Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

No, they definitely are upgrades. No doubt about it.

'Candles in paper bags' is about right. For me, the headlights plus my instrument cluster revamp has refreshed the car in a funny sort of way.

Rear lights arrived on Tuesday but was too busy to open the box. Yesterday, removed them and dismantled the light fittings. Took a Dremel to all connector and contact points. Cleaned the inside of the lenses which are currently in the airing cupboard drying out. So hopefully, all nice and shiny and bright at the back too.

Once the temperature 'lifts', i'll have a go at removing the old one's stuck in with Tiger seal or something very strong.

Radiator plus complete water hose set is sat in the garage staring at me every time I go in.

Dressed up like the Michelin man and set about removing the rear lights. N/s popped out okay and I thought I may have been hasty getting a replacement (bar the fact it had a crack in it) but the right one was smashed to bits.

Took a while to remove the sealant off the chassis. Done and looking sharp.

Next up was the scratch my head issue which has been steadily getting worse:
Smokey, rough start up.
ICV is new. Hoses in and out are new.
DME temp. sensor I replaced in summer.
Throttle position switch activates as normal, all working within normal resistance parameters.
AFM is a refurbished unit.
Coil is new(ish). 4.5k
Plugs and leads all replaced: same 4.5k
No vacuum leaks
Alternator output afaik, very good
Battery replaced before MOT.
FPR new (5k ago)
Fuel pump new and one way valve at pump also replaced.

I thought about valve stem oil seals and then no: 1) not burning oil 2) smoke is grey. What then? Remove No. 1 plug and inspect. Looked good.

Not showing any signs of running overly rich or rich at all for that matter (I set the mixture to 3% on the DME not long after the MOT. The tester said that the emissions were better than a lot of much much newer cars he tested. I had a gut feeling, the 0 setting; position 1 was a bit lean then. Performance of the car has been transformed since setting it @ 3%).
Read a post somewhere where someone had an identical problem and he was told by in Indie Porsche dealer it was probably the valve stem oil seals. Not convinced and after a lot of other fault finding to no avail, he took the lid off the DME to have a look and found a small amount of corrosion near a resistor, cleaned it up with electrical contact cleaner and bingo! It worked.
But before I elected to inspect the DME, I swapped out the DME relay and... (still -3 outside at this point), started fine. No smoke, not rough.

I'm a very happy bunny.

Next week when it gets milder, rad and hoses here I come.

Excellent work!

Cheers Stuart.

Greenock at some point when the weather is better.

Yes no worries, give me shout. Should be back in double digit temps from Monday here.

Great news that the running issue is resolved and that the spare tail light purchase was good planning!

Fingers crossed for the rise in temps and that the rad & hose swap goes without a hitch.

Well, you know the score with these 9xx thingies, so compared to other jobs, should be straightforward.

Went for a jolly. Too much salt on the road for a jolly but I went anyway. First thing was fit 4 new spark plugs (properly gapped). Now I don't know about anyone else but I find that those neat fitting plug leads tend to bind and I have broken 1 or 2 ignition leads trying to extract them.
However, today they came out easily. The rubber was quite stiff at -1.
When I drove in, there was a stutter and it almost stalled just before pulling in to the petrol station/
Filled up and parked in the car park at the back of the petrol station.
Opened the bonnet with the engine running and heard this ticking. Hmm... one ignition lead had popped up and no. 4 cylinder lead had popped off. I guess the small amount of air trapped inside the plug hole plus the fact I used a spot of rubber grease to aid insertion/extraction had expanded and pushed them out. Quite a disparity of heat from -1 to engine warm.
Pushed them back on and the engine suddenly purred like a kitten.

Drove Norf (as they say daan saaf), and hit a snow storm. tippy toed through about 7 miles of blizzard, no incidents and then as I got nearer the coast, snow turned to rain.
Got back with the sole intention of pressure washing above and below to get rid of the white film on the car and a quick shampoo-wax and so ran late and got earache from the epo.
Worth it as the scenery was fantastic and the car ran like a dream.

Rad and pipes fitted.
Not before I spent x number of hours fabricating an insert (944 106 927 00). The previous rad had a protrusion, so no need for one. This rad however, did have screw fittings for both twin turbo fan and single fan cowlings as well as blanks with crush washers.
All fitted until the OH was tidying the packaging and found... a radiator insert in amongst the packaging

A jolly later and a trip across town to get home (usually manifested the fan staying on after ignition off) and no fan. I knew the fan was working as I heard it running when I was sat idling in a layby. So all good. It's much fatter than a standard 944 rad and wider still than the previous one. Extra cooling and with all, extras, it's 'plug and play'. Highly recommended.

Reading up, it seems that if I wanted to run a twin fan one would require a different thermostat and twin relay. Has anyone on here fitted a twin fan to a n/a?

Good job, well done again!

I remember fitting mine was a pain in the arse, one rubber hose ended up an inch too short, the fan cowling needed serious fettling and when that was done fan blades were grazing the pipe to the oil cooler, so needed to trim them a bit!

But, it was well worth it. It performs way better than a standard rad. My temp gauge barely moves upwards in the cold weather unless stuck in traffic, when it will eventually hit the quarter mark on the gauge. After that it stays at a quarter all day long.

Of course, a freshly rebuilt engine with a new water pump also helps things.

Stuart

Did you fit a non OEM Alu rad?

On another note, bulbs are all good after a week, definitely a bulb fault and not a wiring fault. They have refunded the faulty bulb now so all good.

However, since the battery flattening incident, I feel like the battery isn't what it used to be (well, I know it isn't!). I'm getting 2 days tops leaving the car confident it will start, 3 or more days its dropping below 11 volts and won't start without a jump. This is despite some long drives including a 150 mile trip, I would have thought that would have charged the battery right up, but it didn't. Could previously leave it over a week with no issues.

The battery is a very good one, about a year old, a Yuasa 5096, 80 Ah job. So I called the garage that supplied the battery, looking for a warranty exchange. They asked if I had charged the battery, I explained about all the driving but they claim this will only minimally charge the battery and that it needs put on a charger as it died whilst in the car. Is this correct?

Anyway, they wanted the battery left with them for an overnight charge and see how that went before trying to get me a replacement. With the garage 40 miles away and the car being my daily driver, this was not suitable (I don't have a spare battery and neither did they). So I've ordered a fairly cheap 12v/8A charger (a lot seem to be 6A) which arrived today. I will take the battery out soon and do an overnight charge. The charger should also tell me the charge % on the battery when I plug it in, so will see what it says and how I get on.

Interestingly the green tick is still lit up on the battery, meaning it should be fine.

Stuart

[/quote]Did you fit a non OEM Alu rad?[/quote]

Yes when the engine was done the old rad sprung a leak, despite being fine when the car went off the road!

I had similar with a Bosch battery as the previous one started failing about 4 months before the 5 year warranty. He tried to argue the toss.
I know the local mechanics and one of them tested the discharge rate, load test and printed out the result. So If you call around some local mechanics and ask if they have a printable battery tester, that would help your case. Charging it up will not test the discharge rate or load.

(funny sort of bloke) This is useful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq0iey9VC94

The people who sold you your battery could give it a slow 48hr charge but that does not show the full picture of the batteries health.

Yeah I'm kind of stuck now unless I can get another functional battery to get me by. This will require a battery fairy as I'm not buying a new one at this point..................

I will remove the battery tonight, see the current charge level, and give it an overnight charge with my new "fast" charger, and see how it goes.

Of course this will involve having to crawl into the boot on Monday morning via the passenger door to pop the latch, as on the late cars the boot needs power for the button (obviously) and also the key lock, which is a microswitch for the electric release and not a mechanical rod/lever like older cars.

There is a post under the bonnet to connect power to for this reason, but not having a booster pack renders this moot.

Stuart