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Don Nguyen | My Porsche 911 V8 Build

Joined
19 May 2008
Messages
13
"I couldn't find the sports car of my dreams, so I built it myself" - Ferdinand Porsche

I bought my 964 when I was 20 years old. Probably not the best financial decision at the time, but I did it anyways. I knew nothing about Porsches, but after one test drive, I knew that this 964 had to be mine. Since then, there have been several times that I have come close to selling my 964. Whether the reason was due to lack of resources or not enough time to build and restore my 964 into the car that I had hoped and imagined it would be. However, luckily, I never went through with selling my 964, as it would have probably been my single biggest automotive decision that I would have regretted making. It's now or never.

I like Porsches, I like American V8s, and I like race cars. What am I alluding to?
Well, to simply put it, I will be taking my Porsche 964 and putting a Chevy LS based engine into it with the overall end results of a streetable race car. Because what fun, really, is a car that can't be driven whenever you wanted to.

However, to me speed is only one part of the equation. The car's going to take on styling cues of a race car from the exterior, but have a relatively tolerable and factory-esque interior, aside from a few various interior race bits here and there. I like to think of it as a wolf in wolf's clothing. Sounds wrong in every way? Sounds perfect to me. Speed, handling, styling, and comfort. The best part about building a car how you want it is that there is no bad part.

Why? I will only answer this question once. Because.

No fancy tools, no fancy garage, no team of engineers. One man, one car, and countless hours spent doing research. I will be doing as much of the fabrication myself as possible, from building the engine mounts to redoing all of the leather work on the interior.

I can go into details and tell you all of my plans and ideas for the car, but what fun would that be if I told you everything upfront and didn't leave a little bit of mystery to it. As I was always taught, show, not tell. You'll just have to tune in and watch as the progress goes along.

I am not trying to build the best car in the world, but to build my perfect car, which to me makes it the best car in the world.

Smiley face,
Don Nguyen

- - - Updated - - -

This is how the car looked like when I first bought it. These pictures were actually taken from the original ad that were used by the previous owner. Funny thing is, I actually did not remember saving these pictures, but I randomly happen to stumble across them the other day when looking for something else.

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It took me only one week of searching to find my 964 and it took me only one more week after that before I put in an order for a set of coilovers for my car. I figured why wait to buy them, when I could buy them now and enjoy it right away.

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This is ultimately what the car last looked like before I decided to put it up on jack stands and start the reconstruction process. Keep in mind, all of these pictures that I have posted thus far, including this one, are from over a span of several several years.

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As of yesterday, this is how the car looked like. I actually had started taking the car apart before I decided that I would take pictures and document my build. I was never really one to start or have any detailed build threads for any of my other project cars, but I felt like this is one that I would share the process and progress as it goes along with you guys.

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-Don
 
? ? ?

NSX forum?
Maybe I am missing something. :redface:
 
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It's certainly 'Off Topic'.........so I say bring it on and treat us to the build process!

Brian
 
Completely took the dash apart/out and removed some more of the sound deadening/padding. I am going to try and remove as much as I can before relaying new padding down.

Not sure what would work best, so I'll take any suggestions if anyone has any experience with this. I've read/heard that closed cell foam padding was a good option.

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Pile of misc parts and wires that were removed.

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One of the other reasons why I wanted to go through the whole car, which was to find any rust spots that would be developing such as what I found here around the rear quarter windows.

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Not sure if this was like this from the factory, but it seems like someone's removed these before and used 3M double sided tape to put these trim pieces back on. With older cars, you never know where someone before you could gone/been through before. I will most likely be using the 993 window seal for the rear quarter windows, which will delete the need for that trim piece that was removed.

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I originally thought that I wanted to run 993 door panels, so I bought a set with the hi-fi sound package in them. However, I may end up just reupholstering the original 964 door panels and using those. I kind of like the pattern that's on the 964 door panels. We will see. If I do run the 993 door panels, I won't be using the hi-fi speakers, so I can get the small door pockets back

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Random shots of the engine bay and car as it sits now.

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-Don
 
Here's a picture that I pulled off of my instagram, @don__nguyen with double underscores in between the name, for those that use it and if you want to follow me for miscellaneous updates. Sometimes I don't get around to posting all of my updates/pictures on the forums, since it's easier for to just upload directly to a source such as instagram.

Bought a used short block, so naturally I had to take it all apart to check and make sure everything was ok. I am going to go ahead and get the cylinders bored out slightly bigger, oversized forged pistons to match the new bore of the block/cylinder once it gets machine, get the crank cleaned up and get new bearings (con rod, cam, and mains).

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-Don
 
The V8 Porsche thing has been done before. From what I have read, the extra weight of the V8 upsets the already tender balance of the car.
Not to derail your thread but why not just rebuild and turbo your old motor. You should easily come close to the power and tq of the V8.

It's your dream so best of luck and looking forward to the build.
 
What gearbox are you going to use?
I suppose the engine will remain behind the gearbox?
I can't imagine the weight added behind the rear wheels!
The car will understeer severely I would think with this weight distribution.
Ferry Porsche must be turning over in his grave...
What about putting your Porsche engine and gearbox in an NSX ?
More fun for sure!
 
The V8 Porsche thing has been done before. From what I have read, the extra weight of the V8 upsets the already tender balance of the car.

I can't imagine the weight added behind the rear wheels!
The car will understeer severely I would think with this weight distribution.
Ferry Porsche must be turning over in his grave...
More fun for sure!

Maybe he likes the 1/4 mile....Porsche w/ wheelie bars...thats a 1st!
 
jeez guys stop ripping on him. It's his car, he is obviously not just talking, as his pictures show. Just let him enjoy what he's doing. As for why posting on an nsx forum, people post all sorts of stupid shit here unrelated to NSX's. At least this one has 4 wheels.
 
The V8 Porsche thing has been done before. From what I have read, the extra weight of the V8 upsets the already tender balance of the car.
Not to derail your thread but why not just rebuild and turbo your old motor. You should easily come close to the power and tq of the V8.

It's your dream so best of luck and looking forward to the build.

LS engine is 30-50lbs lighter than the stock Porsche 3.6l engine I am pulling out and has a lower CG.



What gearbox are you going to use?
I suppose the engine will remain behind the gearbox?
I can't imagine the weight added behind the rear wheels!
The car will understeer severely I would think with this weight distribution.
Ferry Porsche must be turning over in his grave...
What about putting your Porsche engine and gearbox in an NSX ?
More fun for sure!

G50 gearbox, which is what came with the car. This is what a lot of kit cars use in their swaps as well. It's capable of handling the extra power.

- - - Updated - - -

Did not really get any further progress on the Porsche this weekend. Instead, I chose to autocross my E70 X5 with the BMW CCA group. Gotta make sure all of the tools in the shed are sharp. There were a total of 13 cars in my class, I came in 5th. Got beat by three turbo charged 135//335s by about a second and lost out to first place (2013 335i) by 3.5 seconds on a ~60-65 seconds length course.

Here's a video of my run. The video was kind of quickly put together. It's been a long while since I last did any sort of video editing. It was also my first time using my new gopro hero 3s to shoot video with.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-iB3-uhyXI

That's not to say I don't have any pictures of my Porsche that I can't share with you guys though. Nothing special, but at least it gives you something to look at.

This picture is from at least 4 years ago when I was first test fitting wheels on my widebody E36 M3 and for fun I put the wheel next to my Porsche to see what it would look like.
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Here's a more recent picture of a different, but similarly sized wheel on my Porsche, to gauge roughly how far out my flares are going to have to be.
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-Don
 
I love these older Porsche's i think they are pretty cool. A guy i work with is doing something similar with his. By the look of them rims i imagine you are going pretty wide on them fenders. I cant wait to see how this turns out as my buddy at work doesent move very quickly with his build having a few younger kids and stuff. I think this bad boy is going to turn out pretty sweet. Are you changing out some of the body panels and doing the bit newer front end and stuff?
 
Going with metal flares and fiberglass bumpers (factory/oem parts cost a ridiculous amount).

Not really an update on my Porsche, but I have had a lot of requests for pictures of my widebody E36 M3, so instead of PMing everyone back individually, here are the pictures of it.

This is basically a recap of the past 4 years in 3 pictures, with the red black and white being the oldest and the car in black being the most recent.

I do automotive vinyl wrapping professionally, so changing the color of the car is easy for me. The original colors of red/black/white were painted. However, the matte white and matte black are vinyl wraps. Had the matte white for a month before going matte black. Just felt right. May just get the car painted gloss black later on, or if I feel ballsy enough, I'll redo the red/black/white theme again.

If you really want to follow more oft the progress on my other builds (my widebody M3, motorcycles, etc.), pretty much all of my pictures and updates on those will be posted through instagram, since I don't really feel like they deserve their own threads.

Instagram: @don__nguyen (double underscores in between the name).

Direct link: http://instagr.am/p/WgKZ5DBLgd/

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-Don
 
I love that he is building what he wants. I appreciate the pictures to keep us in the loop too. Keep going and best wishes on the build :)
 
Only pictures I can post right now. The internet server that I am connected through won't let me access my host/server, so these instagram pictures will have to do for now.

I feel like the interior is stripped to a good point now. Whatever is left, I will just end up covering with sound deadening and carpet anyways, so getting every last glue adhesive/residue out is not too necessary imo. Sorry about the lack of updates. I've been doing more work than actual picture taking.

Got most of parts necessary to start mocking up the engine to make the mounts/brackets now.

There's only so much left of the car, sometimes I want to take everything off and go through a complete cleaning of all of the parts so they are like new again. However, the car is going to be a driver, so I am probably going to focus on the actual building of the car versus the cleaning of parts that you are never going to see anyways.

Direct link: http://instagram.com/p/Xa5PETBLnF/
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Direct link: http://instagram.com/p/XagPynBLv9/
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These are the old coilovers off of my car that I am going to be selling. They worked good, but I needed something different with everything else that I was doing to the car.

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The suspension that will be replacing them. Moton Motorsports 2 way adjustables. I most likely will just have to add camber plates to for the front struts, and everything will be just dandy.

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-Don
 
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