Why Should I Buy? A water-cooled Porsche!

• Tell us about how you got into cars? What is your petrol-head origin story? What attracted you to the 924/944 vehicles? You started 924S944.com – what was the genesis?
• History of the 924 > 944 > 968
• Fact or Fiction : People often argue: Is it a VW or a Porsche, or both? Let’s set the record straight.
• Let’s talk about buying a 924/944 – buyers guide?
• The Variants (924, 924 Turbo, 924 S vs 944, 944 85.5+, 944 S, 944 S2 (16v), 944 Turbo, Cabriolet, etc) – Are some better than others?
• What to look for? Known issues? Items that should be revisited or fixed immediately? 
• What a fair market price for a 924/944 these days?
• Thoughts on the 928 as an alternative? 
• If someone were to visit 924S944.com – what would they expect to find there? Products & Services you offer, etc. 

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Grand Touring Motorsports started as a social group of car enthusiasts, but we’ve expanded into all sorts of motorsports disciplines, and we want to share our stories with you. Years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge and information through our podcast, Brake Fix.

Crew Chief Eric: The last of the cheap Porsches. They were plentiful, and some had aggressive jackknife fender flares, and others were more demure. They don’t have the panache of the 911, but that’s okay. Because these amazingly well balanced front mount rear drive vehicles are what many would consider A driver’s car.

Something you jump in, don’t think twice about, but puts a smile on your face when exiting a corner on a back road, autocross, or racetrack.

Crew Chief Brad: Tonight, we’re chatting about the Porsche 924 and 944. The 924 being originally designed by Porsche for Volkswagen, and is the [00:01:00] predecessor to its more famous younger sibling, the 944.

These vehicles spanned a 16 year production run from 1976 through 1992 before ultimately being replaced by the 968 and joining us for an in depth conversation into one of my favorite Porsches is Kevin Duffy, noted 924 and 944 expert from 924s944. com to explain to us. Why we should buy a watercooled Porsche.

Crew Chief Eric: Thanks, Brad. And with that, welcome to Brake Fix, Kevin.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s great to

Kevin Duffy: be here.

Crew Chief Eric: Like all good Brake Fix stories, there’s always an origin. So tell us about how you got into cars. What attracted you to the 924 and 944s? How you started 924S944. com? And what was the genesis of all this?

Kevin Duffy: Well, back in the early 80s, my wife wanted a Porsche.

They weren’t real expensive, but they were expensive enough. So I looked out, looked around, tried to find what I wanted, and I did find a really nice 78 924. Bronze [00:02:00] color, low miles on it. It was four or five years old at the time. And so I bought it. That car stayed in our family until our son actually started driving it when he turned 16.

We put 250, 000 miles on that car. And that’s how I learned how to work on these because you really couldn’t afford to have the dealer do anything on them. And there weren’t a whole lot of mechanics around that would touch them. So I had to learn myself. I had some background in mechanics anyway, but I just had to learn how these cars were the same and different.

And that started the passion that still exists today. When I started 924S944. com, it was an effort to get the word out basically. And just start to write a little bit about how these cars work, what I’d learned over the decades about them. As much as I’d like to say it’s a thriving business and all this, it really isn’t.

It’s my passion and my hobby. I’m a retired law enforcement [00:03:00] officer and retired teacher. From that, when I retired, it was now I can spend full time on doing what I really love to do, which is these cars.

Crew Chief Eric: So the big question, how many 924s or 44s have you had over the years?

Kevin Duffy: It’s in the several dozens, at least.

Many of them have come and gone. I had one that sold it about, oh, probably eight years ago. The fellow that I sold it to about a year ago called me and said, I’m going to sell the car. If you want it back, you can give me what I paid you for it. You can have it back, which I did immediately. And it turns out that that car was my first 924s special edition.

And so I bought it back from him and I’m in the process now of restoring that one. But I had another one. The one that I drive daily is a, uh, 87 924s. I bought it as a salvage title total, bought it, fixed it. Took me a week to fix it because it was an engine fire. So it really wasn’t that [00:04:00] badly damaged, but they told me.

I fixed it and drove it for a couple of months. The president of our local PCA region wanted to buy it. So I went ahead and sold it to him. And when I signed the title over, I knew I was making a mistake. Two years later, he called me back and said, I’m going to sell the car. Do you want it? He sold it back to me.

It has a name. Its name is Sparky. Sparky is my buddy. Sparky will be with me forever because he was a reject. He was going to go to the crusher just because he had a bad repair. Somebody did on a fuel line. It spritzed into the spark plug holes, fuel and sparks make fire. And that’s what happened. So that’s where he got the name Sparky.

And we saved it, but Sparky is a really cool dude, and he’s gonna be with me. He’s gone to a lot of shows, gone to a lot of events, and we are planning on driving to 944 Fest next summer. No trailer. I’m driving the whole way.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s turn the pages backwards and [00:05:00] talk about the history of the 924, 44, and 968 lineage.

Let’s start off with the age old question before we dive into the really technical details here. People will often argue Is it a Volkswagen or is it a Porsche or is it both? So let’s set the record straight, Kevin. You’re an expert on these cars, which is it?

Kevin Duffy: It’s an interesting historical issue. And unless you really know what happened in the seventies with these two companies, Volkswagen and Porsche, it’s hard to understand really what happened.

Porsche, even though they make lots of really cool cars, they’re actually an engineering company. For example, Harley Davidson hired Porsche to help them design a couple of motorcycles because they’re an engineering company. That’s what they do. Back then, you could buy a 914 from your local Volkswagen dealer.

And so, they wanted to replace the 914 with something that was liquid [00:06:00] cool. Reason being was that water cooled engines had better emissions than the air cooled engines. So Volkswagen had their Beetle not being able to meet emissions. Even the 911 was not able to meet emissions. They knew what they were up against.

So Volkswagen said, we don’t want the 914 with its air cooled engine. We want a water cooled Porsche to sell at our dealerships to replace it with. So they signed a deal, and they paid Porsche 50, 000 marks to design what we know today as a 924. When the car was just about done, this could be legend, it could be true.

The guy that’s heading it up died, had a heart attack, keeled over. The incoming folks who took his place said, we really don’t want that car. We want something a little different. We want a front wheel drive car. And so because of that difference, what happened was that Porsche said, yeah, but this is a really good car and we did what you [00:07:00] wanted.

We designed it with all the off the shelf parts we could use. But we took your 75 horsepower four cylinder two liter and we made it into a 100 horsepower or even in Europe, 125 horsepower that you could drive it and it handled well and did all the things it was supposed to do. They gave him 40, 000 marks back and bought the car.

With the idea that at the time, VW Audi was going to keep supplying them with the two liter engine, which was an Audi engine and a Porsche head to make it better. And off they went. Porsche bought it back from them and immediately started working on their own iteration that we know of today as the 944.

Building a brand new car from scratch is tough, and even modifying a car that you already have is tough, especially when you love talking about engines, drive trains and all that. That 10,000 engine limit was something that they really didn’t [00:08:00] think that Porsche was gonna sell. That many of ’em, well, just the na, the naturally aspirated cars.

They sold 120 some thousand of them when they brought the 9 44 out. In North America is an 83 model. They were lined up around the building to buy it. It still had the VW suspension components and the Audi transaxle and all that stuff was still there, but it had a Porsche engine and the engine was designed by the same group of engineers who designed the 928 engine.

So there is a urban legend that the 928 engine cut in half as a 944 engine. It’s not true. There’s really no interchangeable parts. Although some of the part numbers do match up, but the engineers who were building a five liter or at the time of 4. 5 liter V8 next thing you know, they’re building a 2. 5 liter four cylinder that now they over engineered the hell out of it.

Unless you’ve ever had one of these engines apart, you don’t realize that [00:09:00] drag racers with the V8s put a girdle on the bottom of the block in order to keep the bottom of the block together when they come off the line, because there’s that much stress. The 944 engine As a girdle that holds the crankshaft in place, and there’s 32 bolts that hold a four cylinder, 150 horsepower crankshaft in place.

The bottom ends never go bad, and that’s why, because it’s way over engineered. Porsche kept making the 924 for the European and British market. After we got the 944, they quit sending the 924 here. Well, in 1985, they’re still making 924s with 2 liter Audi engines in them, and Volkswagen came forward and said, Listen, we’re cutting you off.

You can’t have any more. We’re not selling you that motor anymore. I’m sorry, but we’re done. The CEO at the time was Peter Schutz. Peter is American. In fact, he was from Central Florida. Among other things, he saved the 911. They were going to phase out the 911. [00:10:00] He said, you can’t do that. But when they got the notification from VW, and said, we’re not selling you any more of these Audi engines, he said, fine.

He told his engineers, figure out a way to put that four cylinder 944 engine into the old 924 shell. Keep the interior the same, the old, what they say, square dash 924 interior. Take all that, leave it as it is, slap the motor in it, and call it a day. And we’ll call it a 924S, and the Americans will buy the hell out of it, which we did.

And that’s where the 924S came from. Now, curiously, in 89, the 944 was a 2. 7. engine. They bored it from 100 millimeter to 104 millimeter, and that made it a 2. 7, and then the next iteration was to stroke it and then make it into the 3 liter. The 89 944 engine, they said, was 165 horsepower, I think, but it was a lot more torque.[00:11:00]

People tend to believe that the horsepower ratings were even higher than that. Porsche built 25 pre production 924S’s with the 944 oval dash interiors and the 2. 7. And that would have been a hell of a car. But, the exchange rate got all screwed up. They cancelled the 924S program in mid year. and the 89 9 24 s never made it to production and they made 25 of them.

They crash tested half of them and sold the rest of them to employees at the factory. And we don’t think any of them survived till today. And that’s a real shame. When you look at the entire history of the 944, how many they made over the years, all the improvements and developments that they made over the years, the fact that they made many more 944s than they ever made 911s in that same period of time, the 944 took a financially troubled [00:12:00] company and not only brought it into the 80s and 90s With a liquid cooled engine and the front engine rear transmission layout, but also taught Porsche how to do liquid cooling.

And then we end up with the Boxster and the 996. So it is a huge piece of development history for Porsche. When people say, it’s not really a Porsche. Yeah, it is. It may not have started as a Porsche. As a side note, when VW decided not to take this car, they instead built the Scirocco, a good car on its own.

But how many of them do you see today?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s actually brings up a really good point in that it’s an interesting decision making process when you look at VW and Porsche together, because You’re right, the Scirocco was the replacement for the 924 concept, but when you think about it from a dollars and cents perspective, it [00:13:00] was cheaper for them to produce the Scirocco because it was built on top of the Mark I golf chassis, which already existed, and they already had Giugiaro on the books designing the golf.

He had done the launch of Delta, which is a very similar car that predates it as well. And then you go, well, here, I’ll pen the Scirocco really quick. We’re going to take the golf and kind of stretch it out and make it into a lift back. It sort of made sense, but then it kind of diverges because that Audi two liter only ended up in a handful of Audi eighties.

Before it was almost immediately replaced by the five cylinder, which is closer to the 944 engineering wise. Again, it’s so sort of intertwined and intermixed in all of this. When you look at it kind of further down the pike, BW graduated away from that Audi two liter when they developed. Finally, the 1. 8, because the Golfs and the Chiracos came with the 1.

6, the 1. 7, then finally the 1. 8, and then the 1. 8 was replaced by the 16 valve, which it took the 944 evolution, how many years to catch up [00:14:00] with VW in the 16 valve realm?

Kevin Duffy: Up to 87. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: It sort of feels like this leapfrogging between the two companies. In reality, they were probably sharing the technology back and forth.

Kevin Duffy: You would think that they did share, and at least they were on the same development lines the whole time. Actually, when they were working on the 944, they were trying to figure out what engine to put in it. And they tried, and I don’t remember the brand, could have been a Renault or some European V6 that they wanted to put in it.

They’re trying to decide if it was going to be a four cylinder or a six cylinder. They put a six cylinder in the body of a 924. And it was a wonderful performer. However, when they got down to brass tacks, they couldn’t assemble the car in the factory the way they wanted to, because the engine had to come in through the bottom and it wouldn’t fit between the subframe rails.

And there was no way around it. They had also worked with some bigger four cylinders. I think they had a 2. 4 [00:15:00] Rover or something. And that’s when they decided to go with the 2. 5 four cylinder and then designed up their engines. But in early development, they really wanted a V6 would have been a hell of a car with a V6, but they just couldn’t shoehorn it in.

That said, you have the VR6 that would have fit. So, you know, you kind of look and see how things develop, and maybe it was Porsche’s experience in the late 70s where they said, yeah, we can’t shoehorn a V6 in the way we want to do it. And Volkswagen said, wait a minute, if we close it up a little bit, maybe we can make one that will work.

It’s some interesting stuff. I mean, you, you start looking at the history of these things.

Crew Chief Eric: When you look at 75 to about 90, the engineering is absolutely fabulous during that time period. But The question is, are the sales numbers commiserate to all of that engineering?

Kevin Duffy: And I would say, yeah, we didn’t get the 924 until the 77 model from 76 to 91, which 91 was the last year for the S2, the 924 S2.[00:16:00]

Porsche built worldwide just over 325, 000 924s, 924s and 944s. Now that doesn’t include the special race models and all that, which only adds about all total less than a thousand cars, but we can say 325, 000 is pretty close. In the same period, from 76 to 91, they sold 217, 000 9 11s. They bested the 9 11 sales by 50%.

Like I say, a friend of mine was a salesman here in Orlando. When the 944 came out, they had a waiting list here for a year. For 9 44, that’s how popular they were. When you look at how the production went with the 9 24, which we look back at the 9 24 here in the United States, at first it was 95 horsepower and then went to a hundred horsepower.

They sent 36,009 20 fours to North America between 76 and [00:17:00] 82. That doesn’t include the turbos. The 931. The turbo in the U. S. was almost 7, 000 turbos. When you look at those numbers, you’re approaching 50, 000 cars that we look back at today and say they’re junk. They were really something back then. If you look and see how that worked out when The 9 44 came out for us in 83.

That was a big deal because the 9 44, let’s face, it was a much better car handling wise. The looks were more aggressive and people were really, really, really fired up about, so yeah, it was a big deal.

Crew Chief Eric: What was the price point back then? But can we convert that to today’s dollars?

Kevin Duffy: The 9 24 in today’s dollars was about 30 grand.

The 944 at the time was in the mid twenties in 19, say like 1984, you can get a nicely appointed nine 44 for about 25, 27, 000, but at the same time you could [00:18:00] buy a Toyota Corolla. You know, you look and see what the difference was. Yeah, it was a pricey car at the time. What happened with the 944 was that as it progressed through the 80s, it got more and more and more and more expensive to the point where in 89, 90, 91, getting a, like an S2.

That could be in 1990. That could be 70, 000 or 80, 000. That was a lot of money. The 968s were even more. You could buy a 100, 000 968. In 1993 94, that’s a lot of money. But the 911s had Earlier surpassed 100, 000. So it still was cheaper than a nine 11, but the sales figures dropped off. I think because of pricing, they had a lot of cool stuff.

They have a lot of options. They have a lot of good technology in them. My feeling is they should just kept it simple and gone from there. And of course, then the Boxster came out with a 40, [00:19:00] 000 price point. When that happened, it was immediately snapped up because people wanted that kind of a price point to buy a Porsche.

I think they kind of priced their way out over the years, which is why when the 924S came out in the U. S. in 87, it was 19, 999. Realistically, with the options and all, 25, 000 in 1987, 1988. You can get a 924S with air conditioning, a radio, and power carrying stuff and all that. But 25, 000 was still a lot of money.

They say the Toyota was still 10, 000, 12, 000. Yeah, it was a lot of money. I actually looked at buying a new one, 87.

Crew Chief Eric: And we’ll get more into buying 924s a minute, but a couple more fact or fiction questions for you in the history of both cars. I remember vividly a lot of magazines saying, especially when the 944 turbo came out, that it was faster than the 911, all things being equal.

Was that mostly because of the aerodynamics [00:20:00] and how slippery the 944 was, or was there some sort of other magic to it that it was quicker than the 911?

Kevin Duffy: The 944 turbo, 951, did have a little bit more power, it was better balanced, it had better aero, and it was about 100 pounds lighter than a 911 at the time.

But if you want to look at and compare like an 86 turbo to an 86 911 3. 2 Carrera, the top speed for the 944 was 152. The 911 was 152. They were dead equal horsepower for the 944. Was about two 20. The nine 11 Carrera was 2 0 7. The 9 44 went zero to 60 and 5.9, the 9 11 6 0.1, if you look at the published figures, yeah, it was faster.

But the difference between the two cars is night and day because you’re in. A 944 turbo, especially a new one in 1986, the 944 turbo was more of a luxury car [00:21:00] than the 86 Carrera, the 86 Carrera was like a driver’s car. You know, you got in it and it made noises. And it was skitterish and it’s handling. I mean, you had to learn how to drive a 911 because of the weight distribution and all that.

A 944, you got in it. It was fairly quiet, had very, very comfortable seats. Although they were the same as 911, the cabin was well appointed. It had nice air conditioning, which 911s. Until they went to liquid cooled, we’re not really known for their air conditioning, so, you know, the AC side was, uh, you know, was better.

So you start looking at all those, and they’re just different cars. But to the person who didn’t have a stopwatch, yeah, the 911 probably felt a little bit slower. The 944 was more competent, maybe. But they’re just different cars, and the 100 difference in weight is huge. In racing, we talk about 1 horsepower is 10 pounds.

So if you can eliminate 100 pounds, it’s like adding 10 [00:22:00] horsepower, which makes the 944 even a better choice. That’s why they sold a zillion of them, because it was. A much, much nicer car.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s talk about Mazda versus Porsche, the RX 7 and the 944. Factor fiction there too. There’s all these rumors about lawsuits and who stole whose design.

And if you look at the original RX 7 versus the 924 and the second gen RX they’re very similar.

Kevin Duffy: The legend is that there were a lot of personnel that were traded back and forth between Mazda and Porsche. It wasn’t that they cooperated, quite the opposite, but that there were the same people in different parts of the design phases on both cars.

That’s the legend. Whether it’s true or not, who knows. But, I will say this, we raced at SCCA in the same class with the first generation RX 7s, and they kicked our asses. Mostly because of top speed. They were just so much [00:23:00] faster than you were. Oh, well, that’s kind of the way it was. You go to a track like Sebring or Daytona, where you got long straightaways, and you just see them come up in back of you, and you say, well, okay, I’ve lost this spot, and sure enough, you know, about halfway down the straightaway, there they go, and it’s just the way it was.

But the 944s, especially the 924s, because they’re even lighter, we could get into an infield course or into a twisty part and catch up with the 911s and with the RX 7s. When it got to top speed, we just didn’t have it.

Crew Chief Brad: I love the 924s and I’m always looking for another one. I had a brief stint of ownership with a non running 924 turbo because I was sold a bill of goods.

What was told to me was just a battery problem was much more than a battery problem, but I’ll just leave it at that. So for someone who’s always looking for a 924 and lesser so a 944, I prefer the lines of the 924. Let’s talk about. Some do’s and don’ts from a buyer’s [00:24:00] standpoint, when you’re looking for a car, are there ones to stay away from ones that are more desirable than others, things like that?

Kevin Duffy: Well, I’ve always got my eye out for the next project to have, or the next one that’s going to come along. Like you, I like the 924, the 924 shape and the 924 lines. I think it’s cleaner. I like it that it’s lighter and that’s what I raced. I, I really kind of got attached to the 9 24 shape and being that the 9 24 was my first one, kind of got taped to them pretty tightly.

That said, the 9 24 s is the 9 24 body gauges, interior look and feel. The whole thing you get the whole 9 24, the early car, the two liter cars, you get that whole thing, but you get the 9 44 engine for which you can get parts. People know about them where the two leaders, I don’t want to say they pretty much disappeared, but they pretty much disappeared.

We don’t see that many of them. And when they come up, they’re either [00:25:00] basket cases or they’re half taken apart, rusted because they’ve been sitting in a field for 10 years. They’re not that many good ones out there and finding parts, even things as easy as main bearings or rod bearings for the engine.

It’s just not very easy to do. Even though the 924 two liter engine is pretty bulletproof, unless you can get the parts you need, you can’t build it. The fuel injections are the old mechanical fuel injection systems. They’re easy, but they’re finicky. Things like the fuel distributor, you can rebuild it.

I’ve rebuilt several. They all leak. They’re a pain in the butt, and it’s unfortunate with the way it is, so you can get one that’s been professionally rebuilt, and hopefully it won’t leak, but they’re really expensive. The value of an early 924 just isn’t there. Not now, and I have to think we’ve probably passed that prime at this point.

There’s one or two that come up over once in a while with 7000 miles on them and this and that [00:26:00] they’ll come up on one of the auction sites and they’ll pull 12 13, 000 to get one to that condition is going to cost you 25 or 30 restoration just doesn’t make sense. That’s why the 924S makes all the sense in the world, because you get the same look and feel and all that, but at the same time, you don’t get the headaches that come with that 2 liter engine and that setup.

Parts availability is the big question when it comes to what are you going to get. When I say availability, I say both, can you get it? And then how much is it gonna cost to get it? For the most part, the early nine 40 fours, the series one cars from 83 to mid 85 and the 9 24 s share a lot of the early 9 24 suspension pieces and rack and steering and all this stuff that you would have.

And there was a billion of ’em out there. So used parts are pretty easy to find. I kind of like those cars because [00:27:00] they’re much simpler. The most complicated computer on my, on Sparky is a radio. The computer that controls the engine, you could probably put on a chip the size of your toenail. But it’s in a box, you know, it’s the best 80s technology you could buy.

There’s still a lot of analog. that goes with that. You know, I like having the availability of computer control, but it’s very simple computer control, but it works really well. There’s a handful of sensors on the engine that reads, and it’s all good. As you get into the more recent cars, the Series 2 944s, the S2s, they get more and more complicated.

Porsche was really good for pushing the envelope. On things like the 944 S2s have things on them that for the day were revolutionary. Today we look at it and go, man, there’s got to be a better way to do that. Because the electronics were primitive, the mechanicals in some of these things, some of the oil fed adjusters and things like that.

[00:28:00] The variable valve timing stuff and all was by today’s standards archaic. Trying to get that stuff to work right can be problematic sometimes. So I like to stick with the Series 1 944 or 924S just because parts availability is there. I can buy a control arm for an 86 944 aluminum control arm with the glued in ball joint.

is 250 bucks a side. I can buy a control arm for 87 924 s with the ball joint and with new rubber bushings in place for less than 50 bucks. If that’s the case, I would rather go with something that I can. For one, I can Work on myself and for two is not going to break the bank. 500 versus a hundred is a lot of money, especially when you’re talking about a car that in most cases you’re going to buy today for five or six grand, maybe 10 at the outside, you’re not going to put big, big, big, huge money into it.

So I liked the earlier cars, but when you’re looking for one, what you want to [00:29:00] look for is things like history. Is there a history to the car? Is there good paperwork on the car? Is there a good record of for one mileage? Cause the odometers are all broken at one time or another. So you really don’t know how many miles they have on them.

So if you have a car fax, or if you have a stack of receipts, I just sold a nine 44 that I bought from the original owner. And he had every receipt of everything from oil changes on up. So I was able to track the mileage and know that the mileage was correct. And that makes for a big deal. Another area to look at is paint work.

None of the paint after 30 some years is going to be perfect. But you want to not have to have the car painted if you can help it. It’s expensive. You can sometimes be as much as you pay for the car to get a paint. Even if you’re going to do the work yourself, you’re going to pay it in the garage. It’s still expensive.

Paint is a very expensive thing. So you look for decent paint and you might be able to clay bar and work it and bring it back to a [00:30:00] presentable level. The front seats, the driver’s seat always has split seams. A decent upholstery shop can fix that for a hundred dollars or so. But you can also get reupholstery kits, the front seats, 400 bucks, you get brand new reupholstery for both seats, you take the old upholstery off, put the new on, it’s not difficult and it looks great.

There are some things that you can do, obviously if it needs everything. You’re going to do the maintenance that has been neglected because that’s why you’re buying it is because somebody couldn’t keep up the maintenance or didn’t keep up the maintenance. So you’re going to do timing belts and you know, you do all that kind of stuff and check the brakes and change the fluids and all that.

And you’re going to put some money into that. You just figure that into your purchase price and, you know, a lot of them will come to me. I’ll pick up and they’ll have really good tires and then, you know, they’ll put in the head, you know, tires are great and go look at them and they’re 13 years old. So you don’t really want to go driving around much on 13 year old tires and you can help them.

So there are a lot of things [00:31:00] to just to look at and see what’s what. You want to, though, see through a good presentation, and you want to make sure you check everything. At this point, there are steering wheel that grab the wheel and it goes up and down about a quarter inch in the column. There’s a plastic bushing that costs 5 that takes about an hour to replace that fixes that.

But it can take 500 bucks off the price of the car as you’re negotiating, you know, steering is loose. So there are a lot of things that you can do when you’re looking at these, you know, tires, wheels, brakes, what has to be done to make it presentable. You’re never going to get one that’s Concorde perfect.

It just doesn’t happen. But you can get them presentable so that you can go to a local event and go to the grocery store. I take Sparky to the grocery store because you can, because it has a hatch. Rarely get out of the parking lot without somebody coming over and wanting to look at the car. To me, that works out well.

I just enjoy that.

Crew Chief Brad: What should we be looking for? What are some of the known common [00:32:00] issues? With these cars, and then what are some things that need to be revisited or fixed immediately? I know you mentioned the steering column and the brakes and things like that things that can go wrong on any car that’s been sitting around for several years.

But before you answer that, I’m just curious. How come. You should stay away from the 924 turbo. You’ve touched on the turbo a couple of times, but it doesn’t seem like it’s, you know, a car that you favor too much.

Kevin Duffy: It’s not that I don’t favor it. In comparison, this is simply, you know, in my sicko mind, a 931, which is a 924 turbo.

makes about 150 horsepower and 924 S and a makes about 150 horsepower. The suspension look and feel the driving experience and all is almost exactly the same. However, the 9 31 engine, while it is not a bad engine, Getting parts and getting it to work properly and all is extremely [00:33:00] difficult and it can get extremely expensive when you start replacing the turbo parts and having parts rebuilt that you can’t actually get anymore.

Things like the headers on those cars crack, you can weld them all you want and you can’t get them back. To seal, you can’t get them to work right. There’s just a myriad of issues with the 931. When it comes to performance, I can get the same thing with a NA 924S. So that’s kind of why I’ve stayed away from them.

And people I know who have had them and have them now, they’re always fixing something. There’s always something up. There’s always a problem. And even my friend’s 924 Carrera GT, which was a 931, it had some serious issues that needed engine outs and a lot of replacement of things and all. And I just, that’s something that I just don’t need that kind of aggravation.

In any of these cars, the 944 engine is an interference engine. If you break the timing belt, you’re going to bend valve, most of them exhaust valve. If you’re lucky and it [00:34:00] breaks at an idle, you’ll bend one, maybe two valves. I had one guy brought me a car. It just quit running. Well, he had it around 6, 000 RPM when the timing belt broke and it bent every valve, intake and exhaust.

That thing was destroyed. Things like the pistons, the rods, the crank, they all went in the dumpster because you don’t know what kind of damage it did. If you don’t have an actual history, if the timing belt’s been on there more than a couple, three, four years, or more than 30 miles that you can document when you buy one, just replace it.

When you’re doing that, everybody says, well, you do the time you build through the water pump at the same time. Water pumps are cheap. You’re there, you’re looking at it, change the water pump. Especially if you’re in the south, like we are here, it gets hot here in the summer. We put a 160 degree thermostat in it.

So it opens up a little sooner, and that way we can keep the car a little bit cooler. The front of the engine also has four seals on it. Crank seal, balance shaft seals, cam seal. That kit. [00:35:00] With the seals and all in it, it’s a hundred bucks, replace them too. You replace all that stuff, seal up the front of the motor, timing belt’s not going to be an issue, you’re all set.

Make sure you get it timed back properly. Make sure you get the balance shafts timed properly. If you off one or two teeth on the balance shafts, it’ll shake like the balance shafts aren’t even there. Very violent. So you want to make sure you get all that done. Come across a few lately, but very few of them have the original clutch disc.

But a clutch job, if you’re going to have it done at a shop, can be 8 to 10 hours of labor, plus 600 or 800 in parts. So you’re looking at 2, 000 to get a clutch done. And if it’s the original rubber clutch, it’s 30 some years old, it’s going to break. So keep that in mind. That said, looking at a car to buy and it’s got a recent clutch job on it, you’ve got the paperwork on it, that’s all good.

When it also comes to a car that’s been sitting for a while, the clutch slave cylinder tends to go bad. You replace the master and [00:36:00] the slave together. Those two parts have gone up lately. They’re in the 150 to 180 range each. But You replace both of them because they never get bled. To bleed the clutch slave, to do it right, you really have to take the starter out to get to the bleeder.

And so nobody ever does it. So all the debris and all the crap from the fluid and all, maybe they change the fluid, bleed the brakes, but they don’t touch the clutch. All that debris goes down in there and eventually fails the slave. So you have that going on. Common issue. Everything else is pretty well straightforward.

It’s normal car stuff. Do the lights work? Does the A. C. work? Are the tires okay? Do the brakes stop the car? When you turn the wheel, does it actually steer? I mean, these are all the things, you know, you look at the rear shocks, you can’t see the front struts, but you, you know, you can’t see what kind of condition they’re in, but you can see the rear shocks.

And if they look like they’ve been there since the Carter administration, then you probably need to replace them. There are [00:37:00] two choices when it comes to shocks. There are KYB shocks that are inexpensive, about a buck and a quarter, you get all four corners. Do those, there are good street driving around going back and forth to work, shock, or you can spend 800 and go with Kony or Bilstein and get a performance shock.

You can upgrade with bigger sway bars if you need to. You can put coilovers on the front fairly inexpensively. The rear to change the torsion bars is a pain. Highly, highly, uh, labor intensive. So you may not want to do that. The front suspension is where all the magic goes. Anyway. You don’t need to have a limited slip transaxle.

People say, you know, you gotta have it, gotta have it. Unless you’re going and doing track days or racing, you don’t need a limited slip. So don’t worry about it. Come out of a turn and you lift the inside rear wheel without limited slip, you’re going to spin that wheel. I’ve done it. I’ve been on track days with open differentials and doesn’t really make all that much difference.

You know, the things like the paint, the upholstery, and you [00:38:00] want to make sure that the lights all work and the gauges all work. If there’s anything weird going on with the gauges, you want to look into that. Oil pressure should be at an idle between two and three bar. And between four and a half and five at RPM, you want to make sure it’s not leaking anywhere.

Rear main seal is like doing a clutch, so getting to it is tough. All in all, they’re pretty bulletproof and they’re pretty reliable. I would not shy away from any of these cars that I have brought back to life, especially my special edition or Sparky. I’m driving cross country tomorrow. No problem.

They’re just that good and they’re reliable.

Crew Chief Eric: So on the other side of that, there’s a bunch of special models in there to include the 924s special edition, 944s2s, people gravitate towards the turbo cars. Are there some other ones in there like that we should be aware of? There’s even the champagne rose metallic or special rose edition of the 944, some of those.

Kevin Duffy: Well, there are [00:39:00] some special editions, and Porsche was really good for special editions. They took the model from Harley Davidson in some cases, even with their 911s, where you take things off and then you charge more money for it. Harley had a, uh, a model where they took all the chrome off of it, they took a lot of other stuff off of it, and they charged you an extra five grand.

Doesn’t make sense to me, but it’s a business model that seems to work. If you think of some of the 9 11 Special Editions, they would take out the interior stuff, door panels, sound insulation, all this stuff, and then charge you twice as much for it. You know, whatever works. I mean, that’s all good. There were several Special Edition 924s.

There was a Sebring Edition, there was a Martini Edition, there was a Special Edition in 79. And all these are great, but they’re disappearing. Finding one that’s in fairly original condition, because some of them had some really special stuff on it that you can’t find. I mean, you just can’t do it. I mean, the martini edition is one of my favorites.

77. It was a white body with the martini [00:40:00] stripes on the side and martini stripe down the hood and the roof. They had white wheels and the carpet was bright red. I mean, bright red. It wasn’t maroon, it was red. And the seats were black with blue piping and red accents. And you can’t get that interior anymore.

You can’t get a replacement unless you have it custom made, because now you start talking about a lot of money. So if you find a Martini that’s out there, most of the time they’re just worn out, and you need to do everything, and you’re going to put 20, 000 or 25, 000 into it, and it’s going to be worth 10 grand.

So the earlier special editions really don’t carry that same kind of value that you would have. In another later mock, the Silver Rose edition of the 944 is absolutely beautiful car. The Silver Rose was a silver color with a hint of raspberry, what they said. They only made a few of them, but the Silver Rose had a lead [00:41:00] interior that was kind of a gray, maroon, and red plaid that was absolutely beautiful.

You can get that material as a replacement, but again, if you get the material, then you have to have an upholsterer actually make the seats, put that all in and do the door panels and all of it. It costs a lot of money. The silver rose editions, they didn’t make very many of them. I don’t know what the number was, but I think it was less than a thousand.

If you find one in really good condition, they’re a lot of money. They’re big, big, big bucks. But it’s one of the few special editions that you can find. It’s a nice Turbo S, you know, the best you can get in a Turbo in a unique color combination with a unique interior, which is what they did with most of their special edition cars.

They would take the base car and they would make it a little bit better and then make it look Fantastic. And I’ve earned a lot of money for it. The 924S, in 87, they sold a lot of them. They sold something in the [00:42:00] neighborhood of, I want to say, 13, 000 total. The first run in 88 was 980 Special Edition. The first 500 of them that came off the line came to the U.

S. Now this special edition was kind of a club sport sort of thing. They were all black. Very few of them had sunroofs. It seems like the later it got in the production run, the more that one would pop up with a factory sunroof. But it wasn’t supposed to have a sunroof. It had crank windows, plastic manual mirrors, kind of like out of a Golf.

Even the passenger side mirror was an option. The little cassette tray in the middle between the front seats, they didn’t put that in there because it was extra weight. We have to save weight. But the black with the maroon carpet and then gray with maroon pinstripe cloth seats is probably one of the nicest interiors that you’ll see in a Porsche.

The cloth that they used in the seats was really thin. It was really light and it didn’t last. [00:43:00] Even in cars that have been garaged and didn’t have many miles on them, they still, the stuff just fell apart. But that cloth is also available in the aftermarket. You can buy the cloth and have it made into your car.

But they also put bigger sway bars. They went wild. All the 924S’s had 6×15 wheels. They put 7 inch wheels on the back. They put a little bit bigger tire. They put 215 60s all the way around, even though the wheels were two different sizes. Same tire went front rear, but with the bigger sway bars, it was lower by about a half an inch.

They put Kony nonadjustable sport shops, heavier springs, 250 pound springs on the front one or two millimeter bigger portion bars in the rear. They handled really, really, really well. I have one, took a lot of soul searching, but I decided to sell. Gonna be up for sale and it has 29, 000 miles. It’s almost all original, but the interior fell apart on it.

So I had to redo the interior. To redo an interior on a special [00:44:00] edition 924S is about 2 grand. But these cars have more value. So it’s okay. The engines are the same. They’re 160 horsepower. There’s a 944 engine. But they do handle really well, you know, a little bit lower, better suspension, all that they handled quite nicely and very comfortable.

They have all the air conditioning and all that stuff that you want. And they were about 26, 000 in 1988 out of the 500 that came to the U S we’re thinking that there may be. 200 or 225 out there. I am actually in the process now. I have a friend of mine who’s putting together a online registry for the special edition 924S.

So we can try to track these cars and figure out where they are. I would say that being obsessed with these 924S’s is something that I do. I have six 924S Special Editions here at my shop. I did buy one up in the Florida Panhandle about a year [00:45:00] ago. That is a 924S Special Edition with the automatic transmission.

We believe they may have made a dozen with an automatic. Now the automatics are not great. Three speed automatic. They’re not fun at all, but to have a special edition car anyway, and then have the automatic transmission in it. This car needs everything, but it’s complete. Everything’s there. That’s a project down the road for me, and I’ll probably keep that one just because it’s so weird.

But I’ve got these special editions, and if I see one and it’s reasonably priced, I buy one. I’ll buy it and bring it home. So the special edition 924S is worth about twice of what a regular 924S would be worth. And they’re going up as they get more and more rare for a stock as delivered model. If it’s been modified or anything, it drops the price, but the special additions, the silver rose, the nine 24 S special additions, they’re gaining value and they’re not that many of them out there.

It’s a good thing to have. If you can find one. And then I could drive my car. We took mine, I [00:46:00] took it on a trailer. I live in central Florida. We towed out to the Dakota regions, to Rapid City a year ago, and participated with them in a weekend drive through the mountains. It was great. Had the special edition.

Went out to 944 Fest the next weekend. in Ohio and went to Blowing Rock, North Carolina the next weekend to a PCA event there. I always marvel at going to these events, especially the PCA events, and people look at my car and say, what is that? I’ve never seen one of those. Had one guy peeking into the hatch and saying, it’s the engine in the back.

So, you know, it’s kind of cool. It’s kind of fun.

Crew Chief Eric: There was always a poster on my wall that I will never forget, which is the Hugo Boss 924 Carrera GT. So the question is about that car being the rarest of the rare. Is it like the Audi Sport Quattro or the Lancia Delta or things like that, where they had to build homologation versions of the race cars?

So do street versions of the [00:47:00] 924 Carrera GT exist?

Kevin Duffy: Yes, they do. They made 406 of them, and most of them still exist, although they exist in museums. Rarely see one out there in the wild, although a buddy of mine here locally had one. He bought it, he drove it for two or three years, doubled his money on it.

I got to drive it, and it was magic. The thing was wonderful. But one of the things that you can do these days, and I’ve done a few of them, is you take a 924 S, which is the same body as the early 924, and you buy the flares for the rear and the 944 front fenders, because that’s what they were, and a fiberglass nose piece and a hood scoop to put on it, and you turn it into a Carrera GT replica.

And I’ve built several of them. If you want to put real Fuchs on it, you can, but they’re pretty expensive, so you get replicas. And you make a look alike. 944 engine, air conditioning, [00:48:00] radio setup with your, tethered into your phone and all that, with a four point roll bar and race seats, and here you go.

They were great. They looked the part, they look really cool, and people look at it and go, now that’s something I’ve never seen. But the 406 that they made were for racing, so that they could actually race that car, and the GT turned into the GTR, the GTS. The other one that people don’t really know about is the 924, normally aspirated, deproduction.

SCCA car. It’s a Porsche kit car. You got the kit from Porsche and they sent all the stuff that you needed and you turned it into an SCCA deproduction race car. There were 16 of them total. Al Holbert in 1980 and 81, they went out and kicked ass in SCCA with this car. And what’s funny is that you, there’s actually a video on YouTube of the entire race.

Final at road Atlanta, where [00:49:00] you have the nine 24 deep production cars going against triumphs and such of the day. There’s a TR six racing with them. And the Porsche is just killing them. The commentators going, yeah, this nine 24 is like the latest engineering. It’s like the best thing ever. And it’s, it’s really kind of funny to hear that, but it was an NA cars naturally aspirated.

It wasn’t a turbo. They made 16 of them. At the Porsche Works reunion two years ago up in Amelia Island, one of the original ones was there. Of course I got to crawl over and take all kinds of pictures of it, but cool race car.

Crew Chief Eric: Early on you mentioned things about, you know, the development of the 924 and 944 where they talked about putting six cylinders in there and things like that.

But it begs the question, I’ve always wanted to do this and I’ve seen it done like once, which is a 1. 8 turbo swap from a later Volkswagen in a 924. And on top of that, we’ve seen all these renegade V8 swaps. So what are [00:50:00] your thoughts on taking some of these well built, well handling cars and putting different power plants in them?

Kevin Duffy: Well, I’ve done a couple of V8s with LS motors. In my opinion, they’re undrivable. I met a guy out in Houston at a track day. He had a twin turbo LS, 650 horsepower. He knew how to drive it. He could actually drive the car. I don’t have that kind of time to dedicate to learning how to drive a monster like that.

It just comes down to it. If you’re going to do a 350 horsepower LS1, those you can drive, but there is a big weakness and it comes down to the engineering. You could put the LS in. It’s similar in weight to a 944 turbo motor, so you’re not losing handling or anything. But what you do have going on is the gearing in the transaxle.

A 944 turbo transaxle that is in good shape. Handle the torque and the horsepower. The legend is that a Porsche Transaxle can take twice the horsepower that [00:51:00] it was originally mated to. So if you have a 300 horsepower engine on a transaxle, it can take 600 horse. So that’s not really an issue. The problem is that when you’re going 70 miles an hour down the interstate.

In your turbo 944, your 924S, you’re tackin 36, 3800 RPM. LS motors don’t like that. They like 1700 RPM, 70 miles an hour. Because of that, that LS is just singin the whole time. I have to think it’s probably not good for it, you know, not as a car that you’re going to drive three or four times a week and go to the grocery store.

It’s probably not a good idea when you put all that together. It’s like, yeah, I, I don’t think I’m going to plus the expense, the kit, all the stuff he needs, you’re going to 8, 000 and then you got to have an engine. You got to find a gearbox that’ll handle it. I mean, there’s a lot that goes into it and you’ll never see that money back again.

That’s for sure. [00:52:00] But, like I say, I’ve done a couple, I’ve driven a few, I’ve drove one on track, and it’s fun, don’t get me wrong. But, I like driving my cars, I like to be able to get in my car and drive it wherever, whenever, and a V8 conversion just isn’t the way to go. Now, you may have seen, and I may have this wrong, but I think it’s M.

A. Motorworks in Atlanta, and they’re doing 1. 8 turbo conversion, and they are awesome. I’ve not seen one personally, and I have not driven one, but they weigh nothing. That one eight turbo has with just a chip, you can get close to 300 horsepower. It weighs 60 percent of a turbo motor. It fits. Almost entirely behind the front axle, so it brings the weight back even farther.

It’s a good dependable motor. You know, they say, well, yeah, you can tune one up and you can get 600 horsepower out of it. If I could have one with 300 horsepower, that’s all you need. and the transmission will be happy, the car will be happy, and yeah, [00:53:00] so that is a good alternative, I think, to the V8 conversion.

Plus, the V8 really fills up the engine compartment. That 1. 8 does not. You have lots of room to do things. I also belong to the 924 owners group in Great Britain. Those people are crazy 0L 924s. They have great events and all this, and just a wonderful group. And they do all kinds of stuff with different engines in their cars.

They do four cylinder, V6s, Rover engines, V8s, small V8s, but they don’t have, you know, the monster V8s we have, but they do all kinds of things. And one of the things I noticed about them is that they’re not scared of fabricating plates and adapters and motor mounts and all that. They just make whatever they want and make it work.

And that’s really a cool thing. So I kind of keep my eye on them too and, and see what’s going on over there. But the 1. 8 turbo conversion looks to be probably the next big thing when it comes to the engine swap.

Crew Chief Eric: So one of their technical questions, since we’re talking about motors, can you explain the whole [00:54:00] floating cylinder design that the 924S and the 944 share?

Kevin Duffy: It’s strange because when you first open up an engine, you’ve never done one of these engines before. What you’re used to seeing is a solid block with holes building. You just think of it that way. Where when you open this up, you see a case that’s open and the cylinders are sticking up inside the case and all the area around it is cooling jacket, which is kind of cool.

That’s kind of a neat thing because you get a lot more volume of coolant through the engine than you would in, say, a standard Toyota drill holes in the block sort of. Because of that design, the cylinders can regulate their temperature a lot better. They’ve got so much fluid around them that they’re able to cure any hot spots, at least that’s what I’ve been told.

Now the other part of the 944 cylinder system is that the inside of the cylinders and the pistons are [00:55:00] coated with something called nicosil. It’s got some other names too, but, you know, Nikasil is basically nickel silicone and works so well. Of course, in the 90s, Germany, the government outlawed it, so they can’t use it anymore.

But that is why the 944 blocks, the cylinders tend not to wear like you find with other engines. I have had engines with 150, 000 miles on them where the cylinders are in stock spec, no boring, no sleeving, none of that stuff, and not even recoding. Put a very, very, very light hone, just for the new rings, put it all back together, get the head redone, and off you go.

It’s an amazing system, but the way that they built it, I have to think that their engineers were thinking 9 11. Piston sticking out you put the cylinder over the top of the piston and you put the head on top I’m thinking that that was their model that they were going after and they they have a box that needs cylinders in it So you have a box and then you glue the cylinders down inside of it I mean, that’s the only way I can [00:56:00] I kind of think of it

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve heard that there’s an achilles heel to this design and this goes back to us talking about Known problems and issues with these cars.

It stems from if they sit for a long time, not running because there is so much surface area of the head gasket touching water because the water jackets are so much larger than a conventional engine that the head gaskets tend to blow. Almost just looking at them now, is that truth or is that fiction?

Kevin Duffy: I’ve not seen that except in turbos. Normally when a head gasket goes on a 944 turbo, it’s because they’ve changed the wastegate or they’ve changed the turbo or both. And now they’re pushing a lot more pressure than they should be when they blow the head gasket. On the other end of that, I had an 83 944 with 110, 000 miles on it.

It had been well cared for. The paint was good, the interior was good, you know, just needed some updated maintenance. for some reason, and I got to think it was a head issue that did a leak down [00:57:00] and a couple of valves seem like they were needed to head done. So I pulled the head on it and the head gasket, as you said, where it was touching the water was rusted through the head gasket itself was a rusty mess.

Okay, it still ran. Well, it’s still What you’re saying is probably true in some cases. It is not what I’ve seen as being normal. If this thing would run with this rusty head gasket, I’d never see anything like it. And I pulled it off the block, and I’m looking at it, I’m holding it up to the light and seeing, you know, looking through it.

There’s no way this car should run. And it ran well. Got the head done, put it all back together, and it’s still out there running today. That was Five or six years ago, guy’s still driving it today.

Crew Chief Eric: So Kevin, you mentioned in the beginning too, how there was a lot of back and forth between the Volkswagens and the Porsches during this time period, whether it was the 914 or the 924, even the 944 in some respects.

You talked about the availability of parts, how much cheaper it is to own and operate a 924 and 24S versus a [00:58:00] 944. Are there even some cheaper ways to maintain these cars? Is there things that you can cross match against the Volkswagen parts been maybe from a Scirocco or GT? EI that you could still even pick up on Rock Auto.

That would be a cheaper alternative to the, you know, Porsche branded part. As you’re trying to maintain these, are there some tips and tricks for making ownership of the vehicles even cheaper?

Kevin Duffy: Well, there’s not a lot of crossover that you can say, go to the Rocco list and get the control arm from Rocco rather than from Porsche.

Where the difference is, is if you have to buy a genuine Porsche parts box for the part to come in. And then you’re looking at huge, huge difference. With Sparky, I needed a new wiring harness because the engine wiring harness was burnt. One of the reasons they told me is in 2015, this is, the wiring harness was 2, 600 from Porsche.

And when you start putting in all the other rubber stuff and everything from the Porsche parts list, the parts bill was over 7, 000. And [00:59:00] in 2015, that’s about what the car was worth. Immediately they told, of course, I’ve got parts cars, so I just pulled the harness off another car and this and that, and I was able to cobble it together.

We used some new parts, but for the most part, I took stuff off other cars. Yeah, it was at one point that you could go and crossbreed another car, but you mentioned rock auto with Rock Auto and even Pelican Parts and all these other places that are good parts suppliers for us. They’re all getting their parts from the same folks.

Unless you’re getting a genuine Porsche parts box to go with it, the prices are the same. With my 78 924, I went down to the local battery shops. I needed a battery and there was, you know, a local shop here. And the guy looked it up and he said, do you want the VW battery or the Porsche battery? Porsche battery number and the VW battery number were exactly the same, but the Porsche battery was twice as much.

That really doesn’t happen anymore. You buy a control arm from rock auto and it’s a control arm for a [01:00:00] golf. It’s a control arm for a rabbit. It’s a control arm for a Scirocco. It’s a control arm for a nine 24, a 78, nine 24, or an 87, nine 24, all the same, it’s the same part, same part numbers, incorrect. And that’s a good thing for us because we don’t have to go searching for

Crew Chief Eric: all that junk anymore,

Kevin Duffy: trying to find what’s what.

Crew Chief Eric: Brad, let’s switch gears. Let’s talk about the future of ownership of a 924 and all the cool things you

Crew Chief Brad: can do with it. To start, I mean, you got to get into one first before you can think of all that stuff. You’re right. And I was looking earlier today and personally, I think people have lost their damn minds because there was an 87924S on AutoTrader that somebody wanted 36, 000 for.

To me, that seems like a bit much, but is that what the market price is for one of these cars these days?

Kevin Duffy: Yeah, he’s an idiot. They’ll never sell for that much. If you see a car on bring a trailer or p car market, an 87 924 s really clean, low miles and good records and all that stuff. It [01:01:00] might go for 20 maybe more like probably 16 or 17 and that’s high end.

That’s as much as it goes. I have sold a few rescues that I’ve done. And again, when I do a rescue, it’s not a full restoration or anything. It looks decent. Everything works the way it’s supposed to. The interiors aren’t falling apart. The gauges aren’t hanging out of the dashboard. It’s a decent driver level car.

A 924S, 87, 10 grand is a good price. A 944 is going to command a little bit more. If it’s got an automatic, it’s probably going to go down. As much as 20 or 30 percent used to be, we couldn’t give away an automatic these days, the automatics have seen a little bit of a resurgence and I’ve had a couple of them here that I’ve picked up and sold around town, as much as I hate to admit it.

They’re really kind of nice, but when you get on the interstate and you start going 70, 75 miles an hour, they’re tacking above 4, 000 [01:02:00] RPM. Cause that three speed gearing just doesn’t work. If you’re in 1984, the best you’re doing is 60 miles an hour. They’re great. They’re wonderful, but you get above 60 and they get a little scary, but it’s still, it’s a nine 44 and if you can’t drive a five speed, that’s what you got.

That’s what you do. You know, just the way it is. A decent 944, 5 speed, 12 13, 000, really, really nice, great paint, Fuchs, good options, you know, sport seats and that. You can get 17 18. I see cars that pop up that are asking prices of 7 and the paint’s terrible, the interiors are falling apart, and it hasn’t been serviced in 10 years.

No way. That’s a 3, 000 or 4, 000 car all day. However, six or seven years ago, that was a 750 car. You’re going to have to put money into it just to drive it. So that’s kind of where the values are today. And you’re right, people have gone crazy from these cars. And if you’re in the kind of business I am, where you’re rescuing and restoring, it’s like, yeah, this is [01:03:00] great.

I mean, it depends. We’ve seen 924S’s on Bring a Trail and such go for 20, 000, 22, 000. That, there’s no way. But online auctions, that’s what happens.

Crew Chief Eric: And from the conversation we’ve been having so far, you’ve mentioned several times low mileage options, but also you said the car’s got service records, if it’s been maintained, if you do those immediate things that need to be taken care of, you shouldn’t shy away from a high mileage 924 either.

So you can pretty much go in any direction. It just depends on, I guess, how much elbow grease you want to put it into it.

Kevin Duffy: Yeah. And that’s the thing is it’s, you got to look at the total picture. You can’t just say, well, it’s got 140, 000 miles on. I’m not interested if it’s been driven regularly and it’s been maintained regularly and you have records on it, you know, compression and leak down tests will tell you everything you need to know about the engine in most cases.

And it’s got good compression. It’s not, the valves aren’t leaking. Hell yeah, go for it. You know, you may still have to do some things to update it and fix the little things that are wrong. For the [01:04:00] most part, yeah, just go for it. Above 150, I start getting a little leery because, like they say in the aviation industry, the airframe starts to get a little nasty.

You look for bends, you look for door gaps that aren’t lining up, things like that. And then you see what you can do about that. But for the most part, under 150, 000 miles, none of that

Crew Chief Brad: scares me. When I’m ready to buy another one, obviously, I’m just going to call you and I’m just going to say, what do you have available?

Or what do you know of in the market? But for your average Joe, who doesn’t have direct line to Kevin Duffy, they don’t want to go to bring a trailer. What is a good resource? Where can people go to find a reasonably priced car from someone who’s not a complete. The

Kevin Duffy: go to place these days, as much as I hate to admit it, is Facebook Marketplace.

In that you have that price point car. The under 10, 000 needs a little work car. And so there’s been a lot of good deals that have popped up there. I used to go around Craigslist quite a bit, but not anymore. I just don’t trust them anymore. The word of [01:05:00] mouth has a lot to do with it. The Porsche Club had a reputation for decades that, you know, the 924, 944 people need not apply, and that’s not true.

I go to these events with my cars, people crowd around it, either they’ve never seen one up close because they’re so old, or I get, I had one of these in college, I had one of these, my first Porsche was one of these, and it was a great car and I wish I’d never sold it. So you get that kind of stuff too, but just going and asking around, Hey, you know, I’m looking for a nine 44.

What can I, can I find, you know, the other thing is that there are Facebook groups for nine 44 is nine 24 asses. I belong to probably 10 or 15 of them. And there’s always people buying and selling. And plus there’s a lot of advice. The one thing, though, that I caution folks about is that if you are adverse to picking up a screwdriver or a wrench, you don’t need to buy one of these cars, because when you start paying people to do all the work, it’s going to quickly outstrip [01:06:00] the budget very fast.

That said, I mean you’re not going to, unless you’ve got the facilities and the tools and the knowledge, you’re not going to do your own clutch. Maybe not even do your own timing bell. You can do all the other little things that come up on jack stands in the driveway. And there’s a lot of reference, there’s a lot of help, there’s a lot of videos, there’s a lot of everything.

To try to learn how to do what you do with basic tools. You really don’t need anything special. You know, you can replace your own starter. You can place your own shocks. You can even do your struts in your driveway. There’s enough YouTube on there that you can figure it out. That said, these are old cars.

The newest 944 S2 is 32 years old. That’s the newest one you can get your hands on. And as we say, You’re one broken bolt away from a three hour job turning into a three week job. And that’s any car. I don’t care, Porsche or not.

Crew Chief Eric: When we open our gaze a little bit and we think about the 924 and 944 for more than just cruises and shows, [01:07:00] We want to do something fun with this car.

Let’s say autocross or even using it on the B roads in a spirited way. Or we want to take it to a DE or even to your point, there’s some 944 cup cars still out there. There’s 924 deep prepared cars out there that you can still race in SCCA today. There’s classes for them. You have raced 944s and 924s yourself.

Tell us all about that. What does it take to get it to that level? What are the things you got to do? Expectations? What are they like to drive at that limit?

Kevin Duffy: The one thing about the 924, 944 series is that they do handle really

Crew Chief Eric: well.

Kevin Duffy: They’re a real driver’s car. In thinking about how cars handle and how suspensions work and how cars turn and all on a track, there are three axes that go through a car.

Front to rear is a roll axis. It rolls left and right. You have a yaw axis that goes straight down through the middle of the car from top to bottom. And that’s where the car turns. You have a pitch axis which goes through [01:08:00] the center of the car. It either pitches forward or backwards. Okay, so you have all three of those and where they meet is called the center of gravity.

In 944, that center of gravity is in the tunnel at your hip. So when you say, when I’m on track, I can feel where the car’s doing, where it’s going and what it’s up to in my ass. That’s true because that’s where the center of gravity is. All the rotation is going on within two or three inches of your butt.

And so you know where the car is going to go. You feel it. I had a stock 924S, stock tires, street tires, up at Roebling Road in Savannah early on. That’s probably been 20 years ago. We drove through a hurricane to get to the track, which is what you do when you have diseases like we have. Drove through a hurricane, got to the track.

The next morning, the end of the hurricane was leaving. It was still, the track was wet and it was still some rain. We opened the track, you know, people were saying, well, I don’t know if I want to go out there in the rain. I don’t want to, you know, spin my car and hit something, or I don’t want to get it dirty or whatever, [01:09:00] because I’d never been on track in the rain.

And I said, okay, well, I’m going to take my car and I’m going to go out there in the rain. I’m just going to see what happens. And so I went out there and drove like grandma, hitting the brakes halfway down the straightaway. I mean, I was scared to death that, you know, the car is just going to go skitter off into the sunset.

And every lap, I went a little bit faster, a little bit more aggressive, a little bit more, brake a little bit harder, just doing all that stuff. And by the time the session was over, in eight or nine laps, I had come down to within a couple of seconds of my dry lap time. in that car because they handle so well and they’re so predictable.

And as a DE car, we see these folks come to our region’s DEs and they’ll show up with a 2021 911 Turbo and they’ve never driven anything faster than a Toyota Corolla. They’ll go 125, 130, 140 miles an hour down straightaway, and the rest of the track they’ll go 30 miles an hour. A 944 will teach you how to [01:10:00] drive because one of the things about these cars is they’re old enough that they don’t have all the things that make you into a hero.

I had a Boxster for about a year. It was a great car, loved it. Had it up at Rolling Road in Savannah on two occasions in the middle of a turn. It saved me. Too aggressive, too hot, back end started to come out, car fixed it for me. To me, that makes me a hero, but actually the car’s the hero. 944, you don’t have any of that stuff.

You have brakes, you have clutch, you have gas pedal and steering wheel, and that’s all you have to go with. And you learn how to drive. We always say, and of course it’s the 944 guys who say it, but it’s more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow. Horsepower will get you out of a lot of trouble.

At 150, 160 horsepower, we don’t have horsepower. The gas pedal in a lot of situations is an on off switch. You’re either flat out or you’re off the gas. But they’re so predictable and they work so well. In SCCA, we have stock brakes. We don’t go with big aftermarket brakes and all because the stock [01:11:00] brakes are so good.

Another thing too is these guys go out here in these DEs with these 911s and Boxster Ss and Caymans and all. And they’re going 160, 170 miles an hour. With no cage, no other protection other than the body of the car. My stock 944 might be good for 120 miles an hour. And if I go off track and I hit something and scrub off speed from there, I’ll survive.

But somebody in a 911 at 170 miles an hour. May not because they don’t have the protection. Now I’m to a point in my life now where I will go on track unless I’m in a car with a full cage and five point horses, Hans device and all that only because I’m married and that has a lot to do with it. I’ve been on track.

I’ve raced at Daytona at Sebring, you know, Daytona international speedway is a great place to race. Kind of boring because you’re flat out all the time, but it’s a historic place. Sebring same way. It’s historic. You go out there, you do the best you can, but the cars are so solid and they talk [01:12:00] to you. And because of that, they’re a great starter car for DEs because you have to learn how to drive it.

And there’s nothing more fun than going into a turn. And the turn, all of a sudden, you feel the car take a set. It just sits down. And then you get a nice, controllable four wheel drift as you’re coming out. The car straightens out, and you’re rocketing down there, and you think, wow, you know, that was really pretty cool.

I want to do that again. And then you try the next three laps, and it doesn’t work. DE is the way to go, and then you can go to PCA Club Racing. They’re very competitive. They have their own class. Three levels in PCA Club Racing. SCCA, you’re either in ITA or ITS or e production. IT, which is improved touring.

The cars are basically stock with a cage, seats, and harnesses, and a fire bottle. Relatively cheap racing. My race car, if I get 130 mile an hour in a back straight in Daytona, it’s because the wind’s blowing from the west. The RX 7s go [01:13:00] 150, as we were talking about earlier. You know, they go right by you. So that’s kind of where I stand on the whole DE racing thing.

Crew Chief Eric: So that being said, for somebody that might have a 944 or 924 sitting around now, any setup tips or longevity items you recommend for somebody that’s going to take it from their street, from their cruise, from their cars and coffee? And do a D E with the car, or maybe decide to get into racing some things that you can pass along.

Kevin Duffy: Brakes of course are imperative because if you’re going to go fast, you need to be able to stop. Check every system, make sure that the suspension, the Coney adjustable shocks are the hot ticket. I love them. Big sway bars. Coilovers on the front, because the front springs on a 944 are really weak. They’re 160 pound, 200 pound.

We run 275 and a big sway bar on the front, 18 or 20 millimeter sway bar in the back, and that tends to tighten up the rear enough. The original 924s didn’t have a rear sway bar. They didn’t need it. You know, you still don’t see really big sway bars on the rear, but an 18 or 20 millimeter is [01:14:00] about all you need.

The stock torsion bars, you don’t really need to beef anything up. Put a couple of KONI adjustable shocks on the back, set them full hard, and then adjust on the front is where you go. A four point roll bar in a track car, for one thing, it allows you to run race seats and a five point harness, and that’s important.

But the four point roll bars, the legs bolt in to the floor right next to the rear suspension pickup points. And as long as the roll bar has a diagonal in it, it makes the rear end as solid as you can ever make it. Because it takes any twist that might be incurred by the rear suspension. It takes that and keeps it twisting the car so that with a strut bar and the engine compartment and that car is tight and solid, decent tires can experiment with different size wheels, depending on what track you’re at, what they allow.

But you know, a good street tire with a low tread wear rating, 200 that you can drive to and from the track with those tires, you know, everybody says, I [01:15:00] want more horsepower. No, you know. Take weight out of it if you can and beef up the suspension, make the suspension really work really well. And then you can use the horsepower you have more efficiently and more effectively.

Crew Chief Brad: So we’ve talked a lot about the nine 24 and the nine 44. What about alternatives? What about the nine 28 or if you can afford it, the nine 68, which is the grand baby of all of them.

Kevin Duffy: Well, the 968 was actually supposed to be a 944 S3. When it was under development, that’s what it was supposed to be. But then they realized that about the only thing that it shared with the 944 was the main body shell, from the firewall to the tail.

And even the tail was different, and the rear suspension pickups were different. So they said, we’re just going to give it its own number. I’m sure the marketing department had a lot to do with that too. The 968 is a great car, don’t get me wrong, but they didn’t make them in great numbers. It’s a three liter, which is a huge force on it.

It’s a 104 millimeter bore twin cam. It’s [01:16:00] got variable valve timing that’s oil controlled. There’s a timing belt that drives the exhaust side cam, and then a timing chain between the two cams. It’s really complicated. And one of the things about the twin cams, the 944 s twin cam, as well as the three liter cars, is that if you don’t get the timing chain between the two cams exactly perfect with the right lash and all that, and it’s dial indicators and all the stuff that you have to do to get it right, it’s going to run horribly.

And most of us aren’t capable of doing that kind of thing. So you’ve got to get it, you know, you got to hire somebody to do it. And since they didn’t make very many of them, finding somebody to do it is kind of tough. The 928, I had a student in a DE that had a 78 928 and it was wonderful. What a car. Oh my goodness.

It was a, an early one. It was a 4. 5 liter V8. The thing handled well, was comfortable, was powerful. It was a [01:17:00] great car. However, when you look at a 928, you open the passenger door, you get down on your knees and you pull down the foot well that your passenger is going to put his feet up against at the front of the interior and a little leather strap there and you pull that strap down and that entire area, which is probably 16 by 10 inches is all wires, relays, and connectors and jumpers and stuff.

I’ve yet to see one that was unmolested because somebody had gone in there and say, well, this isn’t working right. So I’m going to fix it. And once you start screwing with the electronics on a nine 28, you’re done. The other thing, too, about a 928 that we didn’t know until my friend’s shop almost burned to the ground was that the ABS pump for a 928 lives under the driver’s side fender, which is aluminum, of course.

It has a direct connection to the battery that is unfused, so [01:18:00] when the pump shorts out, goes bad, and overloads, which it can do sitting in the shop overnight or your garage overnight. It will burn and when it does it burns everything. He had one in his shop that they were doing a restoration on. The pump caught fire and the fire was hot enough that the fender in that area actually caught fire.

That takes 3, 300 degrees for aluminum to actually burn. Again, the 928 was way ahead of its time, but a lot of the things that they made it do, that made it ahead of its time, were done in a way that we would call today crude. It was mechanical, it was crude electronics, it was relays, microswitches, things like that.

And because of that, I’m not a big fan. If you haven’t figured out by now, I like simplicity. I love that the 944 has a steel tube connected to the shifter. That steel tube goes down on top of the [01:19:00] driveshaft tube, and that steel tube connects directly to the transaxle. That’s what you shift with. It’s simple, there’s no cables, there’s no nylon, pulleys, none of that stuff.

It’s just a piece of steel, and I like that, so I’m not a fan of the 928 because of that. They did a good job, and in the day it was a wonderful car, but they really messed up in some of the stuff that today it just doesn’t work well.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s talk about if somebody needs your help, Kevin, and they visit 924S944.

com, what should they expect to find there? What kinds of products and services do you offer? Tell us a little bit about what you do here now in your retirement specializing in these vehicles.

Kevin Duffy: When I started it, I started it because I wanted to send out information and just make information available.

Things that I had learned over the years that I couldn’t find anywhere else. And so now there are over 200 articles about these cars that you can search. For instance, there’s several articles on the hatch and how to [01:20:00] adjust the hatch so it’ll actually work. When you turn the key in the back, will the hatch actually open?

Without having to jiggle it or play with it and all that, there’s some secrets that I’ve learned on how to adjust the latches to make it right. And there’s a couple articles on that, things like that, that, you know, I just couldn’t find anywhere else. And if I have a project I’m working on and I find something unusual, I have one article on there right now where I had a car with one of the cam followers actually broke.

into two pieces and then shattered into other pieces in the camp tower. I’d never seen that before. So I put that out and then I put it out on Facebook and I said, you know, has this happened to anybody else? And what’s the reason and what’s the fix? So that’s the kind of stuff that I put on the site. I also, if I have cars for sale, I put those up, I have parts for sale, I put those up.

I get people that email me and call me and they’ll say, I have this going on and I’m not sure what to check. I’m not sure where to look. I’m not sure what to do. And it does take some of my time, but I really enjoy talking to these folks because it allows me [01:21:00] to kind of stretch my brain a little bit and say, okay.

It’s always a good day when my shop’s in back of my house, my commute’s about a hundred feet. It’s pretty rough some days because, you know, it may be a little bit cold. Like this morning it was 57 degrees. It was terrible. We’re in Florida, you know, 57 is cold, but I’ll go to work in the morning and my wife kicks me out and tells me to go to work and I’ll go out to the shop.

And somebody will call me and say, this is what I have going on, and I don’t know where to start. I don’t know where to look. I’ll go through a series of four or five questions and say, okay, do this, try this, and look at that. Invariably by afternoon or the next day, I’ll get a call back. Hey, I did this, like you told me, and I found that, and I replaced this, or I adjusted that, and now it’s working fine.

And I just want to let you know that, you know, it’s working and it’s fine. And I’ll go in the house at the end of the day, and I’ll tell my wife. I fixed a guy’s car in Michigan today by phone. That’s fun. I have a good time with that. A lot of people email me, you [01:22:00] know, I don’t know how to make my hatch work.

Okay, well here’s three articles. Take a look at it. Here’s the links to them. And somebody needs parts. Some of this stuff is no longer available. It’s hard to find wiper motors right now. Calipers are hard to find right now because the rebuilders like A. A. Cardone does a lot of the rebuilding of import stuff.

They don’t have any cores to do rebuilds with. And now we’re seeing that the rebuild kits are also hard to find. If I see that, I’ll write an article and let people know, Hey, you know, it’s finding a wiper motor is almost impossible, but got somebody who’s 70 years old and has a small electric motor shop in your town.

Take your motor to him. He could probably fix it. You can put a set of bearings in it and you can clean the electrical stuff inside and you’ll make it work again. We’ll just throw it away. Also gives me a sense of kind of giving back and saying, here’s some things that, you know, that I learned some on the hard way.

I learned with my 78 that putting in a [01:23:00] clutch on jack stands on the carport was something I never wanted to do again. You know, you got to learn that the hard way sometime, you know, that’s what I do. And 924S944. com kind of says it all. My big focus these days is on the special edition part because they are very special.

Putting together this registry to try to track where these cars are, you know, how many of them are there and try to connect people who are trying to do restorations and make them right. That’s a big deal for me, preserving some of that past and not letting these cars sit in a corner somewhere and just rot away.

So that’s where I’ve been and where I plan to go. I’ve stopped doing service work because I’ve got too many other things to do. And I am retired and it’s just me. I don’t have a crew out

Crew Chief Eric: here to help me out. Are there any other shout outs, promotions, or anything else that we didn’t cover thus far that you’d like to mention?

Kevin Duffy: Got a real good friend of mine, known him forever. He’s up in North Georgia and he’s got a three acre farm cover with 944s and sells parts. And if I don’t have it, Elliot does. Elliot Grafton, what a guy, nice [01:24:00] guy. And he’s up there in Blairsville, Georgia. And he services our customers all over the country and even overseas.

One really important one, and that’s my wife, Barbara. Barbara, although she will never admit it openly in public, is a gearhead. She’s as bad as me. She’s had a couple of Miatas. She’s had a couple of MGBs over the years. We just celebrated our 47th anniversary. And when I retired, we have a house with two and a half acres here and out in the country.

And when I retired, she said, well, now it’s time to build your shop and do your thing with your cars. We know as gearheads, we know how rare that can be. That you have that kind of opportunity when you say, yeah, I got a shop in my backyard. You think of a single bay with a roof that’s half caved in and a door that almost closes.

I have a, at this point, three and a half year old 2, 700 square foot steel building with two lifts, an outdoor lift. And the only thing I don’t have is [01:25:00] air conditioning, but I’ve got everything else. And I have my tools and my equipment. I can do my own tire mounting and balancing. I’m in my shop right now.

You kind of see what’s behind me. I’ve got my office out here with my computers. It’s just amazing to be able to have this kind of facility in my backyard. For me to do what I really, really want. It couldn’t happen without her. Then I have my son, Chris, and my grandchildren. Oldest grandchild is Beth and she’s 17 years old.

And we’re working on a 924S automatic for her. She’s doing all the work on it. So, you know, it’s kind of the whole family. I couldn’t do it without her.

Crew Chief Brad: For me, it’s always been about cars for someone that can check their ego at the door, enjoy a spirited drive, and doesn’t need to look flashy or brag about horsepower while doing it.

And that’s why I love the 924 specifically, but I guess also the 944. To learn more about 924s and [01:26:00] 944s, be sure to visit Kevin’s site. www. 924S944. com or reach out directly to Kevin via email at krduffy at me. com or by phone at 386 547 9625.

Crew Chief Eric: Thanks, Brad. And thanks again to Kevin. I can’t thank you enough for coming on BreakFix and sharing your passion for the 924s and 944s with our audience, with everybody out here.

It’s really awesome to talk to subject matter experts about, especially what we would consider nowadays. Classic cars and collector cars like 944, especially from the Porsche world. And you know, when you think about these cars, obviously they’re iconic. It’s always been on our honorable mention list to this day as a starter track car for somebody to cut their teeth in the motor sports world.

It is probably one of the best, if not the best handling vehicles on the planet, but we shouldn’t shy away. From the 924s, [01:27:00] especially the 924s. So for those of you out there that are considering your first collector car, or maybe your next DE car, think about the 924s and give Kevin a call.

Kevin Duffy: And I do appreciate you guys, um, calling me up and, uh, wanting to, uh, reach out and see what I might be able to offer for you.

It’s been a privilege and it’s been an honor and I do appreciate it.

Crew Chief Eric: Thank you for coming on. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Kevin Duffy: Thank you all very much.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 1770. Or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you [01:28:00] enjoyed this episode of BreakFix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.

For as little as 2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newtons, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without fans, supporters, and members like you.

None of this would be possible.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction to Grand Touring Motorsports
• 00:22 The Last of the Cheap Porsches
• 00:51 Porsche 924 and 944: A Deep Dive
• 01:43 Kevin Duffy’s Journey with Porsches
• 04:56 The Evolution of the Porsche 924 and 944
• 05:23 Porsche vs. Volkswagen: The 924 Origins
• 11:40 The 944’s Impact and Engineering
• 19:35 Buying and Restoring Porsches
• 38:39 Special Edition Porsches
• 45:27 Special Edition 924S: A Collector’s Dream
• 45:57 Driving Adventures and Events
• 46:38 The Rarest of the Rare: 924 Carrera GT
• 47:22 Building Carrera GT Replicas
• 48:30 SCCA and Porsche Kit Cars
• 49:51 Engine Swaps: V8s and 1.8 Turbos
• 53:55 Floating Cylinder Design Explained
• 57:41 Volkswagen and Porsche Parts Compatibility
• 01:00:27 Market Prices and Buying Tips
• 01:06:51 DE and Racing with 924s and 944s
• 01:15:16 Future of 924 and 944 Ownership
• 01:19:24 Kevin Duffy’s Services and Resources
• 01:23:42 Final Thoughts and Acknowledgements

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