Tales of the 930 Turbo

[GO DAWG GO]

Ever sit back and think about some of the constraints encountered while working on your car!

Porsches are nice cars but the design for maintenance is non existent. Really bad. It seems like everything you do is much more complicated than it needed to be. Some of my observations on a Turbo:.

Jack up the car.... There is no “real” good place to jack it up with a floor jack.

Take off the front wheel and look at the front hub. Five big diameter lugs on a cast disk attached by 5 small diameter bolts? WTF? What happened to something being only as strong as its weekest link? Throw that out the window. Cant get the stinking dust cover off. Tool required. Nobody makes one. Take the bearings and seals out to remove the rotor. That’s smart!. Rear is a little better.

Forget taking your distributor cap off to take a look inside...The Intercooler has to be removed and you cant unsnap or snap the hold down clips back on the cap. Pull the wires out of the distributor cap to get it off and on...brilliant!

Just stay away from the left side of the engine compartment. It defies the laws of physics and thermodynamics. Multiple objects occupying the same space at the same time and every edge is sharp.

Throw away the air cleaner plenum. It's the size of a washing machine.

Don’t put a quart too much of oil in the tank. It will inhale it in the intake and will be farting smoke for a month. Cant get it out either. It will smoke at will and at the worst times. Don’t drive up to a window of a drive through. Oh nice car! EeeeUUUU!

You have to giggle when you see how to replace the alternator. Its like pulling the N1 section of a turbofan engine and squirming and twisting to remove (5) little 4 mm bolts that hold on a guide vane that has to be removed inside the engine plenum to get to the wires to remove them. These guys have never heard of a connector

Fan pulley...Better have 6+ shims or the whole works will self destruct and grind a slot through your base backing plate. Weird!

Spark plugs replacement is an art. Its like pulling a tick from your horse’s groin while ridding it.

Valve adjustment is and art...This is and issue...Could easily be much better. Its truly a job for an orthodontist.

Fix an oil leak. .It will start somewhere else.

The car clunks where there is nothing physically possible to create a clunk? Front end?????rear end??? Wont clunk unless your driving it with a nosey buddy who cant help but say “what was that? Jack up the car on jack stands and nothing has any play, struts, sway bars, trailing arms… yank, pull, push, spin nothing loose, what the hell is that clunk?

Did you ever see what holds on your emergency brake shoes...Its a frictospringprobegrabulator.

German engineering

What have you observed about your cars that seem silly?

Bob

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by robert_snyder

German engineering

My driver's side rear wheel flare is just over 1/2" (over the max. 8 mm) higher than the passenger side. How do I adjust ride height without removing the torsion bar(s)?

The front was easy to adjust, just turn a couple of 10 mm nuts a few times.

This is crazy.

[CurtEgerer]

It could be worse. You could own a Saab. The alternator recently failed on my daughter's 900SE Turbo. That should be easy, right? I might even break my long-standing rule of religiously not performing repairs on daily drivers. Well, it took me 5 minutes just to figure out where the alternator was. Off to the mechanic. He spent 5 1/2 hours. Wound up remvoing most of the front suspension and dropping it thru the bottom Next time I have a 10-12 free hours, I'll write about the engineering virtues of the Saab convertible top mechanism .....

[GO DAWG GO]

Kach22I,

Did you try the eccentrics in the rear springplates? Does a 1977 have eccentrics????? Hmmm!

Bob

[djmcmath]

Ever try to pull off a fender? You've gotta take off the entire bumper first, and some of those babies are really hard to get to. While they're better than most cars, they're still ... challenging in their own ways.

I did a tune up with a friend on his Ford Taurus not too long ago. Simple task: replace spark plugs, change oil. How hard can this be?

Well, ok, the front 3 cylinders were easy to get to. The back 3 (it's a transverse mounted V-6) required removing the intake manifold. This is a routine maintenance, remember, not replacing some obscure part.

Ok, that was painful, and required purchasing a collection of gaskets that you wouldn't think would be necessary for spark plugs, but ... how about a quick oil change? Can't be that bad, right? Oh, except that there's no drain plug. The "engineers" at Ford decided they could save a few bucks and a possible oil leak by not installing one, apparently. So we had to remove the entire oil pan, which involves pulling a whole collection of itty-bitty metric bolts and replacing the oil pan gasket. I love replacing gaskets, which is good, because it seems like every routine operation on this car requires it.

But it gets better. The torque spec for the oil pan bolts isn't nearly low enough. Or high enough. See, at the torque spec, we still managed to strip 3 of the bolts. But it wasn't tight enough to keep the oil in, so it was still loose enough to dribble a little oil. Nice. Speaking of dribbling oil, the engineers also decided it was prudent not to put an oil-fill spout on the car, not entirely sure why. The only way to get oil in is through a LONG funnel down to the dipstick hole.

After going through that kind of nonsense on a couple of random non-Porsche cars, I'm just about sick of working on anything that isn't German. Even my 37 year old VW is better designed than that...

[GO DAWG GO]

djmcmath,

Damn... I feel better about the ol car now...No oil fill cap or vent...

Bob

[Porsche-O-Phile]

I especially like on the 944 how it requires a $700 tool to tension a $15 belt.

[Superman]

I suspect, and hope, you guys are being funny on purpose. Sure, I've scratched my head a time or two wondering why Porsche did not make certain procedures a bit easier ( recently, again, fought viciously with the clip at the pedal end of my clutch cable). But....I've wrenched on a fair number of vehicles in my day and my all time favorite, hands down, is the Porsche 911.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Isn't it the 2.7L early 911s that are infamous for having you need to drop the engine out of the car just to change the spark plugs?

[the]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

I especially like on the 944 how it requires a $700 tool to tension a $15 belt.

on a $500 car.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Touche.

Q) How do you double the value of a 944?
A) Put gas in it.

Ba-dum-bum.

[m21sniper]

The 928 is just as bad as the 911. 10 hours to change 4 shocks.

As i often tell people, the 928 is built like an onion. It comes apart in layers. LOL...

[Porsche-O-Phile]

I can personally vouch for a turbocharger replacement taking about 20 hours of labor. Brilliant!

[Aerkuld]

Originally Posted by Superman

I suspect, and hope, you guys are being funny on purpose. Sure, I've scratched my head a time or two wondering why Porsche did not make certain procedures a bit easier ( recently, again, fought viciously with the clip at the pedal end of my clutch cable). But....I've wrenched on a fair number of vehicles in my day and my all time favorite, hands down, is the Porsche 911.

I agree. I think the Porsche's are amazingly easy to work on most of the time. If you want to find a car that is a royal pain in the arse you should find a Chrysler Sebring Convertible with the V6. Even the battery is hidden away behind a panel under the front right wheel well. There is no space around anything to work on the motor. I think most modern vehicles aren't designed with the intention of them being fixed. Just throw them away and buy a new one.

[competentone]

Originally Posted by djmcmath

I did a tune up with a friend on his Ford Taurus not too long ago. Simple task: replace spark plugs, change oil. How hard can this be?
... how about a quick oil change? Can't be that bad, right? Oh, except that there's no drain plug. The "engineers" at Ford decided they could save a few bucks and a possible oil leak by not installing one, apparently...

What year Taurus is that?

I have a '99 -- everything has been pretty easy when it comes to maintenance.

I've been thinking about getting a later model Taurus (I like the way they depreciate -- if I'm buying used), but don't want what you describe!


As to the complaints about the "complexity" of doing anything on a 930 -- I've never had my hands on one, but I doubt that you can really describe the 930 as a "planned" car -- it is the product of evolution on the design of the fairly simple 911.

And of course, one cannot ignore that much of the complexity on autos is the consequence of government-mandated emission and safety regulations (some quite good, some of questionable "usefulness").

[GO DAWG GO]

Competone:

As to the complaints about the "complexity" of doing anything on a 930 -- I've never had my hands on one, but I doubt that you can really describe the 930 as a "planned" car -- it is the product of evolution on the design of the fairly simple 911.

To be fair you're correct. But that doesn't excuse the smaller diameter studs inside the front spindles. Ok I can hear it "Well the inner studs are 5000 KSI Inconel and are 3 times stronger in shear strength than the wheel studs" "BFS" I think I just made up a new abbreviation!???

Competone. The only reason you haven't had "your hands on a 930" is because they don't have a neck.....

I have never said WFT so many times in my life since I married the 930...

And been wrenching since I was kid for the last 30 years!

Have a nice weekend

Bob

[Britwrench]

Since cars were invented, there have been ones that are hard to work on, but worth it or cars that are hard to work on, but are total junk anyway. It won't change.

Porsche have some of the "what were the designers thinking?' repair jobs, but the end result of having the car work as it should is worth the time.

I could name several old and current vehicles that are in the "total junk" class.

Most of the manufacturers could start producing workshop and parts manuals (or cds) that related to the real world, but that won't happen either. Digital cameras are obviously too expensive for them.

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by robert_snyder

I have never said WFT so many times in my life since I married the 930...

You need to make this part of your signiture Bob, too funny - I know the feeling.

[notfarnow]

On the other hand, the 930 has the best line I've ever read in an owner's manual. I can't remember the exact wording, but it goes something like this:

"To ensure proper functioning of the wastegate, every time you drive your car accelerate at wide open throttle in first gear at least once."

Maybe someone with an owners manual handy can give the exact wording.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

I should buy one just for that.