The guy who sent us an angry email for daring to imply owning a Porsche 944 might be nightmarish emailed us back after he realized that, yes, it actually is a nightmare car.
This was the first email we got back when Mr. Seven realized we'd posted his entire letter:
Dear esteemed Jalopnik contributor-
my letter was more meant to be recieved with an air of sarcasm (i'm from nj... ) and humour.
Perhaps I forgot to cut and paste something? The whole point i was trying to make was that the 928 belongs on that list instead of the 944.
thanks for using the photo with my license plate instead of one of the others.
here's another shot of my daily driver, enjoy!
.seven (it'(s even))
And then, after a little back-and-forth, came this realization.
ok so after our exchange, i was going through old photos to share and realized how "unreliable" the car actually has been...
about a month after i bought it the water pump blew... i was new to the car and took it to the dealer... 1700$ later i swore i was never going back to the dealer for anything but parts.
the following year i had some work done by a porsche shop in exchange for web design work i did for them... they didn't tighten properly one of the bolts that held the airbox onto the MAF and one of those bolts got sucked into the motor broke a valve and cracked the block. undeterred, i bought a used low mile motor, replaced some gaskets and stuck it in.
(see photo: porsche motor 021 for what follows)
The oil pump has no positive interference driving it; or in otherwords- no keyed shaft, just compression from the main crank pully (torque to 150 ft/lbs at least!)
Owners manual clearly states not to add any additives to the oil. I had not read this.
At a freinds suggestion i put some STP oil treatment in.
as you can see in the picture it gummed up the oil pump which has no positive lock to it's drive mechanism and wouldn't you know it... 3 months after putting the motor in (on my way to a final exam) i start the car back out of my driveway and i have no oil pressure due to a seized pump.
ENGINE NUMBER 3:
I rebuilt the motor myself. by hand. with some help from Dick and Christian Ghirabaldi at DARK HORSE (performance and ferrari restoration shop- the owner 'Dick' designed the grand national motor for GM) in madison NJ in addition to 'Rich' in blairstown who has a sunnen machine (to lap the alusil bores) I bored it out to 101.5 and had special pistons made. 6 months later, I supercharged it.
After i superchaged it; within 2 months I blew the studs out of the motor. I machined out the block (with it in the car) and the head and i put custom made studs in... studs with 300,000 psi tensile strength and added a cometic widefire head gasket
A year later i shattered the differential (attached is a pic of grenaded diff (which is in the transaxle obviously))
I replaced the trans with a turbo trans (has a cooler and higher power handling ability) and removed the supercharger.
Later that year i got pulled over for having a loud exhaust (even though it was the stock system) and wound up getting a DUI. the first breathalyzer was over the limit, just. the second time i was way under the limit. despite not having a valid reason for pulling me over and the fact that my second breathalyzer reading was a .07 i was not able to sucessfully fight it. even though it was the contested alcotest machine which was thrown out in other states.
Yeah, this car is a nightmare. And i haven't even mentioned the clutch... the original factory clutch didn't have springs... just a fat disc of rubber that surprisingly cannot live up to being hooned...
also attached are pictures of some cars i restored. yeah, that's a ghostbusters car in there and a pic of the Jeep... there is also a pic of the 944's body work in progress (i did it myself) Enjoy!
Oh, we're enjoying this. Trust us. We're enjoying the hell out of this.