Looking at buying a fun car to keep as a side project. A friend of mine mentioned a 944 turbo. I have knowledge of the newer 911s, (993, and 996), but have no clue about 944s. Can they make decent power without touching internals? are they somewhat reliable? What should I look at when purchasing one? Is 100K mile car usually problematic? What is a good price for a car with this kind of mileage? Are there model years I should avoid?

Thanks for the help!!

 

I managed to get 417 crank BHP and 425 lbs of torque from a 110,000 mile 1990 example 3 years ago without touching the engine internals!

Did I ever give that car hell? YES! after being modified, we drove it across europe, averaging 175 MPH indicated on sat nav for hours on end, never missed a beat.. (fuel consumption at 175 MPH was unreal though! lol)

All in all, I probably covered another 30,000 miles in that car without any issues other than a period of crankcase pressure causing oil leaks, but a revised breather setup cured that.

Total cost of performance modifications was about £5,000 including labour fitting the bits and it was one hell of an animal.

Get someone who understands them to look one over and then have some serious fun.

Had more fun in that 944 Turbo than any other car I ever owned, it would be all over my 996 turbo on a track.

I sold that one and its still going, I ended up missing it so much I looked for another one and found a perfect 86 Turbo.. No abs, no LSD, no MO30 and it has the smaller early turbo, so only has 220 BHP but with less lag... Great fun to drive but due to mega low mileage and perfect showroom condition, I do not want to modify it.... yet!

 

What mods did you do to get those figures (hp / tq) ? That's a lot. Would require a heap of boost. How did you extrapolate your power bhp? Was this done on a dyno and you multiplied your hp to the wheels by a %, if so, what %?
What sort of dyno? What fuel?

 

That car started out as a normal k26/8 road car.

The modifications were.

18 PSI of boost
9XX Double ceramic ball bearing KKK Garrett hybrid turbo
9XX intercooler
9XX Intake pipes
9XX Stage 1 head (Just rebuilt with attention to detail or blueprinted)
55 lbs injectors
9XX Motorsport Pump (modified Bosch Motorsport one)
Fabspeed 3 inch exhaust, including the turbo discharge pipe
Vitesse racing MAF kit and piggyback
9XX Knock detection module with per cylinder monitoring and auto retard
9XX Dump valve
9XX Pro wastegate kit
9XX Pro Vac circuit
9XX Pro boost control hose kit
Greddy Profec B electronic boost control.

The torque was mainly a factor of the turbo being quite well matched to the project, therefore was not overly laggy (or so I was told) and it did make full boost by about 3800 RPM as promised.

The dyno figures were from a local Dyno Dynamics rolling road, (back then Triton motorsport, a scooby shop) not sure how they calculate the flywheel crank figure, always assumed it was from a calculated transmission loss or calculated from the knocked out of gear spin down after each power run.. I really do not know.

Do miss that car, really did feel like you were riding a cruise missile.