The Banana Hammock - Porsche 9?? Race Car

[RoyaleWithCheese]

I'm back at it!

Had to install some AC into the house for the summer which took way longer than expected on my POS house.

Yesterday I hacked away a ton of the sheet metal off the front of the car, mounted the hood on the hinges, rough trimmed the fenders to fit, and started making mounts for the front bumper.



Hopefully that picture is sized better and publicly visible. I'm terrible at this whole forum photo thing. Maybe it would be easier to just set up a camera to film it time-lapse style and link to youtube videos.

Today I'm going to pull the welder out and finish up the mounts where the bumper meets the hood and hopefully install the Aerocatch latches for the hood as well. Getting all this stuff to align is a total pain in the ass and even in the best alignment the panel gaps are going to be atrocious.

[RoyaleWithCheese]

Cool! Wish you good luck!
How long did it take to revive it?

It took a couple weekends to get the engine back running after the water pump failed. Most of that was because of having to wait to get the original pump welded shut. Overall doing all the general engine maintenance on these cars only takes a few hours once you know how it's done. If you search on whether or not to buy a 944, people all over the internet make the maintenance into a way bigger deal than it is. It's no worse than any other car other to work on. It's just that you HAVE to do it every 30k miles or you risk losing a belt and crashing the pistons into the valves.

[RoyaleWithCheese]

I remember when I told a Porsche mechanic that I was going to do this body swap and he said "ugh, that's going to be a nightmare. I would never do that." I thought to myself, "how hard could it be to weld up a few tabs and rods to bolt all this stuff to?"

Turns out he was right.

The previous owner of the hood drilled the hinge mount holes all crooked so with it adjusted fully to one side it still wasn't centered. So I had to drill a new mount hole and notch the hinge to allow it to push over enough to align. Then I drilled holes in the hood to mount the hood pins.


Turns out that even with the pins holes measured perfectly on the hood, which was centered to the car, the area where each of the pin mounts were going to be are off center from the center line of the car, wtf. I measured everything a thousand times to try and figure out why that might be the case but eventually just gave up and welded the pin mounts on.

With the hood centered and pinned in place I figured the next logical thing to mount is the center of the bumper so that I can align the fenders accurately between the door, hood, and bumper. I cut a plate and bolted it to the top lip of the bumper, then held it up to the hood and welded rods to hold it in place.


It all seemed good when I was 2 inches from the hood and bumper holding it together but once I backed up the front lip of the hood was way too thick so it needed to be trimmed thinner. The problem with that is the hood is as low as it can sit so I had to raise the bumper up a little to meet it.



I trimmed it up but now the bumper was too low. So since I'm an idiot and already welded it in place, I'm using a couple washers stacked for now to prop the bumper up a little higher to meet it.



Now we're getting somewhere!

Well... maybe not... in that last picture you might be able to tell what the next problem is.

No matter how I hold and adjust the fenders, that inside corner will not line up on either side. Here is a picture with the fenders sitting aligned with the hood (ignore the gaps, it's the up/down that matters):


The bumper is limited up and down due to how it fits into the core support which bolts to the frame rails. So the only way I can see this working is if I can somehow figure out how to lower the front of the hood which will make the angle of the front of the bumper more shallow so the fenders will align.

This picture might show the angle of the bumper vs. the fender better.


I'm going to have to look and see what the hood is currently hitting and preventing it from sitting lower. Hopefully with a little cutting I can drop it an inch or so.

That means I'm going to have to make all new mounts for everything. So back to square one.

[RoyaleWithCheese]

Ya that was it.

Just cut out the hood pin mounts, chopped a section out of the bottom edge of the hood to make clearance for the coolant reservoir cap, and cut off the top of the bumper mount. I think I got the front of the hood about 1/2 - 3/4 inch lower and now everything is lining up when I hold it all in place. The hood is resting on the strut bar and has a sliver of space between it and the strut towers now so it absolutely can't go lower.

Time to bust out the welder. At least I have the lessons learned from last time so hopefully it doesn't take me a week to get back to where I was.

[Pete82]

Interested to see this progress.

You must have got in on the group buy (I think boost brothers garage or something like that) I saw the start of it and was thinking about it but I already have a 5 cylinder audi conversion kit so skipped that one. I might end up putting a 07k in something but I doubt it would be my 944. Its a shame hank/iroz stopped doing a lot of the kit for 07k conversions.