Hi All:

As a product of the 1980's the 944T has always been one of those cool cars.

I just sold my Radical SR3 track car and am looking at several chocies, one of which is the 944 Turbo (others are Spec Racer Ford and E36 or E46 BMW M3). Please give me an honest assesment of the reliability of the 944T as a track/race car.

Any input is much appreciated.

Feff

I'll cue Neal on this one - he has a 944T he tracked for years. The general feeling seems to be that they can be reasonably reliable if you don't get greedy with the boost, but the 944S2 seems to be the prefferred "faster" 944 for track use.

If you really want to see how you mesure up as a driver, spend 1/2 the money on a 944 Spec and come out and play in our growing fields!

Feffman wrote:


951 is an awesome car. I just HATE working on them. More to the point; you might want to ruminate on where you want to go. SRF is COMPLETELY different kind of racing than what you would do with a 951. Apples and Oranges totally.

I've tracked a 944 turbo for many years with great success. They are very reliable cars if well maintained. I'm up to 150k and still on the original turbo. In stock-ish form (i.e., with a chip and cat delete) they are comparable in performance to an E36 M3.

There are two challenges to running one as a track car. #1 is that you must start with a car that is well prepared and up to date on maintenance. If you start with a rat or a street car that hasn't seen much use in recent years, you’re likely to become frustrated as each weekend brings a new issue brought on by deferred maintenance. Sounds obvious, but you see this scenario frequently. #2 is that it is very easy to dramatically increase HP with a larger turbo, MAF conversion, piggyback computer, etc. Several vendors sell kits with all of the required components. Many people install this stuff and fail to get the car running properly with a stable, baseline tune. This obviously begets problems. If everything is sorted properly, the addition of 100+ rwhp creates a whole lot of issues when the car is used on the track – brakes, heat dissipation, etc. I wouldn’t bother.

Leave it pretty stock under the hood and it’s a giant killer that will treat you well. Upgrade the suspension with coilovers and it’s even better. An S2 slots well into several race classes, but is a little lacking as just a fun track car IMO unless the car has had a lot of weight removed. 208hp in 3000 lbs is a little meek by modern standards. The 968, with the extra 30hp, is a good alternative.

Thank you for all the input. I love turbo cars (have owned seven turbo daily drivrs) and understand "greed" for turbos is the death knell of the engine.

JB3 wrote:


What's bad about working on the 944T? Constant issues or just tight work space?

Feff

Tight work space is the usual complaint, but it’s better than many modern cars. I’ve found the E39 540i to be comparably inconvenient to work on and would be surprised if an E46 M3 is better. Extensions and wobble joints are your friends.

Like most turbocharged cars, there is also more labor required to do some jobs than on the non-turbo versions because of the need to remove additional intake or exhaust plumbing for access. This mainly manifests in 2-3 hours of extra labor to do a clutch or rod bearing replacement.

I’ve owned mine for 9 years and DIY most of the maintenance. I have the service records back to 1996 (60k miles). When I look back over the years, there are very few jobs that would not have been required on an S2 or NA and I believe that the extra effort/cost of running the Turbo version of the car hasn’t amounted to much. I replaced the cracked headers (common problem) with an aftermarket set that is guaranteed for life in 2007, I’m currently fixing an exhaust leak that would not have cropped up on an NA, and the PO paid an extra 4 hours of labor for a clutch job in 2002 (had to drill out a wastegate stud + the usual 2-3 extra hours to pull the crossover pipe). Outside of that, all of the money has been spent on basic maintenance (belts, fluids, etc.) and stuff that would have gone wrong on an S2 or NA (suspension component replacement, P/S leaks, occasional oil leaks, A/C service, etc.). Mine’s never left me stranded.