An inside look at Hoovie's biggest project

it's like revisiting a nightmare it's back [Music] so we've all heard the term ls swap it and there are times when that is not the answer ls swap is not the answer to everything and many of us have through various different youtube channels have heard about apollo 911 one of the cars that really skyrocketed tyler hoover's youtube career or channel i should say was apollo 911 this was at a time before i had my channel going and he kind of came to me he's like i got this crazy idea i have this 996 that the original engine is is really old and i actually just shelled it out we inspected his original engine the porsche engine it had metal shavings all in it the engine was toast it was done he started weighing the options and it came out to be as cost effective or maybe even a little cheaper at least he thought initially hey let's ls swap this thing so here i am in the middle of learning this whole youtube mechanic shop thing and i'm starting to get the hang of okay i can film a car here or there or this or that but now i got this whole major project that's going to take weeks if not months and i had a deadline he was going to take it to monterey car week and drive it around we got the car into the shop pulled the porsche engine out he had ordered an ls2 which is a used motor but it was in very good condition it had nothing wrong with the engine and he went with a company called renegade hybrids they make mounts they make basically an entire kit that allows you to swap in this ls2 engine into the porsche so the way that tyler proposes to me since the dreaded ims failure had finally taken its toll on his original engine and just destroyed it here's a kit that i'm going to order it's bolt in all the instructions are there everything's there it should be pretty easy we get this done and i can take it to monterey car week so we get the car we get the engine out the ls2 we get it start looking at it in the renegade hybrid kit shows up there are no written instructions there are none they include the parts to mount the motor to the porsche body and a lot of other adapters and things to mount the engine to the transmission and make that all work but i didn't mention that you have to cut and weld the body to make these things fit where the the serpentine belt is on the engine there has to be room made for that to fit it will not fit in this stock form i started running into issues like that and i said okay well let me contact these people and get some ideas like okay so you guys developed this kit what was the way that you found to make this work or what are the instructions because i didn't get any instructions and their answer was however you find it to work best for you i said no no no no no this kit was developed to make this work you designed it it's supposed to be where you bolt it in you should know how you made it work as you design the kit i'm not here to do research and development on your product i'm here to install it i don't want to figure it out it should be already written out and i kept coming up against that answer i'd find electrical problems or i'd find this or that and it's just however you'd like to route it or it's however you think you should want to do it on your car i finally got so upset one day with i told tyler i said i'm just gonna have to go this alone these people are no help there are no instructions and the the answer to everything is however you would like to do it when you order a kit to do a certain thing or a certain type of a swap or whatever it is you want to do it shouldn't be designed where it's however you'd like to do it they should have figured this out they should have researched it there should be engineering behind it to say this is how we made this work you have to cut this you have to install this this is how this works you need this part this harness these sensors everything should be listed out just like you buy a table from walmart that comes with instructions here's how you put it together it was a real stress and a real pull on all the knowledge that i had as a mechanic at that time how do i integrate a porsche 996 electrical system and also have an ls2 corvette system running side by side where they both are happy the gauges will work the ac should work and also i have to cut and weld the body and make all this work i ended up spending a lot of time figuring out how to get it mounted and then the the nightmare began how do i wire this in how do i make all this work and here we are running up against a deadline i know that he wants to drive this car i can't be expected to get this done in a certain amount of time because that amount of time hasn't even been determined how long it should take i don't even know and finally towards the end i really scrambled i really pushed really hard and i got it done and then he takes this thing to a racetrack and locks the motor up because the oil pan on a corvette ls2 is made to be facing this way not this way so when you hit the brakes it's like you're in the corvette in full reverse and hitting the brakes even though you're going forward because all the oil sloshes to the rear of the engine and if you take a tight turn it's all to the side and i think through the advent of several tight turns and hard braking there was multiple instances where it was starved of oil the engine was never designed to be installed in a vehicle backwards now had i had time to research this or think about it i might have come up with some different ideas but it was a really big push for time i just knew i have to get it running i have to get it driving i had no no idea it was going to a race track can be pushed to its limits i got a call from tyler the next day apollo 911 is dead like what i see yeah there's going to be no monterey car week it's not going it's dead it's locked up i was like why and he told me a whole story about it and everything and how it's locked up and they believed because it starved of oil and i said well yeah i guess i could see that now that i think about it i mean i didn't know he was taking it to a track we could have put a different pan in it or done something different or but it ended up being youtube gold the disaster is bad as it was got him so much views and so much notoriety it people were like oh my god this thing just blew up it's locked up there's videos you guys can watch movies garage and see it when it actually happens it makes a strange noise you can hear metallic grinding in the engine and he pulls over and that is the end of apollo 911 part one [Music] i just spent so much time sacrificed so much time i could have been spending time with my family i've i stay late i got this thing done for him he takes it out boom blows it up it was probably a week i didn't talk to tyler i just was like i don't even want to talk about this right now it makes my shop look bad even though it wasn't something that i did wrong it just it looks really bad reflects bad upon me i really don't appreciate it i was upset with him so he abandoned the project he sold it to i think a youtube channel called 305 garage in i think florida the guy was going to take it pull the motor fix it up or put a different motor in it but just like so many projects to varish that don't get completed this one also did not get completed i'm not sure about the details why i don't know what happened but they got halfway through with it and it just stopped it bought another ls2 engine it purchased parts and things to put it back together and that's as far as you got it's set that way i think for two years then the guy contacted tyler and he's like hey i still have apollo 911 i don't know what i'm going to do with this thing and at this time in life tyler is now at a point where the money to buy it or to redo it again is not a concern it's more along the lines of this would be such good content and also be a chance to make this right to give apollo 911 the the life that it really deserved he's like you know what i'll wire the money i'll take the car send me all the parts and it arrived back at my shop it came on a truck one day and the truck was backing up and i was just like it's like revisiting a nightmare it's back so i called him up like what are we doing here he's like well the motor is included with it we want you to pull the motor out put it all back together and make it run again i said well only if you're not going to take it to a track and blow it up again i said i don't want to waste my time i don't want to waste my mechanics time he's like no no no it's not going to attract anymore we did get the car into the shop we did everything we need to do to mate the new engine to the transmission we also installed a baffled and trapdoor oil pan that keeps the oil centered in all directions no matter which direction you go the oil will always stay there we've got everything back together it's actually alive again it's running i've actually had several friends come by and beg to drive it apollo 911 i think is going to be bigger and stronger than it was even in the beginning the car itself has over 200 000 miles on it the engine is only like 50 000 miles from the previous notoriety that it had the name is already established people already know what apollo 911 is but now it's been given a second lease on life and everyone that has driven it has just they come back with a grin on their face they're like this thing does things that a porsche could only dream of and it is really a cool car now that i've driven it now they experience it i spend a little bit more time with it for a car that i ended up hating and didn't even want to talk about i absolutely love the car now the car is a six-speed the the original transmission is still there the 996 transmission but the engine has so much torque down low that you can skip one three and five straight across two four and six and it will pull through hard all those gears to 130 no problem it's absolutely amazing the power to rate ratio hasn't changed that much because it's all aluminum block it doesn't weigh that much more than the standard 996 engine so you don't lose a lot of the the good steering that the porsche has but you now have an engine that doesn't need to wind a six or seven thousand rpms at two or three thousand rpms it's pulling you really hard and the pulling you back in your seat it also sounds really cool when you start it up it sounds like a nice corvette it has flowmasters on it and you just don't expect to hear that out of a porsche but uh originally he bought the car i think for 20 000 and he put another 20 000 in it by the engine paying me to put it in parts and supplies and everything forty thousand dollars into a car that's over two hundred thousand miles i'm not sure what he paid for to buy it back the second time again he didn't have to buy another engine luckily that came with the car probably easily another twenty thousand dollars so all along the way easily sixty thousand dollars or more to make this a reality and to bring it back to life twice the first time was with the blown original engine the second time the blown ls engine and now it's on its third engine which is also an ls engine so let's hope and and pray that he can keep this thing alive he says he won't take it to the track but we'll see if he really does or not fortunately if he does we do have an oil pan that's ready for it but when it was on the track last it was dominating it was just totally annihilating everybody so much power and torque and such a light car so that is the story of apollo 911 how it began how it ended and how it started all over again and back alive again we all love amazon but most of us have had that experience where you buy something with a lot of glowing reviews that shows up and it's just a piece of garbage and it wasn't what you thought you were buying unfortunately amazon can be full of bad actors and fake reviews and things that just don't live up to what you think is going to come in a day or two after you order it that's why new on amazon has been developed it was developed by patrick cooper a friend of the channel a good storyteller who's talked about bmw's and mclaren f1s and things like that and he's a huge e-commerce expert you can learn more about that on his youtube channel but he built a site of trusted sellers well-reviewed products and things that he actually knows will show up looking the way that you want them to and so it's a great way to filter out some of the noise and some of the bad products that you might otherwise discover on amazon so check out new on amazon at the link in the description below and thank them for supporting vinwicki this month [Music]

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 286,164

Keywords: The Car Wizard, Wizard, Hoovie, Apollo 911, 996, Porsche, LS, LS3, LS swap, vinwiki, car stories

Id: Sh1IlTVUJ4Y

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 11 2021