Ryan Burg's Porsche 924S Project

Hi folks -- Photos still coming for this post!

Ryan is a student in my HST 344 Class.

An Update: 1987 Porsche 924s Project.

Some background: My father and I bought a 1987 Porsche “The Poor Man’s Porsche” off of craigslist a few years ago. I spent a summer driving this sports car with a 2.5 inline 4 cylinder 5-speed manual transmission with a short shifter on it. It’s a fun car. It is a front engine, rear trans-axle, rear wheel drive well handling Porsche. We purchased it for around $3500 and enjoyed riding around in it. I had planned on driving it to school and using it as my daily driver until the motor gave out. The culprit seemed to be oil circulation.

As many of you know that oil gets circulated through the oil filter that you screw on to the engine block hand tight then 3/4^ths a turn with a wrench. Less understood is that when you rev the engine and the oil pressure peaks not all oil goes through filter, because the filter cannot withstand the pressure. There is a release valve that allows oil to bypass the filter and keep the bearings and parts lubricated at high rpm. We believe this valve to be the root of all evil, but there is no real way of knowing what went wrong, other than the seal around the oil filter was blown out and all the oil drained out of the car. This started a series of bad things. Broken camshaft belts, destroyed bearings, locked up balance shafts, and oil and coolant mixed to name a few. Above you can see the brown/black burn marks taken of the crankshaft where the main bearings burned out on the old motor. In another picture you see an empty engine bay. The last two pictures are of the old motor on an engine stand, and our used motor now in the engine bay. We use the old motor for reference while we install the motor we recently purchased off of craigslist for $400. We took the new purchase to a mechanic to test the compression and change the timing and camshaft belts.

We have put close to a grand into rebuilding this car, which I consider to be very modest considering the options we discussed. Choices such as sell the car as is dismantle it for parts (potentially profitable), buy a new refurbished motor $$$, convert it to electric, and all sorts of goofy ideas. However we stumbled across this motor on craigslist for cheap, drove to Akron, OH and took a shot in the dark trusting a stranger on his word that it runs. Some preventative maintenance and now the motor is in the car, not an easy job. The motor has been taken in and out a few times while attempting to line up the clutch housing with the torque tube, and while getting the steering column U-joint to bolt to the steering knuckle. Tasks still needing completed: exhaust installation, starter installation, radiator installation, air intake installation, sway bar installation, oil and coolant flush and fill, and other miscellaneous tasks. These German engineers really cut out some work for those DIYers. The moment of truth is soon to come, and with some more electrical and fluid upgrades this car may be running soon.