It was a rough week, but I hunkered down and soldiered on. Found out a good friend and former co-driver passed away very suddenly a week ago. He was pretty young at 29, and I didn't even know he was sick, but he had late stage liver cancer. Biehruz was the kindest and most competitive guy I know, he will be dearly missed.
Worked on the bug off and on but got a lot done over the weekend. It seemed like I was spinning my wheels, but hopefully now I'm over the hump. The rear package try was ready to be modded so I started there. I cut along the sides and in the corner so I could fold the flaps up to meet in the middle.
I trimmed up the sheet metal and I'll make a new floor later. You can see the new floor brace I started on that may also support the accusump later. I started to pull the rear suspension apart because it needed to come out to get the front transmission mount in.
With the floor trimmed up it was time to try and fit the motor again. it's a bit of chicken and egg when it comes to the front trans mount. You can't place it without having the motor/trans together, but its a pain to get the motor/trans into place as a whole unit. Eventually I got them into the car and bolted the motor mount in using the lowest setting. Just eyeballing it now looks like the cross pipe for the header sits about where the old turbo was mounted.
I had to cut a little flap to clear the nose of the trans. After the fact I realized it might fit if I had ground down the rib on top but it still would have been a tight fit. Of course I failed to notice the brake line for the rear was right against the body so I cut right through it :P
Now it was time to completely remove the rear trailing arms so I could locate and drill the holes for the forward trans mount. It was such a pain in the ass to drill the holes, my arms were killing me by the time I was done. I needed to pull the trailing arms off anyway to upgrade the spring plate and swap out the driver's side trailing arm to match the passenger side.
I quick comparison between the old '87 944 turbo trailing arm (bottom) and the new '90 944 S2 arm (top). The big differences being the elimination of the bump stop pad and the new arm is ready for a wheel speed sensor. There is a different stub axle with teeth around the cv cup if you're curious.
Passenger side bolted in loosely for test fit of the new 935-style adjustable spring plate. Seriously awesome part, thanks Alex!
That's about it for now. It doesn't seem like much but for each thing I had to do something else to get it ready. Hopefully now it goes a little smoother and there won't be as many problems.