Jonny944CS
New member
I did a bit more digging through some old books... Sad I know on a Friday night "" but the missus is away and it's my time to geek out in peace. [8|]
It seems the project was conceived as a marketing exercise prior to the 944 launch proper. However the decision by the factory to develop a dedicated 16v head cannot have been taken lightly.
Camcover emblazoned "944 Le Mans"
The cylinder head itself bared no similarity to the later production version.
For all those camshaft-drive fact fans out there ^^ the neat twin belt pulley arrangement was patented by Audi/Porsche with prior art later cited against Yamaha. And can now be found in a large number of small VW/Audi petrol engines"¦.
The bottom end featured a special dry sump casting and belt-driven scavenge pump. Balancer shafts were fitted "" and subsequently carried over into production. Interestingly, Hans Mezger is quoted as saying the shafts gave a 5hp penalty. They tried taking them off, but without them the vibrations from the oversquare 4-banger were breaking components after just a few hours in racing conditions.
A KKK k28 turbocharger was mounted on the inlet side, in a very similar position to the production 944t and fed by a huge front-mounted intercooler.
With a plan to go for a win at Lemans, the engine was producing 510 bhp at just under 1.5bar during testing at Paul Ricard. However reliability around the block => gasket interface was proving to be an issue.
Sadly plans for the GTP changed quite quickly after a decision to revive the 936 racers. The engine was downgraded to 1.3bar (450bhp) for reliability testing and finally 1.1 bar for the race giving 420bhp at 6200rpm matched to a (relatively low) 222 lb-ft of torque at 4600rpm.
In the end Ickx and and Bell won the race in a 936, with the 924 GTP driven to a respectable 7th by Jurgen Barth and Walter Rohrl. The car even won the award for the least time spent in the pits during the 1981 race distance.
Days after LeMans Porsche released news that a new model, the 944, would be released at the Frankfurt IAA the same year.
It seems the project was conceived as a marketing exercise prior to the 944 launch proper. However the decision by the factory to develop a dedicated 16v head cannot have been taken lightly.
Camcover emblazoned "944 Le Mans"
The cylinder head itself bared no similarity to the later production version.
For all those camshaft-drive fact fans out there ^^ the neat twin belt pulley arrangement was patented by Audi/Porsche with prior art later cited against Yamaha. And can now be found in a large number of small VW/Audi petrol engines"¦.
The bottom end featured a special dry sump casting and belt-driven scavenge pump. Balancer shafts were fitted "" and subsequently carried over into production. Interestingly, Hans Mezger is quoted as saying the shafts gave a 5hp penalty. They tried taking them off, but without them the vibrations from the oversquare 4-banger were breaking components after just a few hours in racing conditions.
A KKK k28 turbocharger was mounted on the inlet side, in a very similar position to the production 944t and fed by a huge front-mounted intercooler.
With a plan to go for a win at Lemans, the engine was producing 510 bhp at just under 1.5bar during testing at Paul Ricard. However reliability around the block => gasket interface was proving to be an issue.
Sadly plans for the GTP changed quite quickly after a decision to revive the 936 racers. The engine was downgraded to 1.3bar (450bhp) for reliability testing and finally 1.1 bar for the race giving 420bhp at 6200rpm matched to a (relatively low) 222 lb-ft of torque at 4600rpm.
In the end Ickx and and Bell won the race in a 936, with the 924 GTP driven to a respectable 7th by Jurgen Barth and Walter Rohrl. The car even won the award for the least time spent in the pits during the 1981 race distance.
Days after LeMans Porsche released news that a new model, the 944, would be released at the Frankfurt IAA the same year.
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