Der Sportwagen

July / August 2016 17 the cover, it was totally rotten. So……… And in one of the many race car builds we have done, we pulled out a fairly decent airbag dash. It isn't perfect, but it will do for getting this car up and running. Free vs. $500-700 for a professionally recovered dash. I'll go with it for now. With all this screwing around with the cosmetics (okay, so maybe it didn't all hap- pen exactly in this order), I needed to get the motor up and running (honestly after the car was clean enough to work on, this was the first thing I did, so I could make sure the rest of the engine was good). I pulled the timing belt apart, and knew I would have to pull the head due to bent valves. When I pulled the valve cover, I found the cause of the tim- ing belt failure, which was a cam chain fail- ure which broke the tensioner off the head, broke the chain, and stripped about 4 teeth off the exhaust cam. Uh oh…..until I started looking. I found all 4 broken teeth of the cam laying in the head, all the chain pieces, the broken aluminum chunk off the head where the tensioner mounts, and the pieces of the chain tensioner pad. Bonus number two. All fixable. And when I say all fixable, I mean, I have a spare S2 head sitting on the shelf ready to go on. Otherwise, to find a cam, go through the head at a machine shop, reweld the boss and replace the tensioner, you are probably looking at $1500 in parts minimum. A good used head, maybe $1000 if you can find one. Fast forward. Head is replaced, car is up and running after installing a fresh head, tensioner, chain, timing belt, water pump, rollers, front engine seals, oil cooler seals, etc. I was very surprised to find the cylin- der walls looking nearly perfect. A bum fuel injector caused some running issues at first, but that has been replaced and we are purr- ing like a kitten. Cap, rotor, and wires were all nearly new. Parts total so far? (let's assume you don't have a massive stash of 944 parts from race car builds at your disposal) Fresh head (used, rebuilt), Timing belt, balance belt, rollers: $1500 Oil cooler seals: $50 Oil, coolant, filter, shop incidentals: $150 Dash recover or good used dash (again, if you can find one): $250-750 Fuel injector used: $100 Detailing bill: I don't want to know, but I'm sure I'll be paying for it for awhile…… Spare tire, jack, jack handle that were missing: $100 Spark plugs: $20 Hall sensor: $100 Labor? So far there is probably about 20 hours of billable labor in the car. $2000 Oh and the car: $1000 My common core math skills quickly tell me that we have somewhere in the neigh- borhood of $5000 in it at this point. Stay tuned……. - KARL

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