944 Road Bearing replacement

Repairing damage from broken oil pick up tube, Coated Rod bearings.

Our 944 race car lost oil pressure at AMP. It was driven about half a lap back to the pits after the oil pressure light came on. The cause was a broken oil pick up tube.

I was happy to see the rod bearings were not too bad. The brack looks fine. So I have elected to just refresh the rod bearings and leave the mains in place.

On the advice of Visceral racing, I had the new bearings coated by Calico Coatings. They have an interesting black finish on them now.

The rods are held in place by twelve point 14 mm nuts. Porsche recommends replacing the nuts whenever they are removed. I assume it is due to the serrations on the base that probably get squished when they are torqued down.

I picked up a kit form 944 online that had a new oil pan gasket, new rod nuts and a set of bearings.

I used Permatex Ultra Slick to coat the bearings to protect them on startup.

I read two different torque specs for the rod nuts. One is 55 ft-lbs pus 4. The other is 18 ft-lbs plus 90 degrees. I tried both ways and came out to 59 ft-lbs both ways using my digital torque wrench.

The folks at Calico were super nice to deal with and coated and shipped my bearings the same day they received them. The cast was very reasonable too. Hopefully, this will give the rod bearing a little extra protection when the motor sloshes oil in the corers.