1986 Porsche 944 Turbo review from North America

Blown head gasket after installing chip and manual boost controller. This was my fault and would not have happened if I had not modified boost. The problem was solved with a wide fire ring head gasket.

Burst rubber turbo tube. This happened after I upped the boost. I do not believe this would have happened in stock form. The problem was solved with a silicon turbo tube.

Broken torque tube end. Again, this car is heavily modified and this occurred while the car had slick, R compound 275/40/17 racing tires in the rear. I tried to launch too hard from first gear and sheared off the end of the drive shaft where it meets the transaxle. The coupler that connects the tube to the transaxle, which I thought was the weakest link, was perfectly intact. This was done during a track day event on a race course and would not happen in stock form during regular driving conditions.

Sheared off second gear. Same as above, would not have happened under normal conditions with stock configuration.

Water pump failure. Like the timing belts the water pump on the 944 models can basically be considered a consumable item. It will need to be replaced at some point. Unlike the belts the water pump gives a very noisy warning before total failure. In my opinion this is a quality issue that Porsche should have found and fixed during the development of their front engine water cooled cars.

Power steering fluid leak. Normally this would only be a minor annoyance, but the line leaks directly onto the right sway bar bushing and degrades the rubber very quickly. And since there is an undertray below the engine the fluid will not drip out onto the ground immediately and you might not even know you have a leak. In my case I didn’t know I had a problem until the sway bar bushing actually squirmed out of place and the bar started to make an ugly clunk sound whenever I went around corners. The problem was fixed with new lines and new bushing. At around $100 USD each the lines are not cheap. I also opted to upgrade to solid bushings when I made the change.

There have been problems with the rubber water hoses degrading and leaking, but this is to be expected with a car that is 21 years old. There are kits available online that replace every water hose with new rubber and should be considered by anyone owning and driving one of these cars. It’s very good preventative maintenance and could save you a much bigger headache down the road.

Turbo seal, turbo bearing wear, and turbo failure. It is amazing to me that the stock turbo on this car lasted as long as it did under higher than stock boost settings and very hard street and track driving. At around 125,000 miles the wear on the bearings inside the turbo allowed the turbo shaft to wobble just slightly and enlarge the hole in the compressor housing where the shaft goes through and connects to the turbine wheel on the intake side of the turbo. While at first this does not noticeably affect performance while driving it does allow oil to seep through when the engine is not running. If the engine is not run frequently the amount of oil can build up to the point where it will cause the engine to suck a relatively large amount of oil into the intercooler, turbo hoses, and intake manifold and then into the combustion chambers, onto the spark plugs, and finally into the catalytic converter. The car will smoke horribly for a bit on start up until most of the oil is sucked through and burned. Not only does this coat everything internally with oil, it drains the turbo housing of its lubricant causing dry starts and thus aggravating the situation until the bearings are completely worn and your turbo starts to sound like a dentist’s drill and it is no longer able to spool up properly to make any kind of power. Extracting a turbo from a regular turbocharged car is difficult enough, but Porsche had the good sense to move the turbo away from the exhaust side of the engine to reduce the amount of heat it is exposed to and placed it under the intake manifold on the right side of the engine bay thus making a remove/rebuild/reinstall a VERY time consuming and frustrating endeavor. Not only did I have to remove and reinstall the turbo I also had to clean all of the residual oil from inside the intercooler, intake manifold, pipes and hoses, replace the spark plugs, and on top of it all I needed a new catalytic converter because the old one was almost completely blocked off. On the up side, the car was even faster than before and I gutted the old catalytic converter and now use it for track events. With the old hollow converter the car is noticeably quicker and has a much more menacing, yet not overpowering or annoying, exhaust note.

Gear shift leather worn. Easily replaced with new leather.

Gear shift select sloppy. This happens over time and is a moderately easy fix with a new lever.

Heater linkage clip broken. A new clip fixes this very annoying problem that can leave your heater set to blow super hot all the time.

Broken glove box supports. This is a really annoying problem with 944s. The plastic glove box stops can break easily and allow the glove box door to hang wide open all the way down instead of stopping when it is horizontal. New supports are cheap and the fix takes little time.

Broken armrest flip-up door. There are no hinges on the armrest storage bin door, just a folded bit of plastic that comes apart after years of use and abuse. Luckily this is another easily replaceable part, but again, Porsche went really cheap on this bit and could have avoided the problem all together with simple hinges.

Rear hatch release button does not work. I have never seen a working rear hatch release button on any 944 I’ve ever come across. There is a lock at the back of the car to release the hatch, but if the button is there and the servo is there the stupid thing should work.

Interior clock light does not work. I don’t remember if this is a burnt bulb or a wiring problem, but the thing is impossible to get to without dismantling half the dashboard.

Rear hatch glass squeaks and leaks. After time the weight of the rear hatch glass has caused the glass to pull partially out of the frame and has broken the seal. This allows water to get in and also causes the glass to move inside the frame and make an annoying squeak. There is a fix for this, but it involves removing the hatch, very heavy, and basically resealing and refitting it. It’s a pain to do, but it did fix the problem.

Sunroof, door, and window seals leak. The rubber gets old and dry and the seals fail. They are moderately expensive to replace and it is time consuming work. I don’t think this is a 944 or even a Porsche unique problem. Any car that is 21 years old could probably use new seals.

Transaxle fluid leaks. Some 944 Turbo transaxles have a cooling tube that runs out the front right side of the housing, coils around, and then reenters at the rear of the housing. There are no gaskets or seals where the tube goes in and out so these areas can leak fluid if they are not tight. Easy fix, just loosen the bolts, give the ends and ports a good cleaning and tighten it all back up nice and snug.

Forward sunroof manual fasteners break. These cheap plastic fasteners can break if you are not careful when fitting the sunroof back in place after removing it. There are metal fasteners available and make for a quick and easy fix.

Leaky or broken vacuum hoses and fitting. The stock vacuum lines, joints, and fittings are made of hard plastic tubing that gets very brittle and breaks easily. This can wreak all kinds of havoc with the turbo control computer and other engine management devices. This is easily fixed with aftermarket silicone tubing and metal joints and fittings.

Torsion tube problems. In order to save un-sprung weight in the rear Porsche used torsion tubes instead of springs for the rear suspension. There are two torsion tubes in the rear, one for the left wheel and one for the right. Over time these tubes get weak just like regular coil springs. When the torsion tubes get weak the rear end will tend to squat under acceleration and cause the rear suspension of the car to be much softer overall than the front. For everyday street driving this is almost a good thing because it helps absorbs some of the torque being transferred to the rear tires on acceleration and allows the rear tires a better chance to grip before losing traction. During aggressive cornering or race track driving conditions the difference in relative stiffness between the front and the rear can, depending on conditions, cause the rear of the car to either get loose in corners or cause understeer problems while braking into a corner. Unlike coil springs which can be changed or replaced fairly easily, torsion tubes require the entire rear suspension to be dropped from the chassis. The torsion tubes also control the rear ride height of the car and this must be taken into account when replacing them. The ride height is adjusted by indexing the splines at the end of the tubes for the desired ride height. This indexing must be done on both sides to assure that the height of the rear of the car is the same on both sides.

Overheating issues. The liquid cooling system on the 944 cars is very susceptible to overheating if not maintained properly. If the system has been flushed or if it has lost water due to overheating or leaking it is very easy for pockets of air to get trapped in the system and cause hot spots in the cooling system that can cause the engine to overheat. There is a manual air bleed port on the top of the engine that allows you to bleed the air out of the system while the car is running, but it is hard to get to and use. If the water gets too hot and the pressure gets too great the plastic overflow/reservoir can become deformed and over time it can develop holes that will leak and it will need to be replaced. In my opinion Porsche has never really gotten the hang of water cooling.

Distributor rotor coming loose. Unlike most rotors on most cars there is no keyway or slot to position the rotor on the shaft. On the 944 the rotor is set in place by a screw that holds it steady on the shaft. Somehow my rotor holding screw came loose and the rotor basically moved on the shaft changing the timing as it moved. It was a ridiculously difficult thing to diagnose this problem and had me scratching my head for hours. It acted just like it would if it had fuel delivery problems, a coil problem, a plug or plug wire problem, a sensor malfunction, a boost or vacuum leak, or any other number of problems that would account for sporadic running and power loss. It would idle rough then smooth. It would actually drive for a while and then sputter out and quit outright. After trying to chase down this gremlin for what seemed an eternity I inspected the distributor cap for contact issues and everything looked normal. I checked the rotor contact and it looked fine too. It wasn’t spinning freely on the shaft and was actually still fairly tight so it wasn’t obviously loose. I decided to check the timing to see if the dreaded timing belt had skipped a tooth and was on its way to catastrophic failure. When it reached top dead center I noticed that the rotor was between contact points. At that point I thought I was in for massive deconstructive surgery to replace the belts. That's when I noticed the screw on the rotor. I took hold of the rotor and gave it a twist and sure enough it moved. I felt like a complete idiot for not checking it first thing. I realigned the rotor, tightened the screw, and added a dab of superglue to keep the stupid thing in place until I changed it. The rotor position is not adjustable; there is a hole that the screw screws into in the shaft so I have no idea why Porsche did not use a guide slot to keep the rotor from changing position, but they didn’t.

Battery drain. Probably the most annoying of all the minor problems I have had with this car is the battery drain. If the car is not run for more than a couple of days the battery will be completely dead. I thought maybe the battery was just old so I replaced it with a brand new Optima battery hoping that would solve my problems; it did not. Since I use the car mainly for spirited weekend driving and track day events I decided not to try and chase down the cause of the power drain and I just installed an SCCA legal kill switch with a removable key. As long as I remember to keep the switch on for a while after driving to allow the turbo water pump and cooling fans to do their job and then turn it off I have no more battery issues. This is not a good fix for a daily driver however and if you are having the same problem you should find the source of the drain and figure out how to stop it.

The 944 Turbo is one of the most underrated sports cars ever.

In stock form these cars are very fast. With even minor performance modifications these cars can turn into super handling turbocharged rockets.

Besides my formula race car with a custom molded carbon fiber seat I have never felt more connected and in tune with any other car I have driven. That includes the 997 911TT, Dodge Viper GTS, Corvette C6 Z06, Ferrari F40, and many purpose built race cars. Even with stock seats and steering wheel it just feels perfect.

With the modifications I have done to my 944T I have run into very few street legal cars that can keep up with it, both in a straight line and in the twisty bits. With the chip modification increasing the rev limiter, and thus the top speed, around 170mph, I have even outrun sport bikes in races from 60mph to 150mph. There is nothing more satisfying than pulling away from a pack of guys on crotch rockets and then slowing down to wait for them to catch up and see them try to express their disbelief with their helmets on. I give them one or two more tries to keep up, then I slow down to cruising speed and let them go on their way, their sense of bike vs. car invincibility seriously in question.

At this point the only thing I really fear as far as street legal cars go would be a supercharged corvette Z06 or a true supercar like a Porsche Carrera GT, Saleen S7, Mclaren SLR, or of course an Enzo. Normally this would not pose a problem to most people since these cars are super rare, but since I live about 15 minutes from Microsoft there is a real possibility of me actually getting the chance to get schooled by one of these monsters. I have run against cars like that at track events and been blown away, but the cars were prepped for the track and not the street so it would be interesting to see just how devastatingly I would be beaten.

As far as “tuner” cars go, I don’t even waste my fuel. If someone in a supped up Honda or Mustang is insistent, I just drop it into 3rd gear, push the pedal to the floor, and like magic they disappear behind me into the distance.

The most impressive aspect of this car for me is the fact that with good maintenance and a bit of care this 21 year old car with almost 170,000 miles of very hard driving has not had a major malfunction that was not at least partly my fault. The worst thing that has happened has been a blown head gasket and that could have been avoided if I had upgraded the head gasket to the recommended stronger gasket when I modified the turbo system.

Even now after almost 200,000 miles of consistently high boost, very high speeds, and race track abuse it still has the power to scare the living daylights out of almost any passenger, handily dispatch almost all challengers, and, most importantly, it still makes me feel as though I am one with an amazing machine, not simply driving a fast car.

If you think you have the mechanical skill and driving ability to live with and maintain a 944Turbo go out and test drive one. If you do not find it at the very least a surprisingly impressive sports car you are a very tough person to please indeed.

Just like an exotic pet these cars are not for everyone. They need a lot of care and if you are not careful they can bite you very hard. And if you are reckless one of these cars could easily be the end of you.