Geoff this isn't a competition. I had my 944 S on the track at Castle Combe, and it was way better. It felt very nimble, and the incumbent RO at the time said that in the wet he couldn't get past me in his 911, and he drove single seaters, so I took his comments to mean that I was going quite quickly on a damp track. The series 1 924 t with its switch like boost would have tried to swap ends out of quarry. With the coventional european favoured ratios, with a disproportionately wide gap between second and third, the 44 S was either needing about 4,200 rpm in second, or 3,100 in third and thus going "off the boil", so as I wanted to drive it back home I settled for the latter. With the lower gearing of the 924 t, I suggest there would be little usable revs left in second, or ready to swap ends in third being nicely placed to hit high boost the moment the turbo spooled up.
Following a Cayman the other day, exiting a roundabout at 5:00 am in the wet the back of my Series 2 let go needing a momentary adjustment as the turbo started to go on boost, i.e. 2,900 -3,100 revs, in second. As you know, 3000 in second "aint that quick" at about 29 ish miles per hour. Furthermore, my 924T has just had new shocks all round about 3,000 miles ago. My 944 S had only coverd 57,000 at the time so was probably still quite taut. That said the shocker casings were yellow suggesting the fitting of Konis at some time, and mine had the alloy suspension arms.
Mark Bennet a former 944 S owner said his 944 S never suffered any of the "debilitating" characteristics of the S, which he believed to be the result of the gas flowing of the cylinder-head. I have to restate that my 944 S did not just arrive at the speed. Whack it in a gear to bring up 3700 revs and then floor the throttle and hang on. Way quicker than a 1.9 Peugeot GTI as he found out to his cost when he cut up my wife who was following me over to AFN Guildford and tried to stitch me up us well. He ended up overtaking an empty space in the road. Impatient tw*t, but like I say you had to keep it over 3800 whereupon it would pull hard right up to the red line. Was it 6,800, from memory? I am talking 12 years ago here.
By the way it's no big deal doing the belts. Even an self confessed "idiot" like you could do it. Clean off all the gunge and every thing is marked. The pulleys have "V" marks and the back plates have pointers. Line it all up before you dismantle. Tension? Well the old 100degree twist rule will get you to somewhere with the proper tensioning tool, if you forget to measure the gap between the adjuster and the idler before you take the old belts off, after all, the belts dont vary in length, and heaven forbid they should stretch that much.
The cambelt on the 924 should be tensioned with the proper tool, too, to be fair.
Yes the belts are more expensive but so are many other similar components, like the brake pads, tyres, screen washer jets.
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