Porsche 944 Rebuild

Blame Tom Cruise

One summer, Risky Business was about to leave HBO, so I figured why not watch the good ole Tom Cruise stuff. It was pretty great. Especially the famous scene where he slides into frame in socks and a baggy shirt to Bob Seger. But the scene that got me is the one where he takes his dad's Porsche for a joyride.

It starts with the garage door. As it opens, you hear the starter kick in and the cough-cough of an engine trying to come to life. In the background, a heavy-hitting Jeff Beck riff. Then he stalls the car. Jeff Beck stops playing. Silence. He turns the key again, and the riff picks right back up where it left off. I thought this was so cool. Background music breaking the fourth wall, cutting out the moment the hero falls flat.

I thought the car was really cool too. The taillights and bumper are so charismatic. And that rounded fastback!

Fast forward a couple of years. COVID has cleared everyone's calendar, and I'm browsing Marketplace when I see one: a red specimen for $1,000. Even if it barely works, a thousand bucks is surely worth it? I'd be the next Tom Cruise!

I later found out I had bought entirely the wrong Porsche. The one in the movie is a 928, not a 944. But looking at them, I realized I'd accidentally made the right choice. The 944 is the more handsome car.

One to race, one to daily

The plan was tidy. The red car would become our racer for 24 Hours of Lemons (🍋, not Le Mans), the endurance series for cars that cost less than their safety gear. I used to work with an incredible engineer named Tom King. He'd walk into the office carrying two briefcases, one under each arm. Except one was a pug, the other was a frenchie, and they didn't have handles. He was a Lemons guy, and he raced a Buick with a huge hole cut in the hood.

The second car, a creme 1986 model, had been abandoned under a cover in a parking garage. In California, if a towing company tows your car and you don't come for it, eventually it's theirs to sell. I thought this was it. My barn find! That one would be a daily driver I'd restore and actually drive. In practice I couldn't wait, so I made all my mistakes on the daily driver first.

The red Porsche 944 in the garage with its hood open — The red one, bound for 24 Hours of Lemons.

The creme 1986 Porsche 944 parked in a driveway — The red one, bound for 24 Hours of Lemons.

WYIT (While You're In There)

The creme car came to me with a leaking cam tower. I meant to reseal it and move on. Instead I decided to replace every seal in the engine bay of a near-40-year-old car, so I would never have to chase a leak again.

Every part I pulled out and cleaned up put me one step closer to pulling out the next one. And once a whole corner of the engine is apart, the next seal will never be cheaper to replace than it is right now. Mechanics call this "while you're in there." It ended with me buying an engine hoist and lifting the whole engine out in my Sunnyvale garage.

The creme 944 in the garage doorway with its engine lifted out on a hoist — The whole engine, out on a Harbor Freight hoist.

From there the list only grew: a new clutch and pressure plate, new piston rings, fresh bushings and seals throughout, OEM Bilstein struts and shocks from EBS installed at Modderman, and fuel injectors sent out for balancing. The flywheel and cam tower went to Clark's Garage in Cupertino to be resurfaced.

The worn Porsche 944 flywheel as it came out of the car — The flywheel as it came out.

The same flywheel after being machined and resurfaced — The flywheel as it came out.

The resurfaced cylinder head set back into the engine — Cylinder head cleaned up and set back onto the block.

Four Porsche 944 fuel injectors lined up in a tray — The four injectors, off to be flow-balanced.

The creme 944 engine bay coming back together with new seals and hoses — The four injectors, off to be flow-balanced.

I tracked down a Technics head unit that had spent close to forty years sealed in its box.

A new-old-stock Technics car stereo from the 1980s, sealed in its original box — A brand new Technics deck from the 1980s, still in the box. How cool is that!

What it cost

The creme car cost $3,000. By the time I stopped, I had put another $9,713 into a $3,000 car, and that is before counting my own time, which was the real price. There's a meme for this: Joaquin Phoenix's Joker, arms outstretched, knowing smile. "When everyone made fun of my $500 car but I dropped $10k on it and now it's worth $3k... well, who's laughing now?" I am the meme.

Where it went	What for	Cost
The car	1986 944, bought as a project	$3,000
Modderman	Suspension install, brakes, timing belts, alignment, labor	$3,489
Autohaus AZ	Seals, gaskets, sensors, filters (12 orders)	$1,765
944online.com	Complete clutch kit, master and slave cylinders, seals	$1,654
Clark's Garage	Cam tower and flywheel resurfacing	$910
EBS Racing	Bilstein struts and shocks, seals, axle joint kits	$770
GetPorscheParts	Engine mounts, oil pan insert, seals	$619
Lindsey Racing	Silicone hoses, ignition wire	$506
Total		$12,713

The third cost was space. Equipment was never the problem: half a Harbor Freight lived in that garage. What a rebuild really wants is a shop where a half-finished job can sit overnight and be exactly where you left it the next evening. Preferably on a lift.

What it left me wanting to build

I ended up selling both cars to a father-son pair with more space and time than I had, before I left California. I still regret not getting to drive them the way I wanted. But the work left me with a clear idea: take old 944s, gut them, rebuild them with real attention to detail, and supercharge them with modern tech that stays invisible.

Just swapping the 1980s ECU for an Arduino would pull big power and efficiency out of that engine. You could program it to fire a single cylinder while cruising the highway, or convert the whole car to electric and really disintegrate some tires. What I love is the pattern: keep a vintage design alive by breathing new life into it with modern integrations you never see.

The conversion idea is the one I keep coming back to, and not as a one-off. Most EV makers chase range, and range makes cars heavy: the big battery needs a big motor, and the big motor wants more battery. I'd go the other way. Two hundred miles, fast charging, half the weight of anything comparable, and a modest motor, because a light car doesn't need a monster to be quick. Early Miatas were slow on paper and are still some of the most fun cars ever made. So were the FR-S and BRZ.

A few hackers with a stamping press, laser cutters, a CNC, and some electronics know-how could run a real conversion shop: tired 944s in, light, safe, seriously fun EVs out. Someday I want to build it.

Late-night work session on the 944's undercarriage.

Sorting out the red car's ignition in the garage

Lifted for underbody work in the garage.

The red car up on stands with the engine out

The crew

None of this happened alone. Tom Sun, Kevin Huo, Jerry Li, and Rayyan Ghani go back with me to Waterloo mechatronics: five years of classes together, then more in the Bay. Tom was cursed with me as his housemate, so he could never use the garage, and was forced to help me swap the clutch. Shan Mohta, the most capable man on the track, is the only one of us who races regularly. If you see a blue S2000 with a crazy spoiler at Sonoma, might be him.

It was that kind of group. Tom kept a beater Miata, Rayyan a GR86, and Kevin a VW Wolfsburg Edition, right up until it got totaled.

My favorite receipt from the whole project is a speeding ticket: 80 in the leftmost lane of the interstate, red car on the trailer, headed to Davis. The welder there is the same guy who runs tech inspection at Lemons, so we figured a cage he welded would pass without an argument.

If you were in that garage and your name is not here, I still love you. Write me at [email protected] and I will put it right. You will also be teaching Google that my domain is not spam.