Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

Did some more Porsche related work today - not on my car though!
Picked up a set of 968 strut cases from the welder today and set about linishing back the welds for the adaptor sleeves for the B6 inserts ready to take to the powder coaters. Realised too late on that I 'd run out of emery cloth for final finishing- Amazon to the rescue and it will be here tomorrow.

Can you guess? Yep, more destruction of wire brushes in the never-ending quest to clean up the transaxle casing. The super-dooper extra long brushes that I ordered via fleabay have made getting to the deepest recesses finally possible. I used one up already today & think I now have sufficient to get the remainder done.

I did get some paint on a couple of bits today as well - they will never be seen except by anyone working underneath the car but they were decidedly tatty and I have de-rusted, cleaned, primed and top coated them. I am just debating whether or not to apply stone chip them too for added protection......

Yes.

Rattle mitigation: 4 weeks of jacking the thing up and then driving it and then jacking it up and... rinse and repeat.

Finally solved a major, omnipresent rattle which when transmitted to the cabin seemed to be of a plastic/panel/rubber nature which lead me down the wrong garden path.

During lockdown, all the rear shock absorbers on sale for the 944 had a lower hole that would fit M12, except mine is M14. I found a pair for sale (standard Sachs Bilstein) with the M14 hole but they were twice the price so elected to buy the rear shocks with the smaller M12 hole for half the price.
Removed centre metal sleeve from the old one's, removed the rubber and sleeve from the new one's and then made a bush from liquid poly with the old metal centre sleeve.
I always had a gut feeling that there was insufficient poly because of that internal diameter being much bigger. I had used an oversized washer which hid an internal deterioration of the bush. So after a long rigmarole searching and the help of the stuff in boxes underneath the stuff piled on top of the boxes at friendly mechanics garage, found 2 metal bushes with a sleeve and a smaller wall diameter which would allow me to create a meatier poly bush.
With that sorted and looking like it will withstand the rigours of our glorious roads, took the 944 for a spin Friday 14th March. Super quiet drive on the whole, nothing outstandingly noisy.
Drove over something. Some sort of puddle. Some sort of puddle with some sort of liquid in it. Thought nothing of it. Drove x miles before this smell - odd: not petrol, not smouldering wire insulation, not rubbing rubber. Just odd.
Opened the bonnet, looked underneath and found that whatever was in the puddle, was splattered all over the exhaust and was singeing and stinking.
Fine. Shut the bonnet. Shut bonnet again. Won't shut. Spring on bonnet cable and catch assy broke. Drive home at 30mph along an A road for 14 miles with the bonnet secure only by the secondary catch.
Drill rivets out. Fashion a soring. Fit spring. Test bonnet. All working.
Saturday 15th. A few pre-amble checks and perhaps clean up parts of the exhaust wot gets hot and smelly from whatever was in the puddle.
Bonnet won't open.
Snap panel (928 511 173 02) on lhs - bonnet release cable plate. Removed radiator fan and managed to release the bonnet.
Search on ebay - new one's for sale iro £33 plus £15 postage form the USA. 2nd hand iro £23. Thieving sons of flea bitten motherless goats.
Called Porsche Edinburgh. Brand new panel £10.95.

Add 2 inner seals (£14 each), 2 inner bearings (£18 each), 2 outer bearings (also £18 each) for font wheels as the o/s one booms at 65+, add VAT all told £150 including postage.
Now the waiting game and the weather is good...

Seems as if I haven't replaced or refurbished it, it will break. There are diminishing (along with my bank balance) number of 'it's' I keep telling myself.

A strong sense of ' I've been here before ' as yet more destruction of wire brushes took place in the seemingly endless quest to clean up the transaxle. Why oh why did I go down this particular rabbit hole? To add further insult to injury, I discovered that I have a failed seal between the rearmost aluminium casing of the transaxle and the steel section I thought it was the sunlight playing tricks on me but when I wiped it over with some shop towel and the unmistakable smell of gearbox oil greeted me!
Given that the Transaxle is currently affixed to a wooden skate for ease of moving in & out of the garage and is perpendicular to it's usual orientation when on the car, if the oil is escaping now, it will be a positive torrent when normal service is resumed!
I really, really didn't want to have to do any more dismantling other than the planned seal replacements.

On a more positive note, I did get some more paint on those parts that I had begun painting in my last update. If I have any black stone chip, I will apply that tomorrow morning so it can bake in the sun for the rest of the day.
Think I will take a break from the Transaxle tomorrow and pay some attention to the clutch end of the torque tube and give that a final clean and mask it up ready to apply some jet-laq.

I wouldn't worry about masking up H. It's almost imperceptible when applied and any excess will serve as protection.
I will (if you haven't already) strongly suggest painting the TT first then applying the Jet Laq.

Rustoleum?

Hi Rob,
The TT is already painted thank heavens! It got a good seeing to with the wire brush followed by a liberal coating of Bilt Hambers Hydrate 80. I then applied multiple coats of Frosts Chassis black in a nice satin finish. Shame I can't do photos as it looks great now. I've even got some replacement aluminium duct tape to replace the original that covered the TT slot.

I used Rustoleum when re-finishing my 1946 Wilton vise as only they do a colour that is almost an exact match to the original Factory finish. To be honest, I've never really been happy with it as even though I was meticulous in my prep, it has chipped off quite badly.

You do realise that it will all be under the car and you won't see much of it?

Fitted a new cork gasket on the end of my cam tower. Bolts had worked loose and one fell out which is never ideal. Noticed they are meant to have spring washers, mine did not, might be why they worked loose over 12k miles since the engine build.

Anyway, new gasket, new bolts, new spring washers now installed, and fully oil tight again. The bolts tighten to a mighty 8.2 NM, so had to buy a y torque wrench, cost more than the gasket!

Gasket £4 from Porsche, readily available at £10+ on ebay for the uneducated. Bolts and washers 2 quid, £12 torque wrench. Still a cheap fix. I'm not usually a big torque wrench aficionado, but for this job with the cork gasket I thought correct, even torque was a good idea!

It's also quite fiddly and small hands would have been advantageous.........

Stuart

I wondered what the black smoke emanating from Weegie land was.

MOT due 18th April. Only the headlight wash to sort - it's just a connection that fails as it's used so rarely but now part of the MOT. Just need to clean up the connector block directly to the headlight washer pump and hope it performs for the MOT, then do it again next year.

Done wheel bearings and oil [grease] seal. The seals were the worst thing to fit of the whole job. So much so, I mangled one of them and had to order another.

I'm not surprised you seen the smoke from afar, amazing how such a minimal amount of oil burning makes such an impact! Of course, dropping down straight onto the exhaust will never be a great thing!

I needed a new hose for my headlight washers, the one from the pump to under the bumper had rubbed a hole in itself on the cross member. Bumper off job but thankfully it was off for paint last year so did it then.

Good luck with the MOT, mine not due till September, 4 to go and counting before exemption!

Stuart

I do, but I cannot just leave it in the state it is in. It will only come back to bite me if I don't deal with it now whilst I have everything out and accessible.

On that note, the planets aligned for me today and I finally got the stone chip coating on the parts painted the other week; it did seem a sin to be covering up such nice paint work but I know that the stone chip will help with the longevity. Having been disappointed with the progress on the transaxle cleaning despite the rapid destruction of many a wire brush, I took a punt on some aluminium cleaner by Raceglaze. Now these are the same people that make Jet laq and I figured that as this was a good product, using their cleaner as part of a system, would give even better results.
For those of you that remember 'Wonder wheels' this stuff has a very familiar odour indeed! Any way I put a trigger spray head atop the bottle and proceeded to liberally dose the transaxle casing and agitate with a stiff brush that I use when cleaning the inside of the wheel barrels. Left it for a few mins, rinse & repeat before giving it a final rinse with some hot/warm water as per directions. I then borrowed my sons big boi blowr as it can deliver nice warm air at a fair rate of knots which I thought would ensure that all the many crevasses got completely dried. The end result, if I am honest, left me a little under whelmed but I could at least see the remaining stubborn spots of corrosion - these then got attacked with the wire brush. And that was the key! Not only did the last of the corrosion get obliterated, the aluminium came up looking like it had just come out of the factory I then tried a large area that was devoid of any white fur or residual goop and got nice shiny aluminium as a result!! With that, I set about the rest of the casing and am pleased to say, drum roll please - I'm done with the cleaning at last!
The transaxle seal kit has been delivered from Rose passion, as has the Curil T so next on the list will be to take the gearbox apart to replace the seals and sort out the leak. Once it is all back together, I will give it a squirt of Jet laq to preserve the rediscovered finish.

I took advantage of the bright if rather chilly but dry, weather to begin the resealing of the transaxle. Those of you following along will recall that Rose passion had delivered the seal kit. I set about emulating the excellent video on You Tube by 944 Restore of the exact task. Needeless to say we fell at the second hurdle and the blasted gear linkage had corrosion welded itself to the selector shaft hurdle No amount of penetration oil of heat had any effect.
Eventually I remembered that I'd purchased a slide hammer kit which also included a two or three legged puller assembly. If you've never used one of these things before, they must have been designed by some kind of sadist as you really need three hands to operate them as well as patience. Unfortunately due to only having the requisite pair of ands, patience was in short supply to say the least!
After much perseverance as well as a few choice words questioning the parentage of the tool designer, and copious amount of heat, I did get the blasted linkage off the shaft.

I then turned my attention to the removal of the selector shaft itself which, other than two of the three Belleville washers disintegrating as the bolts were undone, passed without incident. The drive shafts came out nice and easily and these have been treated to a good scraping off of all of the caked on grease. Tomorrow they will be sprayed with degreaser and given a thorough clean before being masked up and given a coat of paint as there was surface rust underneath most of the caked on grease.

I have set myself the challenge of removing the end lid without damage so it can be reused- a new one is US$86 plus shipping- I have seen them as high as $140 plus shipping too! Can't tell you what it costs in GBP as have yet to contact the local stealership!

Happy Easter to you all, enjoy the rest of the long weekend.

We need pics H.

This is sort of like Ceefax.

But keep it up - you might actually drive it one day

I’m picture challenged Rob

Yes, be nice to actually drive it!!

I’m just happy to be back working on it again