Twelve Months with a Porsche 930

Posted on Saturday, March 21st, 2015

The classic Porsche 930 Turbo. 

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The car was built in 1987, coincidentally the same year I was born. I’m not particularly sentimental but that is just cool. When I bought the car it had 49,150mi on it. Since then I’ve put 6,000mi on it and enjoyed every single one of those miles. Service records show a preventative engine rebuild 10 years ago at 40,000mi. Accompanying the engine rebuild was a long list of seemingly preventative services, one of which was a new OEM turbo. Save for a cat bypass and Alpine/Nakamichi audio system, the car was stock.

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It hadn’t been driven much in recent years so I took it upon myself to clear it’s throat over the summer. There were a few hiccups in the higher RPMs and in general it needed a bit of TLC. Regardless, it ran well enough to get to know the car.

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Whenever I get a car, new or old, I like to take it on a road trip…a right of passage type thing. So when time came to drive to Road America for last year’s Tudor race it was the 930’s turn to prove itself. Six hours and 341mi later…we made it to the track from Minneapolis. What a cruiser. It seems happiest around 80-85mph on the freeway. Gotta love it! No issues to report. The car ran great the whole time and seemed to enjoy running for the long period of time.

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Spending as much time with the car as I did on the trip to Road America, it’s not hard to imagine I became attached to the car. The next step was to clean it up a bit. Black cars are never easy to maintain. I’m OK with some patina on older cars, actually I love it, but we had to do something about condition of the paint. Jen from Carsmotology spent 14hrs restoring the car’s factory Schwarz finish. What a transformation. Neither of us quite knew what to expect out of the process, but both of us were pleasantly surprised. The car looked phenomenal.

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Fast forward to fall 2014 and sunset drives with the car…

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The plan for winter was to accomplish two things 1) dig deeper into the car to find out exactly what it was I bought and 2) put together a game plan for 2015. Turns out the car is in pretty great shape. It’s not concours by any means, but it’s a car that can be driven hard without worry, which makes it’s condition perfect for me. This list of items to address was as follows:

1) Clean underbody & engine bay
2) Rebuild wastegate
3) Replace diverter valve seals
4) Re-index torsion bars F&R, inspect suspension system in general & game plan for improvements
5) 17″ wheels & tires

While relatively short, the list allowed us time to finish other projects and gave us a buffer in case we found any major issues with the car. Cleaning the car was relatively straight forward as was reindexing the torsion bars and rebuilding the wastegate. Now the diverter valve rebuild…that seemed daunting. Thanks to a thread on the Pelican forum, I found it to be straight forward and actually fun. It was neat to dig in and familiarize myself with what is going on in the engine bay of this beast. As predicted, the seals were in need of replacement.

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New seals look ready for action.

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All cleaned up and ready for re-install.

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At this point spring was about a month out and we were in full Auto Show prep mode. Our 2015 311RS model was about to be announced (The Limited Production 311RS Evo X). But just before the show a gift from the Motorsport gods arrived.

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I prefer my cars to be fully functional no matter what the situation. This means they not only need to handle plenty of street driving, but they better be ready for a hard day at the track. That being said…I do love a pretty car. Thankfully the balance of form and function typically end up in harmony. For me, there is nothing more beautiful than functional 911. And what is more functional than a set of magnesium BBS Motorsport E50s? These are the same BBS wheels factory Porsche 934s ran.

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The main reason for going with 17″ wheels for this project was to fit the car with a modern tire from Michelin. Both BBS Motorsport & Michelin are partners in our Porsche program and I have to say, what a team the two make. The wheels and tires balanced out perfectly.

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But how do they fit on the car? While it’s 2015, the car was built in 1987. Stance hadn’t been invented at that time…what a life that must’ve been. Any upgrades to the car were to be strictly functional and mindful of the car’s age. So we took that mindset and moved forward. The beefy wheels and tires fit snugly under the 930s wide fenders without the need to roll or pull the fenders.

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The next step before any springtime driving was to align & corner balance the car. We needed a solid base setup to work from. We took the car to Auto Edge and set the car up based on the recommended settings from our suspension partners at JRZ. Being the car will be running street tires and will spend most of it’s time on the road, I wasn’t after a race car alignment setup. However, I did want the car to maximized every ounce of grip tires had to offer. This meant the alignment was skewed towards performance instead of tire life.

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In the 27 years since my 930 left the factory, the alignment had never been touched. Better late than never I suppose. When Auto Edge dug into the front suspension there wasn’t enough adjustment in the factory setup to get to where I needed it. It was maxing out around -1.8* whereas I was after -2.5*.

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And to make the situation more difficult was the disparity side to side. The driver’s side was nearly half of a degree off from where the passenger’s side camber was set. That was not going to work. Some research led me to Elephant Racing’s Quick Change camber plates. Their site quotes an additional 1.25* of camber over the stock setup. Perfect. A few days later they were in my hands and ready for install. Only issue was I was waiting for another piece I found while researching the front end of the car…

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I found this trick 935 x-brace from D-Zug.

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The design for the D-Zug piece is based directly off that of a factory 935 x-brace. Nearly identical dimensions, same materials, same weight, etc. The difference being their unit is a bolt-in brace vs. a welded brace. For a street car like mine, this was preferred as I don’t want to impact the originality of my car.

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With the x-brace and camber plates installed, we were off to Auto Edge for a final touch up prior to the car’s first time on track. I was curious to see how the setup would end running on the street. It’s a lot of camber for a street car but with the wider wheels and tires I was confident the car would manage without much in the way of negative effects.

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The end result was just as we had hoped. The setup combines period correct looks with modern functionality.

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The E50s feel right at home on the 930, especially with the beefy tire setup.

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Look how the thing sits back there. In person the tires make almost as much of an impact as the wheels do. The car feels like it’s on Tempurpedic pillows…if that makes sense. Firm but plush.

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And here is the full car with it’s baseline setup. The car looks and feels just right and it should give us a solid platform to develop the car with.

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I’ll stop here as I’m sure this thread is getting long in the tooth. Needless to say I’m in love with the car. It’s my first 911 and it certainly won’t be my last. Knowing that 930s tend to be beasts in more way than one, I’m sure it won’t all be fun and games, but so far this car has been nothing but a pleasure to own (and drive). I’ll update the thread with some on-track driving impressions and the next round of mods once we finish everything up in the next few weeks.

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