That makes some sense to me. On one hand the average Turbo is a few years younger but still also not "young" by any measure.Oringojin wrote: Mon Mar 30, 2026 11:52 pm I thought I'd share something I heard from Tom Barker, the guy who runs Augment Automotive and does some amazing things tuning and prepping 944's of all sorts. He has dyno'd dozens of 944's over ther years and he says that while stock turbos usually come in pulling the equivalent of factory spec, 220 or 250 bhp, N/A 944's are usually quite a bit lower than 163 or 150, coming in usually around 130-140. A lot of that is probably due to age and wear, so as the experienced folks wrote above, just making sure the stock bits are working as they should ought to make things more lively.
Normally aspirated engines need everything to be working efficiently and to be tuned well in order to make peak power. Airflow in and out needs to be efficient, compression needs to be within tolerances without any leakage, spark and fuel delivery need to be bang on. The engines are all ~40 years old with various levels of neglect or partial maintenance being performed over the years. It is 100% feasible for things to be "off" by 10%+ throughout the system and dropping 10-15hp from optimal power.
All that to say, I agree with trying to return the engines to original factory specs as best we can first before seeking "more". Plus if you don't address the inefficiency potentially in the engine from deferred maintenance, a shiny new exhaust and intake won't really do a whole hell of a lot and/or it will just expose the other elements requiring attention and down the rabbit hole someone goes......
