Oops! It's been a while since I've updated this thread... so time to bore you all with a massive update!
Since the last update my girlfriend bought a very projecty house, which took a lot of time, then I bought a less projecty house, which still took a lot of time and now needs a garage built... and the poor Porsche has bounced between driveways and been generally unloved
For a little catch up...
Unsurprisingly the North Coast 500 plans fell through to be replaced with a long weekend camping roadtrip around Snowdonia through which the car didn't miss a beat
Unfortunately the motorway haul back home must have been too much for the CV joints, as the next drive was accompanied by a familiar clonk clonk clonk... No re-greasing this time, 4 shiny new GKN joints got fitted:
The first MOT under my ownership came up in October... main concern was the handbrake doing naff all going forwards but working in reverse, there's another thread somewhere on TIPEC with those woes, but turned out that a PO had put the spreading bars between the brake shoes in the wrong way around
Flipping those around, and with the new shoes I'd already bought for my first fix attempt, the rear wheels would eagerly lock on demand
. Handbrake and brakes even got a compliment from the MOT guy, who passed it with advisories for slight chafing of a flexi brake line and slight play in a steering column UJ. Pretty happy with that!
Last stop before being parked up (across multiple driveways
) for winter was a little 80's photo shoot with a mates Capri and an unexpected 205 GTI:
***CAUTION NON PORSCHE CONTENT***
okay... picture dump excuses
almost over!
Between various housey things over the winter I kept checking forums etc and at some point realised that I had the newer style water pump, but not the metal guard that is supposed to fit between the two sides of the belt, so that was the first job in the spring before getting her back on the road:
^^ The sharp eye'd will notice that the idler pulley is missing in that shot - replaced that for a new one as well
And got round to fitting a new clutch master cylinder - far easier than guides had lead me to believe! Old vs New:
No more DOT4 dripping into the footwell finally! Really should have done that sooner...
Finally an oil change with one very seized oil filter - makes me wonder if the garage I bought it from actually changed the filter, or if it's been on the car for 16 years... But got it off, and new porsche filter fitted
So that brings me more or less up to date, she's re taxed and back on the road, now time to enjoy driving her for a bit!...
... yeah about that. Now that the newness factor has worn off, I'm noticing the flaws a little more, so got some presents through the post:
oops, no pre-assembly pics....Those are some lovely bits to sort the front suspension and steering out - the needle bearing on the steering column through the bulkhead is horribly grindy and as above, I have play in the lower UJ in the steering column, so new bearing and 'drive shaft' - as it's called in the PET. deLUX called this one of the worst jobs he found on his 944.... So I'm
really looking forward to it!
Then there are some bits that should tighten up the front suspension a little more and hopefully reduce the knocking! New genuine bushes for the control arms, new Porsche bushes and bearings for the damper top mounts and moog ball joints... because while I'm there and it will be needing a geo anyway, why not?! And finally new febi wishbones, because mine are rusty and a little dented, and well - at £12.50 a pop on sale how could I not. Will make life far easier when it comes to fitting the bushes too! Fitting with new fixings all round, courtesy of OPC who are pretty reasonable on nuts and bolts, then wanted £8 for one M14 washer
I guess I'll source those elsewhere! It was 17p for the M10 washers...
Overall that's about 400 quids worth of fun!
I had time and nice weather on the bank holiday Monday so got cracking with the suspension - easier job first right?
Only one set of spring compressors, so did one side at a time. Top mount first:
Compress spring, take the nut off the strut top, drop the suspension assembly down, then simply push the bearing/bushing out of the strut top. Now I feel silly though - the old top mounts feel perfect. Not sure what I felt in the bearings last time I felt them when I did the struts, but I was wrong! Rubber felt identical to the new ones. Anyone want a used but good set of top mounts?
After an annoying mess up with ordering I didn't have the track rod ends, but the existing ones still feel good, so I'm leaving them for now, so next was the new control arms/bushings and ball joints. Everything came off remarkably easily with a little penetrating fluid before hand, didn't even break out the breaker bar!
old v new
Glad to be swapping out the bushes:
The new caster block bushing is quite different... I don't see why it wouldn't work though. I ordered these quite a while back and need to see if these were from OPC or RosePassion
Something seems to be missing here....
Now looking far shinier under there:
That's most of the pictures I took. I had ordered all new fixings from the OPC - unfortunately many of them had been superseded, which means instead of getting nice yellow zink bling, you get boring grey
Managed to get both sides done in a long afternoon. Tried to match the castor block positions as closely as possible to keep the geo, but then tried to go for a test drive and quickly turned around - I had lost all self centring, felt like there was some significant toe out, and going past 2/3 lock resulted in the steering running away to full lock. Think I need to sort that a little better with some strings, then get it to a garage for a geo!