1980 Porsche 924 Turbo (Series 1)

[lesmondo]

I’ve been a long time Porsche fan and have owned a 911 SC for a good many years now. I cut my teeth on this car mechanically and do all the maintenance myself. The SC is in fine fettle and for a while I had been toying with the idea of buying a project car to work on and had been keeping an eye on so called barn and garage finds (terms which are used far too loosely I find) on ebay etc. I flirted with the idea of Capris (2.8 and 3.O’s), XR3 (not XR3i) and mk 1 XR2’s. Nothing really came up that was priced low enough for me. Then one Friday evening in March 2014, I stumbled across the add below on Pistonheads:

“trying to sell a 1984cc Porsche 924 turbo charged. it does not run because the battery flat. it has been sitting in a garage for about 10 years started up a couple of time in that ten years. bodywork in good condition. all paperwork available throughout the life of the car.”



Mileage was stated as 9k. Seemingly too good to be true and the photos were terrible as you can see. I was intrigued enough to give the vendor a call but didn’t get much more information – she clearly knew little about the car (apart from the fact it had been in her garage since 2001). I duly arranged to view it the following day!

The story is that that car was bought by her boyfriend as a project in 2001 as it needed some work (she couldn’t remember what) and then he passed away and the car sat from that point on. Once I had removed all the garden furniture and other detritus that was on the car, I proceeded to take a good look. The engine bay was pure filth, cobwebs, leaves etc but the outer body was pretty straight apart from offside lower wing rust and some previous owner modifications (removal of black trim and lots of colour coding – very 90’s). I spotted a couple of missing exhaust manifold studs, split front seats (ooh Pascha ) but otherwise it was a good project candidate. The structure was very sound as I would expect having spent the last 50% of its life in dry storage.

The odometer showed 12k rather than 9k and I could tell that it was 112k by the cars condition. Looking through the paperwork over a cup of tea, I saw that the mileage stated on the last MOT was 9k and this is clearly where that figure came from. Needless to say I bought it and trailered it home the following week.




I didn’t have a plan for the car, perhaps a CGT tribute or maybe strip it out and use it as a track car. That’s was until I realised how rare these turbo models are. Anything but a restore would be a crime I think.

This was 18 months ago so I will add some details of my progress over the next few days as time allows.

[GT4ME]

Look forward to the updates.

[longman]

Wotcha Les

[retrorob86]

Looking forward to seeing what you have done with it

[duncanmartin]

Hi Les
Nice to see you on here.
924 Turbos are great. I might be slightly biased though!
Cheers
Duncan

[iant]

Very nice! Interested to see the progress you make with this!

[lesmondo]

Decided the first job was to get it running. Pulled the in tank fuel pump to drain the old fuel. Disgusting brown varnish!. Jumped the fuel pump relay but nothing. Both pumps were dead.

I also noticed that the fuel lines from the primary fuel pump were very badly corroded, a known 924 weakness.





Corroded sections were cut out and replaced with fuel hose and both fuel pumps were replaced. With the fuel lines at the fuel metering head disconnected and in a jar, I jumped the relay again and flushed through all the curse word fuel and with nice fresh fuel running through the lines, I buttoned it up and changed the fuel and oil filters, added clean oil too. Changed the cam timing belt and then went for the start up -bingo!

[lesmondo]

Pulled forward and back to make sure I could get gears. Sounds dreadful with that exhaust manifold issue 

[Carrera RSR]

Reading with interest. Keep it coming

[lesmondo]

So, with the knowledge that the engine ran well, albeit with the exhaust manifold issue, I decided that it would make sense to remove the engine in order to tackle the head repair work. The head can be removed with the engine in the car but access is pretty poor, as is my bask. Before the engine can come out, I needed to drop the cross member which fouls on the sump because the engine needs to be pulled forward off of the torque tube. You don’t need to do this if you pull the TT and the trans backwards (as per the workshop manual) but this seemed to me like a whole lot more work. As I was planning to refurb the suspension anyway, I decided to drop this out of the way first.




All the parts were sent away for blasting and powder coating or passivating after a lot of cleaning. I will need new poly bushes all round plus shocks. The brake discs were as new once the surface rust was cleaned off but the callipers will need rebuilding for sure.

I pulled the steering rack apart for a good clean. Here it is prior to re-assembly and painting of the case.



Rack all rebuilt and lots of nice shiny bits carefully stored.

[camerashy]

Nov 27, 2015 16:11:57 GMT lesmondo said:

That’s was until I realised how rare these turbo models are. Anything but a restore would be a crime I think.

Are they that rare lesmondo ? I keep seeing them pop on kijiji (Canadian version of gumtree) all the time for pennies. There is one guy who's been trying to sell two of them as a pair for $1500 for forever.

Intrigued to know if it's worth getting one as a winter beater being that the 911 project I now have is going to take me *quite* a while to getting around to.

Love the seats and that's on the original wheels!

[duncanmartin]

camerashy
There are something like 80 RHD 924 Turbos left. They might be more plentiful in the Americas or Europe, but over here they are pretty rare.
Cheers
Duncan

[g52oyc]

Prices are on the up in the UK now aswell, have a series 1 and 2 myself.

[lesmondo]

That's true but the cost of restoring one of these soon mounts up. Getting the turbo rebuilt cost almost 80% of the cost of the car. The way things are going the restoration cost will exceed what I believe to be the current value of a restored car. But that's ok because I didn't take this project on for a profit...

[commervan]

Your right there every thing that got taken off mine needed work n I ended up with a 15000 924 worth 2000 !!!

[Carrera RSR]

Dec 1, 2015 7:23:03 GMT lesmondo said:

That's true but the cost of restoring one of these soon mounts up. Getting the turbo rebuilt cost almost 80% of the cost of the car. The way things are going the restoration cost will exceed what I believe to be the current value of a restored car. But that's ok because I didn't take this project on for a profit...

£250 -600 for a turbo rebuild depending on parts/machining
£2000 - £20000 for a rough to pristine 924 turbo (£45k - £65k for a 924CGT. £100k - £200k for 924CGTS)

Unless its a super rare model, its never economical for a resto on a lot of Porsche. But the 924 turbo is worth it just to scare many 911 drivers on the straights, and out handle them in the twisties

[Woofwoof]

Bookmarked.

[lesmondo]

With the front running gear out of the way, time to set about preparing for engine removal. Now there is not a lot of space in the engine bay of one of these puppies and because the engine must be pulled forward once dropped off of the engine mounts, the coolant plumbing and rad had to be removed along with whole lot of tin ware and bracketry.

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The four bolts connecting the Torque Tube and engine were ok but very very fiddly to get anything onto. However by far the biggest issue I was expecting were the eight nuts connecting the exhaust to the turbo and wategate, given their proximity to the underside of the car. To my amazement they all spun off very easily (to the point I think the PO freed them off before he died) but one of the exhaust to turbo nuts was just out of reach. It took almost three hours of patience, perseverance, creativity and swearing to finally get this one off given its awkward location!

With the starter motor and clutch hydraulics out of the way, I was ready to go. My neighbour lent me his crane and I got a cheap engine stand from eBay ready to go. The rest was easy but helped with an assistantant (thanks Dad) pumping the crane as I watched to make sure nothing snagged.

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Before getting it on the stand, I needed to remove the bell housing and Clutch, but the bell housing proved to be an issue. The retaining pin for the clutch release fork need to be driven out of the bell housing with a drift, however, the lower end of the retaining pin is locked in place with a little M6 bolt. This proved to be the first fixing to shear so far AAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! I tried to drill it out but being steel in soft aluminium, I made a right mess of it and ended up cutting it out using a dremel . With the bellhousing out of the way (and knackered for now) I pulled the clutch and flywheel and got the lump mounted on the stand.

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The turbo, manifold and wastegate came off first, needing a little heat, revealing the mess of a cylinder head and the cause of the exhaust blow (plus signs of some comic attempts to bodge it with sealant) . As well as the missing studs (hence the sealant attempt) some of the threads in the stud holes were also damaged.

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Now my original plan was to pull the head to get the manifold studs replaced and any repairs doneBut why not get new valve guides and a skim while its out? And while the head is off and the engine is out of the car, why not break it down and replace the bearings and rings…? Oh dear, I think I have caught whileyouareinthereitis.

[lesmondo]

Needed to tackle the front end to remove all that ‘personalisation damage’:

4 turbo intake vents painted white
Front bumper over-riders removed and holes filled & painted
Rubber trim between the bumper lights and indicators removed and white ‘panels’ fitted over the top
Porsche badge removed and holes filled & painted
Lower plastic grille missing but replaced with chicken wire
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I sourced some over-riders, the light trim pieces and grille on eBay and re-installed them. For the grille I had to fabricate some new brackets as the originals were missing (hence the PO use of chicken wire I guess!). The intake vents I re-used after painstakingly removing all the paint with a sharp razor blade as they are hard to find and costly for what they are.
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While the bumper was off, I repainted the area around the bumper mounts which had a little surface rust. I also broke a headlight washer nozzle when re-installing the bumper (grrrrr) only to find they are NLA. Luckily a pair of new old stock nozzles were up on US eBay so snapped them up and then got everything re-installed.
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The old alarm was poorly installed so pulled all of that and associated wiring which tidied up the area around the fuse box nicely.
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[Morris63]

I had a feeling this would be good when I saw your post in the new member's section.

That alarm wiring was alarming!