Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

Thanks David, that is the worry...May still get the door card pieces to get an idea how terrible fitting it is. Need to find a local trimmer to have a chat with

I've been having some fun driving the car! Or at least was until I went for a drive with a mate in his E30 and he quickly pointed out I had no brake lights. They were working a couple of weeks ago. Looking for some help on them!

Both brake lights out, so check fuse and pedal switch - both good. One pin on the switch is at 12V, the other is not connected to ground. So far as I can see that wire should feed back through the harness to the light clusters and go to the bulbs, which feed it to ground. i.e, the other terminal on the pedal switch should be ground, not floating.

On the light cluster side I've cleaned up the grounds, the rest of the bulbs are a fair bit brighter, and the brake bulbs are definitely getting GND, the round plugs have also been cleaned.

Circuit so far as I can make out is GND > Bulbs > Long harness section > Pedal Switch > Fuse > Battery +ve.

That would imply a connection directly from the pedal switch to the brake light signal wire, but the multimeter shows no continuity.

I've seen mention of a relay for the brake lights but I believe that only applies to oval dash cars?

Is there anything I'm missing there, or are there any common points of failures I've not seen?

The wiring diagrams I've found haven't really made much sense to me...

In other news, I've started having a shot at the cookies:


Some Polishing


Starting on the Primer (Don't worry, they'll be black! And the chips will be filled...)

Playing with the brake lights made me pay some attention to the rear end... nice bit of rust starting around the number plate lights to grind down and fix:








Unfortunately I didn't have any zink primer or gloss black, so I decided to do the inside with a thin coat of underseal with the thought that it's never seen anyway and is a common rust spot... Ground all the rust off the bracket, sprayed the back in matt black and made a new seal for the lens with some innertube. Not the best of jobs, but sure looks a lot neater! Now I just need to do the other one

And the friend who pointed out my brake light!

Amazing what I'll do to put off digging through the wiring harness...

After sorting the rust around the number plate light yesterday I filled, sanded and re-primed the wheel. This is my first time doing any of this so the worst wheel is my test subject... Definitely needs more filling and sanding as I didn't quite get it right first time, but I'm getting quite happy with it Now fingers crossed the masking is acceptable - that was hard to get right!



Then went on to the rear lock - as I mentioned in another thread, this needed a different key and I was initially looking at buying a whole new set of locks and keys for the car at ~£100. Thankfully white944 put me on the track of rekeying the locks and I found a guide on Pelican Parts.

As I've not found much on forums I took a good few pictures as I went along, turns out that cleaning everything takes far longer than actually rearranging the lock pins though!

Removing the lock from the boot was simple, two 10mm nuts, then two 10mm studs.



Pin pulled out with a bit of wriggling:



Spring off next - took a picture to remind me how to put it back together which came in useful!



Now the lock barrel can slide out - easiest way I found is to put the key in, turn 90 degrees then pull it out on the key.



So mucky! No wonder the lock was stiff. I was pre-warned of the fiddly springs so disassembled in a little take-out tub:



After cleaning up everything up with GT-85, rags and a tooth pick I went through trial and error of matching the pins I had to the ignition key. Wasn't too bad a job, although the old pins wouldn't all work with the new key - I ended up only having 5 of the 7 pins in the new lock:


(They fit flusher than that when the key is in properly)

The lock barrel also looks rather rough, so took the opportunity to give it a fresh coat of black with paint bought for the wheels. Some sanding, a coat of primer, two coats of colour and a final coat of lacquer later it was looking decent (remember only the end few mm is visible)



Unfortunately I then underestimated the time it took lacquer to dry and managed to scuff it up fitting back to the car (also, phone was refusing to focus. Probably thought the paint was too dirty!)



May have to re-paint at some point, but on the plus side, one less key on my keyring!

Great inspiration to fix my seized boot lock. Glad you posted a piccy of that large spring cos mine shot off into the darkness and I couldn't work out how to refit it. Took a few taps with a small hammer to get the barrel out, then liberal application of Corrosion X (great stuff) and judicious use of a few dental instruments all was free and smooth. Very satisfying.

Glad I could help! I took the photo thinking, not going to need this, but just in case... Then got it wrong the first time putting it back together

Fair bit got done this weekend... As I needed new brake light bulbs I thought I'd try some LED ones. When I was trying to fix the brake lights in the drivers footwell I was watching for the drop on the voltage gauge to see if they were coming on or not! I ordered some on ebay, on the basis that they used the LED panel on extruded heatsink design that I quite like and shine in 360* so actually fill the reflector unlike the one's that purely shine forwards...



I knocked one while squeezing the bulb tray back in though and quickly found that I should probably buy some more expensive ones! These are lightyears from automotive grade:



Still, I delicately fitted them, and was rewarded by barely a twitch on the voltage gauge when pressing the pedal. Also, little slo-mo video of the brake lights, one LED and one filament here.

I also swapped out the boot light for an LED equivalent, far brighter, whiter and more battery friendly now

Something I didn't know to do when inspecting the car to buy was to check out the inside of the sills using the phone camera - finally got round to it now.
Pretty good news on the Drivers side, small patch of rust but otherwise clean. Pretty sure this isn't an original sill as it doesn't have the dimple for the jacking point.



Not so good news on the passengers side, which is the original sill:





Nothing I could poke a screwdriver through yet, but not ideal. Looks like the dodgy porsche specialist I bought if from has filled a hole in the outer sill with filler (white mushroom thing in second pic) and stonechipped over it. Sneaky git. He told me a thousand times the car was rust free

On to the bigger bit of work, my floor pan is no longer cracked
I'm lucky in that I had multiple offers of welding from friends, and finally took one of them up. It's not quite a professional job (Sorry Ian!!) but it's far far stronger now, and my seat no longer wobbles - inspires a lot more confidence in corners! I was learning as I went along, so lots of pictures coming up.

The floor pan was cracked around the outer rear mounting for the driver's seat. The raised section of the floor which held the mounting had totally collapsed as well (There maybe a heavy owner in this car's history? :p). Underside of the floor (rust has accumulated since I first pulled the sealant off the bulge, it was clean metal at first):



And inside once the seat came out, handbrake removed and carpet pulled up:



Using a block of wood under the bracket and a jack, we pushed the floor pan back into shape, then cleaned up the cracks and surrounding area. Plan was to weld the cracks, then weld a support plate underneath the whole section. I imagine the proper way would have been to cut out the cracked section and weld a new plate in, but that would involve cutting off and re attaching the seat bracket, getting it's location perfect etc...



Obligatory flame welding mask:



And the bottom again, after a little work with a flap disc. (apparently a couple of the welds were embarrassingly blobby - I was asked not to post the pre-tidy up picture )



Then a plate over the bottom, making sure to weld all the way around so can't become a moisture trap:



It got tidied a bit more than that, but I forgot to get a picture before giving it a generous helping of underseal:



Tad more underseal on the inside:



I'm sure I could have got a better job professionally, but I've learnt far more this way (I did most of it bar the actual welding), and it was free - or at least yet to be paid for in pints!
(Thanks again Ian! For anyone who might be interested he has an engineering blog http://wechook.com - mostly based around building little one man electric eco-race cars for the Greenpower race series using a chassis made almost entirely from foam... I'm involved in the race series too, but mostly through another team)

The seating position changed a surprising amount as a result.. need to get used to it again, however having a rock solid seat beneath you makes the car feel far more planted on corners - although still a long way to go before the car is handling 'well'.

The brake light vid really shows the difference in the speed of illumination, quite surprising

I have factory LED rear lights in my A4, but it did not stop some twat destroying the rear of it last week!

It really does, I was surprised - although bear in mind that the video is 120FPS, which is approx 4x slow motion.

Video here to save digging through above post: https://goo.gl/photos/fLgjZCj6nt7tUv9y8 I can't work out how to embed it properly as it's not youtube.

Bad luck on the Audi!

Loving your work there! The LED's are far better than most out there - do you have a link to the seller?

Re your welding and carpet removal - how was it getting the carpet up? I'm having a nightmare trying to remove mine just behind the drivers seat.... Did the underseal on the metal work cause any problems at all in terms of going up in flames when the heat from welding went into the panel?

Thanks in advance

Light output and build wise I'll agree the LEDs are better than most, however I'm dubious about build as they are literally held together by a push fit of the extruded ally into the socket cup. I'm planning on delicately pulling mine apart and adding a little glue to the join. The one's I ordered are ebay item number 252290161869. The join to the resistor to the top LED panel failed on the one I broke - there was hardly any solder there at all, and will be an awkward fix as you need to desolder 6 connections between panels to get the top panel off - and that's assuming it isn't glued as well.

I've seen your woes with welding... it's what made me realise how lucky I was to have multiple offers from friends! Hopefully a welder actually turns up soon!

Rolling the carpet back wasn't too bad, had to peel it away slowly though as it was well stuck down. Some of the rubber under matting ripped instead of coming unstuck but it didn't cause a problem for me.

This was the extent of carpet I pulled up:



Handy scrap laptop to weight it all down...

I was watching the interior during welding. A couple of small (2cm max) flames popped up where I hadn't cleaned away the coating well enough and were just dabbed out with a spare leather glove. The bucket of water wasn't needed thankfully. The flames didn't seem at all keen to spread over the rubber area - if one bit catches it's not going to all go up in a whoosh of smoke! If you're having trouble scraping it off, maybe try a heat gun on it? I know after a little bit of welding I wanted to scrape a bit extra back and the heat had made it go very soft - it came straight off. Not sure if a heat gun would have the same effect, but worth a shot.

I can't say for the underside, but I had no reports of flames from Ian. The underseal came off easily enough with a wire brush drill attachment.

I got my LEDs from Tore Bergvil who supplies kits for 993s. I fiddled around with the bulb fittings and found a VW doulble contact so the tail light is now tail/stop and I have an extra led single filament tail. The bulbs are quite long so wont fit in all sockets, but the indicators are a straight swap and are much more noticable.

Where did you source the double contacts from? I'm all for having brake lights as visible as possible! I can imagine it's difficult to fit the bulb tray into the lenses around the body lifting eyes with anything larger than a P10w bulb in the lower middle?

I swapped the brake and tail, could have used the fog aperture, they are all red afterall. The twin connector is off a VW Bay I was lucky to find just the connectors on German ebay. The UK available repro light units won't work as they are quite different and don't use the same connectors only way is to find a scrapper or trawl through German sites. I got mine from www.vw-classicparts.de in the Netherlands part no 00-311953071A. I still have a couple of connectors they clip right in but the bulb retaining pins on a twin filament bulb are a slightly different height on one side i.e. staggered bayonet so I had to trim one side of the pin retainers on the bulb holder a bit, obvious when you look at it. With LEDs in the fogs they can be seen from space.

Thanks for info and advice Gryphon,

I'll get busy on Friday with the scraper and blow torch! The original welder has now been in touch - he had a trip to hospital last week.... He's coming down on Friday but it doesn't fill me with confidence that he's had a trip to A&E recently

I'm borrowing a Mig from a Tipec member at our C&S meeting tomorrow night so can at least try myself as a last resort

Good luck with the rest of your rebuild - it's been interesting to read and given me some ideas on other jobs I need to get to grips with!

Endoman, I was wondering about swapping brakes and fogs, but I'm not sure it would meet UK legals any more... I'll have a google.
To go total overkill it would be pretty easy to make all the red lensed areas light up with the brake lights, but still retain their original function as well using a couple of diodes. That could look a bit crap though.

Glad I could help blackadder, I look forward to seeing the results! I definitely need to learn to weld soon... Too many things to do/learn!

Edit - Looks like swapping brakes and fogs would be legal. The requirement is a 45* viewing angle on brake lights, but I'm pretty sure the fog lights satisfy that.
However there is a requirement for a gap between brake lights and fog lights - as such switching the brake and tail lights isn't strictly legal although I'd be amazed if you're called up on it!

Following a bike the other day who had very interesting brake lights. When he held it on the rear brake the brake lights flashed, on the front brakes it held steady. I've seen some cars in the states that seem to have pressure sensitive brake lights. It all gets a bit confusing and some dozy bugger will still rear end you.

Life's been a bit too busy to put much time into the 944 recently, but had an opportunity on Saturday. Got the tools out for an overdue service of the Mazda and the 944 was sitting next to it, so tempting...

So... New lower air box went in as the old one had broken around the front mounting points and been poorly repaired with glass fibre - the mounting suds were obscured so it was simply hanging at the front, and the repair was cracking up on the inside filling the clean side of the filter box with resin fragments I'm not looking forward to checking the bores...

New and old boxes:





The inside of the AFM was also filthy with oil and crud, so I had a go at cleaning it...



Unfortunately once all was back together, I found the engine had decided it didn't like idling much! Before the new air box it had a smooth if slightly high idle, after it got very lumpy and would occasionally die. As the AFM was the only bit I'd played with, that was the obvious thing to check first... Video here.



The carbon track in the AFM was completely worn through in places at the low end - right where it is vibrating over in the video. After a couple of attempts at re-tracking it idle smoothed out nicely, although at a lower RPM than previously. I don't know what caused the issue in the first place (cleaning the AFM?) but the engine seems to feel more willing during normal driving now, so a good thing to do.

The tappets have finally un-seized themselves, which is pleasant, but it's made me realise just how whiny the belts are. A re-tension is due anyway (1k miles) so I'll hopefully be solving that soon... It is rather bad at the moment though (another vid).

Finally some cosmetic bits... I've been super slow at refurbing the cookie cutters, but my trial wheel had a coating of collie-845 and is looking rather good Now I have three more to do



Since buying the car the metal trim along the top of the drivers window has been bent and chipped back to silver metal - finally got around to straightening it out and giving it a few coats of black trim paint. It isn't perfect as it cracked a bit when straightened - need a new one really, but it's a big improvement for now.