can't find the coolant temp sensor on this engine, it has to be there somewhere! I will look again tomorrow.

We should be able to get the carb done and fire it up tomorrow.

-Don

Videos of yesterdays activities.

I hope to get the engine fired up today!

-Don