Note: I started this project last Saturday and am reposting my thread posts from Rennlist so they are in order and can one day help someone else. I tried changing the verbage in this initial post but may have missed a few items. As an aside I have purchased all my replacement parts from Pelican which works out nicely as they are just a couple of beach cities away from me
Begin Project
My '79 930 (owned since '98) has a number of oil leaks and really needs a valve adjustment as well. The oil leaks have been there for a couple of years now (I posted here about how I was going to fix them and then chickened out) and at least one is really bad (pretty sure its a oil return tube).
I don't drive the car very much so the valve adjustment is due to time rather than mileage. Also, since I plan to have both lower valve covers off it seems to make sense. I know this is an expensive repair at the shop so I've decided if I'm going to keep this car I really need to learn how to do some of these repairs myself. Unfortunately I'm good at working on computers but my mechanical skills are non existant. I've booked 3 nights at a Holiday Inn Express for good measure.
I've 'almost' started this project multiple times now but end up getting nervous and never starting. The whole thing scares the bejeebers out of me. Finally this past weekend I began. I'm going to try and document it here for others in a similar position. I'm a computer nerd by trade so my mechanical skills are oil changes (not on a Porsche) and I once kind of helped a guy pull the engine out of his 911 so I could learn something about my car. Here's a couple of notes about my experience level (this was as of last weekend).
1. Do not own a 17 mm box/open wrench
2. Had to google box/open wrench to be sure I was talking about what I thought I was talking about
3. Have never changed the oil in my 930 myself
4. Didn't visibly know the difference between a heat exchanger and thermal reactor
This is going to be fun.
Last Saturday I took the car for what I hoped wasn't its final trip around town to get the oil heated up. Jacked the car up using the controversial 'sump' method and prepared to drain the oil. Devil is in the details
I used one of those 15 quart oil pans (not good!) with the really small reservoir on the top. Picture included. Removed the oil plug and wow does that oil come screaming out! I had another 7 quart open pan just in case the oil couldn't drain into the pan fast enough. Everything seemed to be ok but the damn oil kept coming, and coming, and coming. Then, very quickly the oil filled and over flowed as I swapped to the 7 quart open model. You can't possibly swap between the two fast enough. Had to be a half quart or more on my floor. I laughed! First step in and I'm already looking like the rookie I am. One thing about oil too, it gets on everything! Oil is not easy to cleanup!
Anyhow, 20ish minutes later I returned to remove the sump plug for the rest of the oil scared to death it was going to leap from the hole, run down my arm and onto my face. Ended up with no issues and all oil out of the car. Also sprayed some of the nuts/bolts holding the heat exchangers to the thermal reactors with WD40.
I did take a few minutes to scope out the upper and lower valve covers as well. Was pretty sure there wasn't an upper valve cover on the driver side until I spotted a small corner of it buried under an intercooler and bunch of stuff I don't know the names of.
Enough fun for one day I decided to call it a day.
Sunday I decided to tackle the filter with my filter removal tool. Nope. Big Filter. Little removal tool. Filter very tight. Will come back to it. The filter wasn't even on my list of 'stuff that will be hard'.
Sunday was also more WD40 to the nuts on the heat exchangers and I decided to tackle a few of the easier to access nuts just to see how difficult they might be. Once I figured out I needed a 17mm open ended/box wrench is also about the time when I figured out I don't have one.
I did have a couple of 1/4 drive 17mm sockets and was able to loosen about 3 of them. Enough to realize just how difficult they are to loosen. And these were the ones where I had good leverage. A few of them look very difficult to access and I'm choosing to ignore the thermal reactor for now which doesn't even look possible. I did spray the thermal reactor nuts with wd40 but I don't even want to think about that challenge yet. I'm familiar with the broken stud horror stories. I'm tackling this one step at a time and right now that's one nut at a time until I get the heat exchanger removed.
So, all cleaned up and not sure if I will have time during the week....or light for that matter. Might not be able to work again until next weekend. In the mean time I'm going to be reading and I'm heading to the store to get a bunch of stuff I don't have including the following items. If I'm missing anything let me know.
Lighting
Oxygen Mapp Gas Torch
Propane Torch
PB Blaster
Sil Glyde (for the Oil return tubes)
Snap Ring Plier Set (per pelican tech article)
Torque Wrench
.0025 and .003 feelers (back side method)
Beer
Marijuana
I'll post more as I continue to make progress and/or mistakes.
Take Care,
Brian