3.4L Motor Swap Underway! - 986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners

insite · 09-07-2010, 08:54 AM

well, i finally found the right combination of time & money; i finally started the swap. i will document the process, but i am not going photo by photo & taking my time. i plan to do this in a couple of bursts, & i should be complete late this month / early next month.

i will take some occasional photos of the process, and i plan to specifically document a couple of things:

1. stuff i buy. i will keep a running tally of everything i buy along w/ price & source.
2. fuel rail setup. i will thoroughly document however i do this.
3. maf housing / intake setup
4. motor mounting (i.e. how i lowered the motor)
5. LN IMS retrofit

the plan is to install a stock 3.4L motor that i sourced from a guy in NYC. it's a '99, with around 40k miles on it. i will be upgrading the IMS. it looks like EVO Motorsports will build my intake plumbing, with a 996 diameter MAF housing to boot. (QUESTION: do i need a 996 MAF, or am i good with the OEM 986?)

hopefully, todd will reprogram my ECY & supply me with a DME pin for the VarioRam functionality.

i will also be adding a 996 guage cluster w/ analog oil pressure output.

if anyone has SPECIFIC stuff they want to see photos of, let me know & i'll try to accomodate (time permitting).

looking forward to this! my poor car has been sitting for 18mos.

insite · 09-07-2010, 09:00 AM

as i post pics, i will also try to document time. YMMV, i have a LOT of experience working on cars.

yesterday, i lifted the car & removed the wheels, suspension braces, halfshafts, exhaust, bumper, heat shielding, convertible top & clamshell.

total time: 1hr 8min

insite · 09-07-2010, 09:02 AM

another thought - charles at LN: i plan to install your IMS retrofit. a '99 3.4L is a double row, correct? any chance i can trade you a dead 2.5L core for a discount?

insite · 09-07-2010, 10:25 AM

charles - questions on your accusump kits:

you have an HPDE & a race version. does the remote filter on the race version allow use of a deeper filter so it doesn't have to be changed every 1200 miles?

what is the use of the electronic valve? does it just activate the system? is the HPDE version just a manual valve that i'd have to pop the trunk to activate? what is the purpose of deactivating the system at all?

tnoice · 09-07-2010, 10:40 AM

Wow, an hour and 8 minutes. You were moving through that project. Will be looking forward to seeing the progress in the coming months.

Cloudsurfer · 09-07-2010, 10:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by insite

well, i finally found the right combination of time & money; i finally started the swap. i will document the process, but i am not going photo by photo & taking my time. i plan to do this in a couple of bursts, & i should be complete late this month / early next month.

i will take some occasional photos of the process, and i plan to specifically document a couple of things:

1. stuff i buy. i will keep a running tally of everything i buy along w/ price & source.
2. fuel rail setup. i will thoroughly document however i do this.
3. maf housing / intake setup
4. motor mounting (i.e. how i lowered the motor)
5. LN IMS retrofit

the plan is to install a stock 3.4L motor that i sourced from a guy in NYC. it's a '99, with around 40k miles on it. i will be upgrading the IMS. it looks like EVO Motorsports will build my intake plumbing, with a 996 diameter MAF housing to boot. (QUESTION: do i need a 996 MAF, or am i good with the OEM 986?)

hopefully, todd will reprogram my ECY & supply me with a DME pin for the VarioRam functionality.

i will also be adding a 996 guage cluster w/ analog oil pressure output.

if anyone has SPECIFIC stuff they want to see photos of, let me know & i'll try to accomodate (time permitting).

looking forward to this! my poor car has been sitting for 18mos.

Your IMS is likely a double row, but there's no way to know for sure until you either match the serial number of the engine and/or visually verify. If you have the motor in front of you, it's pretty easy to tell as the single row has a deeply set flange, while the double row does not. There are plenty of pictures floating around of both types, as well as on LN's site.

Since you will be flashing the DME over to a 996 3.4 program, you will need a 996 size MAF. I am running a Cayman S MAF on my 3.6 based 3.8, which as far as I know is the same size as the 996 MAF and has the airflow smoothing grid. For intake plumbing, I am running a BMC CDA airbox, which gets air through some SCAT hose routed up to the driver side vent, and from the CDA goes through 3 1/2" hard pipe (sourced from Vibrant) and silicone joiners (Hose Techniques) and a silicone elbow (Samco). For my 996 3.6 throttle body, I actually needed a 3 1/4" silicone elbow to get a good fit on the throttle body, which is a very unusual size and was difficult to get from Samco, and then I also needed a piece of 3 1/4" tubing (only place I could find it was Burns Stainless) to make a joiner out of to mate to a 3 1/2 to 3 1/4 silicone reducer as the Cayman S MAF is sized for 3 1/2 pipe. I have extras of all this stuff if you can use it. See attached pic for my setup.

I believe you only have to run the wires from the DME harness to the VarioRam solenoid to make that work.

If you use the stock plastic 996 manifolds, you will need to lower the engine. Seems most people machine spacers for the front and use 964 mounts at the rear. If you get the metal X51 manifolds (you'd need both uppers and lowers, and it uses the same crossover pipes and throttle body), you can actually leave the engine at stock Boxster height.

My donor car was an 03S, so it already had the non-return fuel system, so I merely ran Aeroquip hose to the 996 fuel rails, and re-used the factory Boxster fuel connection to connect to the hard pipe on the car. If you have return type fuel system, I think you're going to have to keep it that way.

Pat · 09-07-2010, 12:42 PM

Nice work, insite! Look forward to watching the progress.

clickman · 09-07-2010, 07:58 PM

I love it! Post as much progress and pics as you possibly can. Thanks

insite · 09-09-2010, 04:35 AM

did a bit more work yesterday. i stripped down the new motor, pulling off the intake & plumbing, secondary air stuff, & other ancilliary equipment.

following this, i did some general inspections of the motor. this particular engine has been on a shelf for EIGHT years, follwing extraction from what was purported to be a front-end wreck at 40k miles. it looks like they sprayed it down to degrease it, but never rinsed the caustic agent. the result is some pitting & corrosion of the aluminum, visible in some of the photos below.

the intake valves look brand new; no visible deposits of any kind. i pulled the plugs & examined the piston tops (as much as was possible). everything looks really good. i drained the oil, as well. smells nice, looks to be in very good condition, and, most importantly, contained no metallic sediment. i saved the oil & will send a sample to blackstone for analysis as soon as my kit arrives.

i also did a 'ghetto' cylinder pressure test. a proper cylinder pressure test is conducted when the engine is warm. the starter is used to turn the motor. this engine is cold, all the oil has long since drained from the head & from the lifters. additionally, i had to spin it by hand (after spraying some lubricant into the cylinders). most cylinders, i could get 60psi. there were two where i got only around 30psi. i could hear the hiss of air slipping past the intake valves. under normal testing conditions, this would really concern me. given a cold motor that has been sitting for 8yrs, i am not as concerned. very likely, this issue will go away after the first time the motor warms up.

i placed my initial order from Sunset Imports for seals, gaskets, o-rings, bolts, & additional bits i'll be replacing. hopefully, that will be here by next weekend.

this weekend, i will drop the motor & tranny. i will be pulling out all of the old heat shield & insulation from the engine bay & generally cleaning things up.

Time: 1hr 15min (strip motor)
Time: 1hr 35min (inspect & test)

fellow board member Byron in Atlanta dropped by for a bit; he recently blew his motor at road atlanta & wanted to check out the progress. he found a rod cap sitting on his case.......not good.

check out the corrosion here:

and more corrosion here:

variocam actuator wires torn:

suspicious bend in exhaust manifold. maybe during the accident?

insite · 09-13-2010, 12:51 PM

did some more work over the weekend. dropped the motor & cleaned a bunch of things. overall, it went very well. this car, to me, is nice to work on.

the toughest part was turning the motor sideways to clear the suspension subframe. FYI, you have to pull the flywheel to get clearance.

IMS retrofit is on the way. a HUGE box of goodies from sunset is on the way. a new clutch disk from spec is on the way (their stage 1 clutch for the boxster, BTW, is good to 340ft-lbs of torque). i have also ordered a BMC air filter, some bits from pelican, & probably a few things i'm forgetting......$$$$$!!!!!!

Times:
Prep: 2hrs 20min (includes draining coolant, breaking lines, removing AC comp.
Drop: 1hr 30min (includes dropping the tranny & motor separately)
Clean: 2hr 10min (getting the goo off everything)

Cloudsurfer · 09-13-2010, 02:51 PM

Looking good! Something to think about when putting this back together, is joining the engine and gearbox out of the car, and then stuffing the whole lump back in. All you have to remove is the cross brace (4 15mm bolts) and you can slide the whole thing back in in one piece.

I find it WAY easier to mate the two out of the car, and it's especially easier to get all the fasteners together that way.

insite · 09-13-2010, 02:57 PM

agreed on mating the engine & tranny, however, my car simply isn't high enough to clear the subframe without turning the motor sideways. this won't work with the tranny attached. i'd go higher, but my motorcycle jack will not......

clickman · 09-13-2010, 04:03 PM

[QUOTE=insite]

QUOTE]
What the ????

insite · 09-13-2010, 04:24 PM

haHA! someone is paying attention!

clickman · 09-13-2010, 09:56 PM

Ok, for a minute there I thought maybe that was your technical advisor on the engine swap...

ekam · 09-14-2010, 04:56 AM

Good work on detailing the project. Anyone who's doing this needs to have lots of patience & time. I wish I had the patience (& money) to do the swap when mine went.

Cloudsurfer · 09-14-2010, 06:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by clickman

Ok, for a minute there I thought maybe that was your technical advisor on the engine swap...

I hope not

insite · 09-14-2010, 06:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cloudsurfer

I hope not

tech advisor is actually the badger; he took the photo....

insite · 09-20-2010, 03:00 AM

did a bit more work this weekend; mostly just organizing & cleaning. the corrosion on the block was a bit excessive; i tried an acid etch (alumiprep 33) followed by alodine to halt the process & protect the metal. it looks a LOT better, but not nearly so good as it would if i could have dipped it instead.

LOADS of parts are on the way, & many have already shown up. my clutch is here, IMS arrived, a batch of goodies from Pelican (motor mounts = $104!), etc.

the real meat should start showing up from Sunset late this week. this will be o-rings, gaskets, seals, secondary air stuff, etc.

next weekend, i'll start building up the new motor & pulling all the goods off the old one.

i did find one interesting deformity on the block. it looks like someone tried to repair the case by weldind on some extra aluminum. if this is factory work, it sure is sloppy......

look at the case bolt flange:

the left one is normal. the right one, not so much....

insite · 09-23-2010, 09:19 AM

finally found some evidence of the old motor's demise (other than it being locked up, of course). i pulled the intake manifold last night, amongst other things. the intake valves all look fine, but the intake manifold itself is full of oil and metal.

not sure exactly how it made its way to the intake; my first guess would be AOS, but the AOS is fairly new & shows no signs of having been the source. after i get the carr running, i'll tear down the old motor & find out......