Hershey Swap Meet

Just back for the Hershey Swap meet. For once, the weather gods smiled, and it was a beautiful day. I got to see a lot of folks that I haven't seen for months. This event seems to bring out a lot of folks just to socialize and look at the cars in the Porsche only lot,.

I got what I was hunting for: 2 turbo fenders, turbo nose panel, and turbo headlight covers (still attached to the headlights, but those are destined for the trash). Now I have enough parts to add the turbo nose to my car and stay legal in my class.

Also scored the typical side purchases, some oil filters for $3.50 each, specialty tools like a compression gauge and piston ring expander, and some other bits. The nice thing was they all fit in my Subaru WRX.

An almost a complete turbo front end in my trunk

You never know what you are going to find at Hershey. Here's a nice 356

And a not so typical 944

Compare and Contrast

The racecar is just about ready for the season. Next up for it is a corner balance and alignment. I can do the corner balancing, but alignment of 944's is an art, aka pain in the ass. That's one of the few things I'm happy to farm out to somebody else. I'm going to take it up to Bodymotion in Northern New Jersey. Mike, the owner, is a racer for many years, and it's a great race shop. They did a great job in pulling my bent frame back into spec a couple of years ago. To take it to the shop, I need to load it into my trailer. One small detail though. Remember that parts car I bought earlier. Its sleeping in the trailer.

Not a pretty sight



As long as I revved the motor up to about 4500 rpm, I was able to get the automatic tranny engage, so I could drive it out of the trailer and into the garage, where it's days are numbered.



A pair of 89's





The title of this post is Compare and Contrast. Let's take a look under the hood of a stock, street driven 89 NA with about 120K on the clock.



Bone Stock 2.7L motor



Not too bad, hoses look fresh, most of the rubber looks good, recent distributor cap. Pretty filthy though. All the motor parts are all oxidized and corroded. But all in all, not that bad. I'm sure a bunch of those fittings, screws and nuts will be a pain to work on.

Now let's look under the hood of my racecar.

A little happier 2.7L motor

Ahhh, much nicer. I like the look of a clean motor installation. Its a nice contrast to the flat black exterior.

What Parts Car?

I've tried to convince Maggie that there's room in the back yard for another Alternative Canine Relaxation Structure, but I'm not sure she's buying it.

A brief interlude

Edward stopped by a few evening back and with his help I was able to achieve a successful docking of the motor with the torque tube. That was the last major mechanical task. I try to spend about a 1/2 hour each night after work on the finishing up tasks. Last week I put in the clutch slave cylinder, starter, radiator and fans. Ran the water hoses and hooked up all the electric connections. One small setup back was I routed the alternator cable to the wrong side of the oil separator when building the motor and the connector wouldn't make it to the matching one on the firewall. This necessitated removing the fuel rail and intake manifold and re-routing it and putting it all back again. A minor bump. A slightly bigger bump was I forgot its always easier to set and adjust the reference sensors before you put the motor in. The bottom bolt is a bitch to get to, and took the whole of one of my evenings to do.

At this point I'm real close to finding out if it will all work, but I had to take short break. An Ebay alert popped into my email inbox on Friday. An 89 944 with a "running" 2.7L engine was being auctioned off. Located in Northern NJ the current bid was $325 with a buy it now for $750.

Car was rear-ended, you can see the broken hatch in the back photo. But I'm thinking, hmmm, only $750, and the engine is working. Let's see from the photos, I can probably sell the wheels, keep the doors, the hood , left side fender and air dam.

It has a new A/C compressor, receipts for $2k of recent engine work - I bet the timing belt went and it had a head job. So after thinking for about 10 minutes, this is what convinced me to pull the trigger.

A 2.7L running motor that's probably in decent shape. Hell, the head alone is worth $1000. I can pull the motor, keep the bits that get used in a race car like doors, fenders, hood, etc. and sell just about everything else and end up with a free (rare as hen's teeth 2.7L) motor. Sounds like a plan!

Hit Buy it Now and sent a note to the seller, that as long as the engine was good we had a deal.  So Sunday pulled the trailer up to Northern NJ and brought it home. Now it's living in the trailer for now - out of (Maggie's) sight, and out of mind. We'll get back to it after the racecar is alive.

And speaking of the race car, another 1/2 hour in the garage tonight.

I have had a set of braided steel fuel lines from Lindsey Racing hanging around in the garage for the last 2 years. Just haven't had the time to install them. Well now's the time I reckon.

Here's the install in progress. One of the fuel lines (the return) has been cut and new line attached. All the other lines are misc ABS brake lines.

Install in progress. Looks pretty sweet.

And even though they look pretty cool as it, functionality is what drives a race car, so they get wrapped with an fiberglass heat sleeve. And I believe those sleeves helped with the car fire last April, keeping the fuel lines cool and keep from creating a bigger inferno.

Next steps are to add spark (battery), oil and water and see the result. Stay tuned.