Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

I'm going to be looking for a larger lump for my 944 soon.

Any ideas much appreciated

Only way to go is a V8

Depends on budget. But the scrappers are full of tired engines & they aren't economic to rebuild. Putting a newer V6 or V8 in makes more sense if only to get cheaper parts prices. The V6 being the cheaper option thats also more insurable & easier on the gearbox & half shafts. If I was starting again with mine that would be my engine. LS26 3800 GM. 200 to 300HP. The V8's a brute but will be at least 10K to sort & fit as everything else needs upgrading to cope with it. 450+. You just might find a turbo that someones spent £££'s on the engine even though the bodies rotten.

I got bored a few days ago and measured up the engine bay of nic's 85 oval dash.
I have a spare rover v8 block on the yard and I reccon that would squeeze in OK. No idea if a RV8 conversion has been attempted before - it probably has.

4.6 base unit with good heads will comfortably make 300+ bhp and then there's the option of installing a Janspeed twin turbo system if you can find one for even more grunt.

For some cheap thrills, why not try nitrous? A standard 4 pot engine will take a small shot with no mods to either the bottom end or timing since small shots of nitrous actually have a cooling effect on the inlet charge. £250 will get you an extra 40bhp for as long as the bottle lasts. The going rate is about 80 notes to fill a 15lb bottle these days IIRC.

Rover goes in relatively easy but isn't enough BHP to be worth the effort as the 944 is quite torquey already. Once you get into 4.6 territory then they start to get expensive as well. My 3.5 was great in the 7 but I'd be looking for more in a 944.

Here's an example which might give an idea of effort required

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Porsche-differenc ... 35af7c1d60

It's a myth that you can't get decent power out of a rover for relitively little cost. The first MGB GT V8 conversion i did had enough grunt to lift the front wheels off the deck so it couldn't have been that bad.
A decent 4.6 build could be done for around 2 grand. 3 grand if you want to go the turbo nutter route?

I'll repost the PH article this time ;

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=77388

And it is old technology! If I wanted to go RV8 then I'd personally pick up a TVR Chimp engine & drop that in rather than build one. I'd be surprised if you can do a full X bolted 4.6 for that money.
The LS1/3 could be done for a few more quid & starts where the Rover leaves off. A straight out of the box LSx gives 300BHP plus. This is new technology, fractionally smaller than the Rover & loads of bits to make it lots faster. And the spares pricing is relatively cheap. I love the RV8, I built a cracking engine for peanuts but I wouldn't look for more than 250 or so BHP as it is wasted money. I've seen lots of RV8s built for TR7s for very high power, Boosted LS1 had a manic twin Turbo 4.6L in a 7 & builds 'em for a living but even he is now looking at LS1/3.

Well several discussion in the last few days.
After a few more months driving, I will have collected the parts to swap out th 3.0 16v to a 2.3 16v Turbo engine, from a Saab Aero.

tweakability to 350 - 380bhp is easy so probably the simplest route, has balancer shafts and a very nice robust engine, that with the right volvo valve springs revs to 7k rpm.

setting a budget of £3k, inc Tubular manifold, labour and parts. will report on how it progresses when we start at the end of the summer.

Fife

That will be interesting to see! Not the first engine that most people would think of but I do notice that you own a couple of Saabs already, so why not? I presume that you have measured the engine bay and the engine and you can't see any clearance issues?

Hmm, this should be an interesting swap, I look forward to hearing about the progress with this project, keep us updated with piccies as well