944 Le Mans Car.....

[Mike_Pollock]

I had an '82 Lancia HPE 2.0iE that had just the same Motronic as the early 944s. A great improvement in driving characteristics over the carbs on the earlier models, but only a small amount of extra power (5bhp?) ant that was a belt driven twin ohc engine, but only 8 valve.

 

[Ex Skyline]

Thanks Steve, for that fantastic post that you put up [8D]!! It has given me at least a couple of hours of great reading and, most
importantly, much "food for thought" [8D][]!!

 

[Ex Skyline]

Oooh! Just noticed, that last post was my 1,000th since coming on here! Never thought I'd keep the '44 Turbo that long [][]!!

 

[Neil Haughey]

Great thread guys keep the info coming.


...and Paul, trailers are not half as much fun as anyone would think. Trailering really has been the bane of my life the past 3 years, far too much faffing about for what benefits they bring. There is no way I would use one in the future for a track day car, race car yes but track days are for cars driving on the road IMHO.

 

[Ex Skyline]

Touristenfharten days at the "Ring" are basically Track days and, I always drive there and back as well as around a dozen laps
over the course of a weekend. I have never had any mechanical issue's with whatever car I have owned at the time however, on
the way home, I don't stop worrying until I get to Calais []!

 

[Neil Haughey]

When my car was road legal I drove it home once after a Goldtrack day at Silverstone in what could only be described as monsoon conditions. It was fine really, a bit buttock clenching a couple of times but generally fine. The only problems I had as a result of road driving is my shocks leaked and seemed to need reworking more than recently but I think my fronts where a bit dodgy (rears have never leaked or been rebuilt), that and the tyres go hard due to all the constant running on the road, its like a slow bake for the tyres. This is only an issue though if one is chasing lap times and tbh if I had driven the car harder then I would have worn the tyres out much quicker anyway before they went hard.

Not being road legal is a real pain, what do you do when you want to bed the brakes in or scrub the tyres? I got caught by this back in February. Had brand new tyres on the car went to Silverstone and it was 5 degrees and raining, spent the morning generally trying to not to spin off whilst going very slowly trying to scrub the tyres in, once scrubbed a bit it was like a different car but if the car was road legal I would have done a few dry miles on the road the week before and not ended up wasting 1/2 a goldtrack day.

 

[Ex Skyline]

So, can we agree then, the 80's Le Mans car featured a 2.5 litre engine with a 16 valve head. Am I correct in thinking along those
lines? Simon.....? [].

 

[944 man]

And it said 944 Le Mans on the cam cover. The car was a 924 GTP though and the engine was very different to the later production 944 engine, 944S engine and Turbo engine. It did have Lanchester/Mitsubishi balance shafts though, so there were similarities as well.

 

[CarreraRSR]

So the thread should be called '924 Le Mans with non 944 16v engine' ?

 

[Ex Skyline]

Thanks guys []. That'll be all then folks [].

 

[os951]

I have to disagree what comes to similarities with Le Mans car engine vs. later 944 16V engines. Le Mans car's engine block is quite close to "normal" 944 block. I had few year ago a possibility to check closer that engine while i visited Porsche museum in Zuffenhausen. Block was almost identical to 944 ones. Head had more differencies compared to production 16V heads.

 

[944 man]

Dimensionally I believe that the block is similar and it has the balance shafts. I wonder why the production 16v heads used a single driven camshaft with a slave chain?