October 2009 In this issue... • Featured Members Bob and Sue ...

Rice’s Ramblings
Story and photos by Lee Rice
Lee Rice showing his 911 at Breakfast Club
Evo-Blue, my 911 of 38 years finished
its 2008-2009 major update and upgrade
with the installation of one of my newly
rebuilt engines. This engine has a bit of
history in my family as it is the engine
I installed in my brother’s 1987 Carrera
back in1995.
This engine (a M30/69) is a 1992
3.3Liter CIS, Jetronic C-2 Turbo engine.
It was installed with all the electrical
and emission systems intact and fully
operational.
However, we also decided to
enhance the performance by upgrading
to our own version of a Turbo S. What
we did is what any 930 Turbo owner can
do to improve their own street, track, and
daily driver 930.
Back in 1995 I did the following:
• First off I had the crankshaft
checked for cracks, straightness, and
wear. It was perfect. Then we did a clean
out of all the oil galleys, finally we had
the crank micro polished and balanced.
• The rods got checked for alignment
(perfect) and were then machined to new
standard specifications and also match
balanced. The rods were then installed
with standard bearings and Raceware ®
rod bolts & nuts.
• The crankcase was checked for
warping and all oil galleys cleaned out
and re-sealed. All piston oil ‘squirters’
were replaced with new units (1.5 mm).
• Case studs were replaced with
Raceware ® studs, forged washers, and
12 point nuts.
• The Turbo Oil pump was
disassembled to check for wear: (perfect)
and reassembled.
• Pistons and Cylinders for 1992
were upgraded MAHLE ® items. The
fully finned 97mm cylinders did not
have head gasket grooves, but instead
had flat tops for a new stainless steel
flat sealing ring that must be replaced at
every tear-down. It was then coated with
a silicon application. During the last 15
years I have yet to see any flame path
blown through this flat ring design, even
when severe misuse of over boost was
known to occur!
• I also did replace the Piston
Rings.
Fast forward now to my 2008 rebuild,
I replaced the Pistons and Cylinders
with newer MAHLE 98mm fully
finned cylinders and 7.4:1 compression
MAHLE pistons and, once again, used
the flat stainless head to cylinder rings
This time around the Cylinder
Heads got a good valve job, replacing the
factory valve guides with harder, longer
wearing American made-valve guides. I
then lapped the valves to the seats.
This time however, we made one
major upgrade: we increased intake port
size from 32 mm to 40 mm. and replaced
the plastic intake fuel injector intake
stacks with aluminum intake stacks
bored out to 40 mm. You can only bore
the plastic ones safely to 36 mm. We
chose to use 40 mm aluminum intakes
as we were going to change cams and
exhaust systems for greater breathing
capacity. Along with porting the cylinder
heads we also enlarged the small intake
manifold passages to match the heads
to the new 40 mm stacks. During the
assembly process I used factory work
shop methods to put this engine back
together.
[Note that I think the internal
overhaul described above is the standard
practice method to rebuild and upgrade
every 911 engine to insure a safe long
life.]
This time we chose to use 964
camshafts as these give the 930 CIS
engine a bit more push off low rpm than
the SC cams did and they also have more
pronounced upper end power compared
to the SC cams. I also added the turbo
scavenge oil pump drive to the left
camshaft. The right side 964 camshaft
has a drive for the hydraulic pump (for
the 1992 C-2) that we didn’t need for the
1987 chassis so the cam drive could have
been cut off. However, we left the pump
drive on the cam.
All the cam drive wheels, gears,
chains, and ramps were perfect so they
were reused. In 2008 I upgraded the cam
system with Aasco valve springs and
retainers and replaced all rockers, shafts,
adjusters, and hardware. As this engine
was to be smog tested, we had everything
installed as delivered in 1992.
Included in this system is a unique
ignition system called “EZ-69.” This is
a crank- signaled hybrid unit that mounts
in the engine compartment exactly where
the standard CDI box used to be located.
The ignition distributor for this system
is a CLOCKWISE rotating distributor,
strictly for High Tension current to each
spark plug cable. There is no timing
adjustment provision for the EZ-69.
Timing can be checked by applying
vacuum or no vacuum to the EZ-69 unit
and revving the engine to 4,000 rpm and
at which point you check for 40-degrees
ignition advance. Then you must apply
boost pressure and check for 21degrees
advance @ 4,000 rpm. This is a simple
system which works pretty well most of
the time.
However, it does not like any boost
higher than stock as the EZ-69 unit then
goes bad. It is sealed and non-repairable
and expensive. As this was a limited in
use item (1992-1994), it was later found
not worth the trouble and expense to use
on the upgraded engine. Some years later
I reverted to using a standard 1978-1989
CDI box and coil system with a specially
fabricated ignition distributor. If I had
known the weakness of the EZ-69
system earlier on, I would have replaced
the crankshaft ignition distributor drive
gear with a C.C.W. (Counter Clock
Wise) distributor gear. Then I could
have simply installed a 1983-1989 Turbo
ignition distributor with idle retard, boost
retard, and vacuum advance.
Because of the C.W. rotation of the
C-2 Turbo ignition distributor drive, I
ended up making a special distributor
from three others:
(Continued on pg. 33)
OCTOBER 2009 27