2001 Porsche 996 LS1 Conversion Thread by 1dirtyZ

12 minute(s) of a 536 minute read

messed with the fuel system today , and i think we've solved it. sore some odd reason the check valve in the fuel supply line in the tank decided to take a crap and the feed line started pushing fuel back into the siphon tubes. anyhow , i still need to run the car till it looses some of the gas in the tank to verify the fix , but untill then it seems to work.

also found out that the gas guage works now and the calibration they keep talking about is for the low fuel warning light i guess.

so now i have the speedo , oil pressure , gas guage and volt guage working , i just have to trace the wires from the engine to the pcm to verifiy that the signal is getting there (after swapping the interior harness).

any how, decided it was time for more testing to make sure the fuel system is ok 

here's a few WOT runs for your viewing pleasure please ignore the power steering pump whine :

12.24.11

i know its been a while since i updated , but nothing much to report , been bust trying to get the camaro done and moving stuff so not much progress going on .

what i did manage to do is i finally got around to installing the bumper , and i finally got around to welding the tips in place (i just found out that the pics i took are crap , so sorry no pics for now )

i also got some new Xenon bulbs installed , but apparently there is a wire loose or a bad connection somewhere cause the passenger side doesn't want to work will have to dig into that some other time .

another thing i've been messing with was the guages : after i swapped the harness the water temp and the RPM guages decided to stop working . i'm assuming this is because of the different pinouts of the harness i put in. so right now i'm going back to the old pile and trying to figure out how the wires were routed and re wire them like that . can you feel the fun ?? 

i did score a used cluster from evilbay for a decent price , why you may ask?well i ordered a set of speedhut guages for the '70 camaro and i like how they look ,,,,, and was thinking why not just swap out the sock guages to something more custom ( speed hut can build /print anything you want on the guage faces , and they already have a "porsche" logo template i can put on the guages to make them look original , plus they come in the right sizes for the guage cluster , i just have to find a way to mount them 

i know it mans i'll loose the information display on the cluster , but i can live without it ( its just telling me stuff i already know like : where the hell is your engine , and why is there no auto trans in me ), but i'm keeping this as a plan B if the stock ones don't work like i want them to.

i also finally took the seats to be redone , going with black leather to match the rest of the car and should have them finished in about 4 to 5 days. i'll get some pics as soon as i get the seats back. after that ( well some time after that ) i should be able to take it to the upholstering shop again to have them do the steering wheel and the rear carpet.

12.30.11

i got the seats back from the upholsterer and i am all smiles ! they did a great job on redoing them in black leather (sorry didn't have the camera with me so no pics for now ). i also got a new throttle cable made which is shorter than the 6 mile one i had on the car , i got that in and re routed it and now i have a lighter pedal feel 

i'm still messing with the harness trying to figure out why the temp and rpm guage don't work, no progress there 

so next up is to fix the guages ( and put the interior back in ) take it to the upholsterers to get the rear shelf carpet made , then i have take it to get an stero/nav. system installed, and by then the new decklid should be here so that will be installed and its off to get it as well as the rear bumper painted 

another thing i have to adress is the cold idle tune , the car has problems holding idle when really cold , i should have went with a smaller cam but nooooo, i had to put the camaro's old cam in and hope it idled fine at 700 rpm )

01.04.12

not much done , but i did get the seats in

other than that , not much to report . i have to just find an hour or so that i can dedicate entierly to tracing the wires on the harness, and hopefully that will end the cluster dilema. ( marky552 where are you ?? )

i might take her out for a spin some time these days , just to see how it fairs on longer outings

01.05.12

well i just came back from the first real trip for this car i drove the car from where it was to my place for a total of about 15 miles 

happy to report no major incidences , the thing was a blast to drive !

temps never went above 160 even though i floored it a few times . the thing pulls great and smooth (even though it was not tuned for WOT) . the cool part is thing is that the car feels like it has oodles of torque because of how tight the trany is geared and the v8 - it accelerated real nice in 6th from 70mph , and power slides are nooooo problem 

i still have to tune for cold idle ( it has issues ) , and the oil cap breather was dripping oil so i have to figure out some sort of bafeling or relocate it to a catch can. another thing i noticed is the car is a bit loud for what i want inside the cab, but its not a fair conclusion sice the rear shelf was still exposed and some of the panels were not on. adding sound deadener and a carpet should cut it down considerably .

so ,,, i guess its time to scratch one more milestone from the list

01.11.12

this should sum up where i'm at right now

the car is resting peacefully in its new garage , it runs and drives good ( needs to be tuned ) , ac needs to be hooked up ( not a priority in winter ) , i have to finish wiring the RPM and temp guages , and swap the decklid ,,,, speaking of the decklid , look what showed up :

i also ordered the rocker panel thingies ( i have one missing and the other one is not in such a good shape.

like i said , its a bit slow right now cause i'm in the middle of a move and work has just been pouring on me , so bare with me for a couple of weeks untill things settle down.

01.21.12

more updates i guess , i drove the car back to the shop last night to work on it ( well that was the excuse i gave my self , i just wanted to drive it ) . 

from that drive i got a better feel for the car ; i like how it pulls in any gear , but hate how stiff the gas pedal is ( i have to do something about it ) , i also hate that i can't read the RPM nor the coolant temp !!!! ) . i also noticed that the engine will raise its idle to about 1500 or so rpm every now and then for a few seconds just like a vacuume leak, i'm guessing its the gas tank purge solinoide venting - i have it connected to the intake- and causing it to surge , will take care of that soon 

any how , so the car is at the shop waiting to be tuned ( will be disconecting the front driveshaft so i can dyno tune the thing = donut time ), so while it was there i decided to install the GT2 wing on there. well a few minutes of messing with it and tada !!!:

only problem i have now is getting it to close - the thing just won't latch in ! i had that issue with the stock deck lid and it took me forever to get it to close , so i decided to quit and make it the body shop's problem 

speaking of body shops, the rocker panels should be here any day now , and as soon as they are in and on the car , its off to get the parts painted 

i also spent some quality time on the stupid wiring on this car , and i still can't get the RPM nor the coolant temp to work. i though that the CAN signal wires were not connected after swapping to the new harness but after verifying it turns out they were.

i guess next up i'll have to remove the porsche coolant temp sensor and check whether the wires are still ok on that end . as for the RPM wires , i'm am just as confused as i was when i started. it just doesn't make sense 

so , next up on the to-do list:

- disconncet driveshaft and dyno tune

- do a few "test" donuts

- install rocker panels 

- redo tank vent and plug intake port

- relocate the oil cap breather to some where else ( don't like how goofy it looks , so i'll plug it and use the valve cover ports to vent to a seperate catch can or something like that.

- more quality time with the harness

01.25.12

i guess i can call this an update: i went to the shop to see how that would do in the rollers , only to find it parked next to the dyno , when i asked they told me i had a serious fule pressure issue ! fuel pressure was at 20 psi and drops to 15psi at WOT . 

so, i start thinking of how i'm going to fix this and redo the fuel system and what not . then i remebers my old saying : start with the cheap easy stuff first so i did : the gas guage was reading 1/2 and the car was running fine a few days age , so it can't be something that bad , pluse i remebered that you have to recalibrate the stupid gas guage if you remove the sending unit out ...... so i decided to dump a few gallons in there and see what happens . and guess what ?? back to 60 psi !! 

it turns out that i was simply out of gas. so since i was happy and could not put the car on the dyno for the night, i decided to go do the second best thing : donuts!

so i head off to the end of the road and commence the pastry festival ! 

i did a few donuts , then me and my passenger noticed that there was no one filiming us , so i had to stop and do it again infront of the camera. ( we can't dissapoint fellow LS1tech members )

so i start again and all is fine and danady ,,,, untill:

as you noticed there was a "slight" fire in the *** of the car ( the curse of the roasted porsche strikes again ) , turns out the breather was just puking oil - as eveident on the street and in the engine compartment - which reached the header and you know how oil tends to combust sometime 

any how the fire was quickly put out thanks to a local shop worker who happened to be standing next to a fire extinguisher 

luckily nothing was samaged and the fire was put out rather quickly, all the rubber and plasstic inthe compartment seemed fine ( dusty but looks fine ) , i started it and drove it back to the shop and it has fine too . here is how she looked post BBQ :

so i guess the breather / catch can project just jumped higher on my to do list 

i'll mess with it today if i have some time and see what i can do . i'm thinking of a remote catch can with hoses going from the valvecover nipples to it and venting some where safe , and just closing the oil fill hole with a cap.

did i mention this car really needs an LSD !