Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

What a great day to be at Goodwood

Somewhat closer to home, I managed to get the rear control arm bushes on without any difficulty or tool breakages or any mishap whatsoever

Riding my luck, I attended to the rust on the inside of the shock spring caps and nothing flew off the drill/ wire brush & I even managed to get some kurust on them too. Left it too late to get the first coat of proper paint on but I’ll attempt that tomorrow when I get in from work.

Nothing major done today as I'm in that lovely waiting game again- more parts form my local ish OPC and for powder coaters and welders to get stuff done. However, I did get some garage time and got the rear control arm bushes all torqued up and fitted the ARB stiffening bracket to the drivers side. Also spent some time on the commuting bike with an electrical issue which I am pleased to say I got sorted.

At last, the replacement ARB bushes came in to my local OPC and were duly collected. The powder coaters had also called and the freshly coated ARB and springs were collected early Saturday morning before returning home to spend the rest of the day at our street party for the Royal nuptials.
Today, the plan was to fit the ARB and new bushes along with the passenger side ARB stiffening bracket. Having cleared the workspace, the first challenge was to undo the crossmember bolt so the ARB stiffener could be loosely fitted. Those following along will recall that I had applied plus gas penetrating fluid to the bolt s in preparation for the job. I was rather dubious that it had done its job as the bolt looked rather dry but I needn’t have worried as use of the breaker bar resulted in the satisfying crack of the bolt loosening off.
If you are contemplating replacing your ARB bushes, the one essential tip I will pass on is to invest in some talcum powder - it makes putting the new rubber bushes on soooo much easier!
Having liberally sprinkled the stuff over the new bushes, they went on the ARB with ease as did those in the wishbone end mounts.
Everything mounted up nice & easy and use of a punch to line up the bolt holes of the ARB brackets along with some mole grips to clamp everything together ensured that the bolts went in without issue and could be torqued up to the correct settings. With everything refitted, I decided to refit the plastic sump guard only to find that two of the bolts had been cross threaded at some point and needed rethreading.
I was lucky enough to have been given a thread restoration kit for Christmas and it came into its own sorting them out. Unfortunately, the bolts are too far gone and will have to be replaced.
Not a huge job, but at least parts have gone back on and I can think of it as progress.

I've not done much other than drive the 944 for quite a while now, but today finally removed the 15" 6J/7J staggered teledials and cheap tyres that I bought the car with, and replaced them with 16" Teledials and Avon ZV7's all around (The staggered nature makes finding a matching set of good tyres so difficult).



The drive has totally transformed - how much this is down to the smaller sidewall, and how much it's the better tyres I don't know, but no more wallow, majority of the body roll has disappeared, back end no longer skips on bumpy corners, and doesn't 'flop' on the transition from one direction to the other any more. Steering is so much sharper (and heavier). I'm not sure I need the late S2 ARB's that I have waiting to be fitted any more. The downside is I can now feel just how bad my geo is... Time to free up those rear swingarms!

Looks a bit better too

The transition on the flip-flop mostly down to the sidewalls storing and releasing energy. Wheels look good. If your not tracking the car then I wouldn't bother upgrading the ARB.

Agreed - and the body roll too. I just hadn't realised how much was due to those sidewalls. I'll see how I feel about the ARB's once I'm used to the new handling, but I strongly suspect you're right

My interior rear view mirror fell off the screen yesterday while the car was parked in the sun. When I bought the car 2.5 years ago the mirror was in the boot. I have tried all sorts of "specialist solutions" over time and this last fix survived for over a year. I have a plinth of adhesive that is very securely fixed to the screen, but the metal button to fix the mirror refuses to stick to that. I guess I need to abrade the back of the button to provide a key.
Any other bright ideas?

David

Fitted another re-con alternator yesterday after it became apparent the one from eBay wasn't as reconditioned as the seller thought............anyway had time to do the job myself this time which is always good. This allowed me to see that the "specialist" who fitted the other alternator seemed to think hammering off the undertrays was a better idea than unbolting them. My previously correctly attached aluminium tray was now only connected in 1 place and had a bolt missing in the middle connecting place and a broken tab on the other. So I spent an hour correcting this issue. Next I found out he only wanted to tighten some bolts on the airbox . And then the piece de resistance. Alternator shroud, previously connected properly with all 4 bolts, was now not even sitting in the right place with one lonely bolt half tightened stopping it from moving. Argh. We also had the rubber grommet rammed up the loom doing f all. Honestly what bloody chance do you have with people doing things on your pride and joy that just don't give a friar tuck? Anyway all sorted now, alternator all good and also nipped up my front wheel bearings a tad whilst car was up on axle stands. Ordered new plugs, cap and arm from CP4L. Bosch plugs and Beru cap and arm, £40 delivered and arrived today. That shall be a job for the weekend.

Good news is I can now do an alternator, at the side of the road, on a turbo, in 2 and a half hours start to finish. I'm quite happy with that!

Stuart

Good work - alternators on turbos are a bit of a pig to get at.

As for the rest of the hassle with garage 'workmanship', this sh*** does my head in and mostly why I've learned to do most things myself.

I finally got this back on the road!

Just in case you hadn't seen my build thread

That has a lot of vents...

9 to be precise, 7 of which are fully utilised.

I did this....

And how did it go?

Looked at it in the garage, then the bike, then the mountain bike. While I was deciding which to use it started pissing down, so I shut the garage door.