I was about a month away from my move to NYC. What better decision is there to make than to buy a car with severe issues before then?
I found this 944 on Craigslist and immediately drove up the next morning to check it out. Garnet Red, 16” Fuchs, sport suspension, and Porsche script sport seats definitely fogged my vision on the absolute grind I was about to endure. The previous owner had found it in a warehouse in San Diego, where it had sat for about 10 years. The owner before that owned a construction company, so this thing was said to had hauled lumber amongst other materials from site to site. I guess a truck just wasn’t his style.
The 944 had a blown clutch and a blown head gasket, but still ran. Sounds easy enough right! Wrong. Once I got it into my garage and everything on the top end removed, every bolt holding the head down came off with no issues aside from one. That one broke. No big deal, head should just slip off right? Wrong again. I tried everything. The head would just simply not come off. After about 3 weeks of packing and moving stress, I left the car in my garage while I went off to the Big Apple. I lasted about a month or so there. Turns out moving somewhere like that in the middle of COVID equals no jobs and an overwhelming vortex of cash removed from my wallet. Once I was back in town, the 944 was my only car so I HAD to get it running. I finally got the head off after hours upon hours of prying, and I’ve never seen so much corrosion. Enough corrosion to hide a crack in the block.
Long story short, after buying a long block that ended up having similar issues, I did a very light rebuild on a used short block I found in Berkeley. All gaskets, rod bearings, timing belt, balance shaft belt – the works, or should I say werks – it’s a Porsche after all. Unfortunately, enough work to make me not interested in the car due to the pure insanity of the engineering (or maybe I’m the crazy one, since 99% of my experience is on BMWs). Eventually, engine was in and it ran with some slight hiccups, and some smooth talking to the lady at the DMV reduced my back fees and was able to force non-op it simultaniously with a title transfer (something that everyone swears is not possible). The title was then in my hands and I was so ready to part with it.
The owner I bought it from saw my listing and came and committed to buy it, took the 30 years of service records back and left me with a small deposit. He flaked and stopped responding to all of my calls and texts. I was out a huge folder of service records, and up $100. Buyer number two wanted it pretty badly, however he was located in San Diego, many hours away. We talked about shipping costs, but my friend needed some cash and had a diesel truck he was just itching to use. We negotiated a price, but I along with 2 more of my friends felt guilty so we tagged along. We left at around 1AM after fixing the trailer lights with stuff found at a Walmart at midnight. We drove through the night and eventually met the guy in an Albertsons’ parking lot in the brisk hours of the morning.
I was one car down and many thousand up and proceeded to find a car about an hour or two north. You can read about that one here.
