..and in todays " you have got to be kidding me " section, rear light housing

[theiceman]

so i remember reading about the captive nuts on the rear light housing seizing up a couple years ago and someone even posted the part numbers for ordering from our host..
so tonight i thought i would replace the gaskets around the lens. After 40 years they could use a refresh and held up well but are cracking now.
Sure enough the inside bolt is seized on the drivers side . i crawl underneath and think ..okay.. pita but doable, may have to drop the rear muffler, 4 bolts and a couple straps, and of course in for more muffler gaskets but okay . i have grown to learn there are no simple tasks. but i manage to squeeze the new gasket in place anyway with a trim tool.. all good..
move t the passenger side .. go to the inside bolt first and it comes out no problem ...

move to the outside bolt on the passenger side and its locked solid and i here the captive nut , click click click as it turns..

crawl underneath !!! have you got to be kidding me ????

i have to drop the oil tank just to get to one nut ? there is zero visibility up there.

i have never had the oil tank out but im thinking this is going to be one big pain in the arse just to get to one speed nut...
am i missing something guys ?

needless to say i didn't do the gasket on that side. i have a Porsche run on Sunday and the last thing i need to do is turn a simple job into an unmitigated disaster.

any tips on this one ?

thanks

[Canada Kev]

Same thing happened to me. I think it may even have been me that posted the part number for the nut.

Anyway, the captive threaded nut is made of some sort of bronze metal set in a steel piece which clips to a solid piece behind the light housing. On mine, the bronze was fine except for some crusty dirt, but the clip had corroded and allowed the insert to spin. Not cool.

I managed to get it apart after a few hours with some vice grips accompanied by copious amounts of swearing. Thankfully, I didn't have to do anything as drastic as removing the oil tank.

I think that if you give it time and lots of effort mixed with some contortionism and you'll get it.

One piece of advice I offer is to cover your bumper with a couple layers of masking tape to protect it from your tail light housing moving about during your struggles and scratching the paint.

[Geneman]

drill it out

[Canada Kev]

Not quite that easy...

[john walker's workshop]

Drill the head off and deal with the rest when the housing is off. Easy.

[theiceman]

Thanks all for your input. decided to back off on the project for a few days with a run going on tomorrow.
Need to source M5. by .8mm pitch by 13mm phillips head machine screws locally , then i can drill the heads off and see what i am dealing with. i will try and resuse the captive hardware if possible as ordering such small items from our host is just not feasible with all the charges being in Canada.

getting new gaskets to stay on is a bit of a nightmare so im going to take my time, remove housings, glue the gaskets on with weatherstripping adhesive to hold them in place and do it right.

thanks again all . ill see if i can snap some pics for the next guy when i do it.

[Canada Kev]

I couldn't find any appropriate clip/cage nuts to do the job properly and in line with some originality in screw sizes and whatnot, so I just got them from the dealer. They were the same price as Pelican (even in Canadian $$ which is a minor miracle in itself), I got them in two days and there was no shipping cost to pick them up at the dealer parts department.

If you can get the nuts out, you may be able to clean them up enough to get your new screws working in them smoothly. I destroyed mine in the process of removal, and they were corroded badly anyway. For the couple dollars they cost, I knew I'd replace them anyway to hopefully avoid the same problem if I had to get in there again.

However, if you manage to drill it enough to remove the screw head, sure, the tail light housing will come out easy enough, but you're not done yet. You'll still have to deal with the clip nut and the rest of the screw holding it in.

Here is what those nuts look like. They clip over some body work inside the fender behind the housing. The mounting screw goes through the light housing, then through the opening in the top of the clip, then through the hole in the body and then threads into the brass captive nut.

If that screw still has enough remaining so as to not be able to bend the top of the clip OVER the end of the screw, the clip nut cannot be removed to replace it with something else. This is because the remainder of the screw is still going through the body and being held by the brass nut on one end and the opening of the clip at the other.

I think what I ended up doing is holding the screw with some vice grips behind the housing inside the fender behind the oil tank, while drilling the head of the screw off. I had to hold it because the steel clip had corroded enough that the brass nut broke loose and just spun so I couldn't drill. After the head of the screw was gone I could remove the housing and actually see what I was doing through the tail light hole. The remaining part of the screw I managed to cut off with some side cutters and then I could bend the clip to release it from the body. I hope that makes some sort of sense...

[theiceman]

Kevin got it all apart.... thanks for the tips... i need the part you show above so hopefully i can find your original thread... bolt and nut are fused aso one.. i have some pics for future readers so i will update this when the project is complete.

[RWebb]

it's not an electrical issue but Porshe pooched this design so bad, it might as well be an electrical issue...

good luck with it - we need a nice LED solution for the whole housing - something that will not collect 10 lbs of gravel

[Canada Kev]

Originally Posted by theiceman

Kevin got it all apart.... thanks for the tips... i need the part you show above so hopefully i can find your original thread... bolt and nut are fused aso one.. i have some pics for future readers so i will update this when the project is complete.

This is the part number for that captive nut clip, the same that I've got in my hand above.

[Canada Kev]

I just had a laugh at the quality control statement on the package. Hopefully they have more control of their parts quality than the packaging of their "moror vehicle equipment..."

[RWebb]

maybe they just mis-spelled the name of the engineering intern who designed this funky system... moron

[Canada Kev]

Originally Posted by RWebb

maybe they just mis-spelled the name of the engineering intern who designed this funky system... moron

Yeah, that makes more sense.

[pampadori]

I dealt with this earlier this spring. One side of the passenger light was just spinning so I couldn't unscrew the screw from the broken captive nut.
I ended up removing the muffler and had enough room to get a Sawzall with a long blade in there to cut the screw/nut off. Dripping wet with sweat by the end but my tail light was now secure.

[RWebb]

you meant to write "secure... for now" right?

what a ....

ok, rant suppressed

[theiceman]

i did the drill as suggested and tail light was out in 2 minutes... i even managed to save the severely contorted caged nut, just to see if i could,, have new ones on the way..

i saw on another thread people using plastic inserts and a screw,,, i imagine it would work, but my holes are round, in the other thread they say the holes are square, so maybe a different car...
i did the two sides in different ways ,,, this project can go down the slippery slope fast...

you need some sort of rubber glue to glue on the new gasket,, so to do that right you should really take the housing out as its covered in grme and grit... however the harness that is hard wired to it also has the wire going to the rear license plate lights... which is of course fastened in place so would require the removal of muffler, rear bumerettea and rubber strip i imagine,,, so i took the back off the light housing instead.. bit of a mistake as now i need dumb dumb to seal it back up , but at least i got to clean the light assembly up on the bench and glue on the new gasket

on the second side i just tapped an old towel to the bumber let the housing dangle while i cleaned around the edges best i could and glued on the new gasket,,, worked out okay..
forgot to put rubber washers in so took it all off again ,.
forgot to put light bulbs on so tok it all off again ...
it was a bit of a day lol...

only thing now is the very corner of the taillight that has the point sticks out a bit with the new gasket and is quite sharp ( side of the car towards the front of the lens ) ,, redid it 3 times and got it best i could.. don't want to strip the housing or crack the lense so just left it for now.

more updates with pics to come.

[theiceman]

oops sorry about the massive pictures guys ... not sure how that happened ,

i could not re-upload pics due to Pelican policies so i just deleted the post and redid it below .
i hope this helps someone in the future and people can post with added information.

[theiceman]

rubber drain tubes ... in case yours are missing , thats what goes in the hole in the bottom of the assembly.

P/N P0911-631-259-02

[Harpo]

I did not replace my fasteners with Porsche stuff instead I used some stuff from work that is rated for 1000 hrs of salt spray and was free. Also instead of a philips mine use a torx drive.

No it isn't stainless

[theiceman]

Gees just realized i forgot to update this ...

got it all done and realized while under the car several holes in the bumper ..
so now im on the lookout for a heat shield i did not realize was missing and the rubber seal that runs the width of the car under the lights. so some pics as promised...

lenses had started to lose their colour , so scraped off all the old loose paint .. this is important as this is what gives the lenses the faded look ( the gap between the paint and the lense )



my lenses after i went around the edges on the inside with my testors paint..


my original weatherstripping had seen better days...


to replace weather stripping properly housing has to come out as it goes over a lip in the housing...

screws had to be drilled out .. so paint protection is absolutely key here.. tiniest grit will scratch up the paint..



this was the only way the housing was coming out ......




once in there you may as well just replace all of them .. i enjoy keeping the car original and these parts are cheap.


on the first side i took the whole light housing out .. which meant pulling these wires... so it meant i had to reseal the housing when done ... this was a bit of work so decided to just let it dangle on the other side and tapped down material for added paint protection. the real issue is license plate light wiring which goes off into the bumper which makes it a bit of a pain..




assemblies test fit ... all worked fine .. and done .. i glued the rubber to the housing with some wurths rubber cement.


after that it was just buttoning it up ...

oh i did have to order the rubber drain tube for the lights as mine crumbled on removing.