Actually Mike, there is a little history behind the Sable. This thread's name was changed in memory of my best friend, Mike Maring. He died on my birthday in 2004. The Sable was Mike's and I have been driving it as a daily driver ever since his death.

 

Chad,

That is just neat to read. Really one of the coolest things I have heard on this forum. Kudos to you sir.

 

Bill, I believe it has been the biggest thread since 6speed came into existence. However, one of these days The Manly Thread will pass this thread by.

 

****

 

As an update I decided not to go with the 80.4 mm stroker crank. The reason for the decision was I just didn't feel good about running a L/R ratio of 1.55. I felt even with thicker liners the short rod length would lead to long term troubles.

I sent our 102 mm CP Pistons, one of our Woosner liners along with the two liner housings to Neil at Performance Developments. PD is going to supply a ductle iron piston liners which are thicker than the stock liners. PD will custom fit (hone) each liner to fit the individual pistons. PD will also come up with some tin plated piston rings for our pistons. The case will require some machining for these liners to fit.

We should have the parts back in about one month.

 

Just a heads up. I noticed many of my pics from 986host.com are now being blocked to 6speedonline. In addition another host site that I was using that was owned by Sony will be discontinued by February. It looks like most of the pics will be gone soon.

 

Chad,

www.photobucket.com is a great site for hosting pics.

 

Neil sent me an e-mail. Said S Car Go sent him all the parts he needed. Hopefully the parts are back to S Car Go Racing by the middle of December so we can complete the assembly of the motor.

 

Everything appears to be on schedule for the motor assembly in December.

I just spoke to Todd Knighten of Protomotive regarding the ordering of the MAF, Turbo's, External wastegates, Intake for turbo's along with the Fuel Pumps.

Since Mark @ S Car Go Racing personally builds the best headers I have ever seen ............. he will be constructing the headers with the intergal wastegates. In addition we are installing peak and hold 1000 cc injectors along with a CD system with six monster coils. I believe the end of January will see all this work done.

At this point Todd Knighten will get the car for tuning and from there it will go to Cary Elsinlohr at ERP for the front geometry changes, an adjustable "on the fly" creation from ERP that makes our front four way adjustables, adjustable on the fly. The front sway bar will also be made "on the fly" adjustable.

It looks like there is light at the end of this incredibly long tunnel. She should be ready for testing by April. Todd Knighten said the other day, with the plenum, heads, cams and some of the other mods the real question will be, is it going to be a happy or grumpy motor.

 

I spoke with Neil yesterday. He has ordered the liners which is good. PD said they received one of the two liner housings. PD said they needed both. I called Rob @ S Car Go and relayed this information and he is confused as to why PD needs both. Rob said all he asked for was one piston and liner. So when he asked for a liner housing I assumed all he needed was one.

I am not sure why one believes he needs them and the other doesn't believe he needs them. For whatever reason, communication seems to be a lost art. The good news is the other liner housing will be shipped today.

 

Today's update:


Hello Chad,

The Liners are in process. I have not yet received a delivery date as all of the manufacturing is upside down everywhere due to PRI and the holidays. I will have an expected date next week, hopefully.

 

Slow and steady wins the race. Good stuff, when there are more things to take pics of, I'm sure we would all like to see some pics of an assembled motor and whatever other cool stuff you have going on.

 

KhanNSX,

It really isn't slow and steady. I just want the engine finished. I have abandoned a stroker crank and larger pistons. We will still be assembling a 3.743L motor that will be plenty fast ........ it won't be the 1300 hp package that we were testing. After buying all the parts I simply got tired of all the little things that kept surfacing resulting in delay after delay. With the torque that was being developed we would have needed a billet case just to hold the heads down for any period of time. One of the engine builders who has done a fair amount of work on this motor recently sent me this e-mail regarding my instructions to de tune the engine. You can see he is more than a little disappointed.

The Pistons are 101.96mm (102.00mm). With the 76.40mm stroke, this has always been 3746cc. 3.8L is 102.70mm bore x 76.40mm stroke. Porsche has always rounded up to sell cars/engines.

102.70mm has only come about with the 997 series of Cup and RSR engines as Porsche finally did what they should have done years ago and supplied engine sizes as advertised at the very least give the cars a fighting chance within the rules.

I am concerned about your final choice here. It appears to me that you have given up on what to do. Just get it done. The shame here is you have waited so long and put so much time, money and effort into this engine and car probably, that the final product will not live up to your expectation and the cars mystic.

The time of my visit you showed me the following you and this project have. Not to spend money for no good reason, but is not the final product important to you as the owner and driver. Forget the mystical image this car has, have the best engine/car you can have and let no other outside factor change this. It’s a shame you have been strung out so long on this project.

Some years ago we were asked by Road and Track to enter a car we helped develop in their 0-100-0 competition they run every 5 years or so. This was around the time the 993TT was the latest car. We had developed an older 89 930 car. Joe Rius who was the editor at the time was a friend of ours. We entered upon his request and although we had the best brakes Brembo could supply at the time, the car suffered from not having ABS. Under braking our car was one of the worse due to this disadvantage. We still came out on top by far even having the worse braking time. The car just locked up and slid. We beat a record that up to this time had stood for some 20 years. I think since then, our time has been broken by a Ferreri. By mili secs I think. So, an older car can still show up the latest versions. This competition is a special deal with R&T and it would be good to see your car on the front cover of R&T just like the 930 did. The present engine would not make the grade.

I truly hope you are lowering the final product because you do not wish to have the best anymore.

For your sake, for no other reason.

 

Yeah, that's an understandable decision. When trying to push the envelope, delay after delay is fairly common although frustrating. And in your case, you are pushing just about every variable there is to play with, thus the amazing amount of delay and development.

Of course nobody including yourself wanted you to make the decision you have, but at the same time this could drag on indefinitely. It's probably the right decision to just get it finished once and for all for you to enjoy.

I've been a part of a 5.5 year project with a customer(who has turned in a good friend) of mine, we are probably within a month of it being completely finished. At this point the car is running, but needs some finishing touches, break in miles and tuning, etc. My customer still has further plans with his car, but the way this project has dragged on, I finally just convinced him to finish it in it's current form, enjoy it, then make the decision to proceed with the wide body and suspension re engineering. If I hadn't talked him into finally enjoying his car, he probably would have dragged this on for a couple more years.

With cars and projects like these, at some point the decision to just finish it in the best form it can be in a reasonable amount of time, seems like the right decision to make.

 

KhanNSX,

What we gave up on was the 80.4 mm crank and the 105 mm pistons. There was not an issue with either part. These parts produce an ungodly amount of torque. Our concern was one ........ the thickness of the piston liners. The pressure developed by the torque on the lower portion of the liner due to the LR ratio was scary. In addition, the boost being used with GT40R turbo's was such that the head studs grip by the case was very questionable and we did not want to weld the heads on with the miles being put on for street use.

The liner issue could be reasonably handled. The case issue is very expensive along with time consuming.

A 3.743L motor with big heads, cams, nitrous and GT35R turbo's (along with an assortment of other tricks) shouldn't be too slow. Besides, I would like to get her on the road and track before Porsche replaces the 997tt.