Project start

[gost]

Hi to all, I began my servicing and repairs on my 85 tonight and wanted to share the process with other members especially newbies on the forum and new P-car owners that might find the info usefull.
I got her on the stands and took the wheels off. I used Bill Verbergs reply to my post to locate the stands as I feel they are the best spots. It allows complete access to everything. Call me nuts but I raised the car using 3 jacks ( I have them so why not )
One in front on the cross brace just behind the a/c condenser and the other 2 are the standard side locations. What a breeze. Took all of 10 min to have her on the stands.

The goods that are going in.
I drained the engine and tranny. Engine was simple. Got her up to temp and pulled the plugs on the tank and the case. I heard so much about the mess you get when you remove the filter so I laid out towels all over and turns out that 5 drips of oil fell out of it. Perhaps because I drained everything before removing the filter I don't know but it was no mess at all.
Then the tranny. I read numerous times to remove the fill plug first just in case you drain it and find that you can't remove the fill plug because it is a *****. I used a breaker bar after cleaning the plug well so the 17 mm hex socket would seat properly. It came off with a bit of effort but it was not too bad.
The drain plug is magnetic and will show you what's going on in the tranny. Besides fine shavings and slime, this turned up.


Well that was it for tonight. I will continue this rainy weekend. Hope it does rain now cause if not then I will miss Kurts meet on Sunday on Long Island. Hope this was a bit helpful.
I will continue posting my progress.
Someone let me know if this is old news and tireing and same old blah blah and I will stop posting on it. You know, shoot before I get like that kinda thing. Beer was good by the way.

Gost

[DW SD]

what projects are you doing? Your box suggests some of them....

[gost]

DW, Basic tune up, plugs, Magnacore 8mm wires, valve adjustment, replace 1 oil return tube, all filters and oil, I'm going to drill out the airbox with 3-2" holes for better breathing, New brakes and SS Dot lines, flush and bleeding brake syst, rebuild calipers, paint calipers, repair A/C ( I think it's a relay or the evap blower ), fix the drivers power seat rear height syst ( replace or clean the switch ),
repair drivers seat heating (I hope it's just the relay), treat my Fuchs with cleaning and vaseline to try and remove the water/chemical stains, remove and paint the alternator fan and housing, tighten all the oil lines, clean and detail the engine, tranny and engine bay.
Drink some beer and bond with my car. It's alot of work but I need to do it and learn about the car while at it.
Should be fun. I have the time now so I'm going for it.

Gost

[DW SD]

Sounds like some good projects - good luck!

Doug

[sagacis]

Any updates on these projects?

[gost]

Just removed the trunk carpet and battery and spare tire to have more access to things. A tree fell on my house damaging the roof so I was re-roofing this weekend as oppossed to turning wrenches. Should be up to speed this weekend and will post my progress. Thanks for the interest.

Gordon.

[gost]

Picked up the wrenches yesterday finally and continued plugging away. I took all the ancillary stuff off the engine to allow clear access to valve covers, plugs, cleaning.
The hardest part was the alternator and that wasn't all that difficult. The fan popped off when I tapped the alternator with a mallet from behind (while the whole housing was resting on 2- 4x4's at ea. end of the housing) and getting the alternator out of the housing was done by slapping the whole housing flatly on the 4x4's with a towel in the middle on the floor to catch the alternator when it dislodged. Beautiful thing. The strap came out easy enough with the dizzy removed and pulled out from the opposite side of the dizzy.
Then you have this wonderful open area to work in.

To get to this point took me about 3 HR's and I never worked on a Porsche before. I was armed with 101 projects, Bentley's and the workshop manual. Also a great help was the tech articles on our sponsors site and of course all of it's members with on the money advice.
When checking the top of the motor out I noticed this....


I can't tell you how easy it was to get the plugs out when you have all the other crap out of the way. I was surprised how little effort was needed to screw the plugs out, they felt barely snugged down. Lucky me I guess. Next I will be degreasing the underside of the motor and then doing my valve adjustment.
Does anyone know if these are the updated Turbo type valve covers?
I read that if they have the cross sectional ribbing on them that they are the Turbo covers, just want to be certain.
So she sits until tomorrow night for the next step.
Till then.
Gost

[Sumotang]

They are the turbo valve covers.

[gost]

Thanks Sumotang. I wonder if they were stock issue on the 85 Carrera or were added somewhere along the way.

[Zeke]

Bill told you to put the rear stands that far foward? I'm a little surprised, but I won't second guess his wisdom.

However, if you happen to remove lots from the front of the car and nothing from the rear, you might find you are awfully close to the fulcrum point. This positioning also puts a lot of stress on the chassis under the doors. Ideally, one would like the stands where the wheels are in relation to the chassis, but the 911 doesn't provide optimum jack points to serve that purpose. And as it is, that would still be 60/40 with the bias at the rear. The way you have it, you could be 75/25.

I solve my own concerns about this by using 5 stands. The 5th is placed under the motor at the back of the case using a block of wood to spread the load along the bottom of the motor/trans. I feel that if I pick 200 or so lbs. on the fifth jack, that I'm relieving stress amidships and providing security in the back.

Well, look at your doors. They will tell any story. Gaps wider at the top rear? If not, forget me. But don't forget the uneven weight distribution and start jaking up the front.

[gost]

Hey Zeke, I tend to agree with you. Bill posted a diagram of the underside floor pan and indicated points C and D as the best location for the stands and then posted a few pics of his car in the air with this set up. This was on the rennlist forum on my post topic ( gost - user) "front lifting points" on 4/8/05.
I did this and did notice the door gap situation so I put my floor jack under the engine with padding and jacked up the rear to alleviate some weight. I have read on other posts that the gap is no big deal and returns to normal once the car is lowered. I also used another floor jack and raised the front a bit behind the condenser and now very little gap and the car is super stable.
What's your take on the head leak? Just check the torque on the head bolts?

Thanks

Gost

[sushinav]

Way to go and jump into it! You'll be amazed how quickly all these tune up items go the second time you do them. I've always jacked on the front T-bar covers and rear T-bars, but Bill knows what he is doing.

1 technique on the valve adjust that I just started started doing and really like: instead of trying to wedge the feeler blade in to check the gap, just back the adjuster out first, put the feeler in, then tighten down to spec. This saved the frustration of trying to get a small feeler in a small gap.

[gost]

This is sound advice and I plan on doing just that when slipping the guage "in" is difficult. If it goes in easy and the adjustment is right then I save the bit of additional work by not having to adjust anything. This has been alot of fun so far thanks to all the prep, literature and advice from this board. This is a great place to be as a Porsche owner who does his own thing.
Thanks for your support and enthusiasm.

Regards,

Gordon

[strother]

Great thread, and really great pictures, Gordon. I'm looking forward to someone weighing in on your possible leak.

[gost]

Struther, thanks for the support. I did get an answer on the leak. Turns out the 3.2 has no gasket at the head just metal to metal contact and is known to weep at that location. I'm amazed that there is no gasket but hey, Germans. I was told to check the torque on the head bolts while I have the valve cover off to do the valve adj. and re-torque them. Simple enough. I want to clean the bottom before I go on with that. My heart skipped a beat when I saw that leak and thought "engine re-build" right away. Hope it will work and if so I consider being very lucky.
Hope it helps you.

Gordon

[gost]

I decided to start on the brake rebuild tonight. I placed a double layer of saran wrap on the reservoir and plugged the vent line and blocked the brake pedal about 3 inches down it's travel as I read in other posts. I then cracked the hard line connected to the caliper (I started with the passenger rear) and then the other end connected to the flex line. I soaked everything with penetrating oil a few times in the past few days and again tonight and I believe it helped alot in getting things apart. The hrd line did twist a tad when I unscrewed it althoigh it remained intact but I'm going to change those short lines anyway, they are cheap enough and worth the piece of mind. If you don't have a metric flare wrench, I believe the size is 8mm, then you can use a 7/16" flare wrench if you have one, fits perfectly and why spend the bucks if you don't have to. The caliper mounting bolts are 19mm and the top one is a breeze to remove but the bottom one is a bit of a hassle. The bolt is close enough to the trailing arm that you cannot fit a socket and rachet in the space. You should use a long (for leverage, it's tight) box end wrench or offset wrench or a ratchet wrench if the ratchet wrench is not too wide (diameter wise). my ratchet wrench was too fat to fit on the bolt with the space allowed. I had no long 19mm wrenches at all and realized that my 3/4" offset wrench fit on the bolt just fine and pulled down on the wrench hard while laying on my back and cracked it that way. The caliper comes off easily now and the pads are a no brainer. The rotor comes off simply by removing the 2 phillips screw on the face of the rotor. By the way i read about how messy this job is and all I got was about 10 drips of fluid out of the lines and caliper before I removed it. No mess at all.
At this point this is what I had.
Then I saw the inside of the rotor where the shoes do their work!
Is this a rotor that can be re-used or is it toast? There was a third similar crack opposite the other two. Could this be caused by the PO leaving the emerg brakes on while driving and overheating the brakes and rotor to the point of fracture? Doesn't seem possible to me but then again this is my first Porsche brake job.
How does the rotor look to you all? I know the correct way to tell is to mic it but I don't have one now. I could go to Pep Boy's for a measurement if required.
When I went for my inspection about 1K ago the mechanic said I needed rear brakes now but would let it slide and that I should replace them very soon. When compared to my new Mintex pads they were worn about half way. Probably a year of light driving left on them. No matter, I want to re-build the calipers and paint them anyway.
So this was not too bad of a removal with the lower caliper bolt being the hardest part and that wasn't sooo bad.
On to the other calipers tomorrow night. I will take apart the first caliper and see how difficult it is to get the piston out and if a bear then I will hook it back up and use the fluid in the system to pop'em out
Hope this is helpful to a few out there. I'm having a gas working on the car so far. Will keep things updated as the work progresses.

Ciao,

Gordon

[gost]

In a rush today so I only got the other rear caliper and rotor off.
Awesome steak tonight for my 42nd. The other side was just like the other rotor and shoes. Glad I started this project cause they looked scary.
New rotors are on the way. The hard line attached to the caliper twisted like a pretzle when I took it off penetrating oil and all. They looked like they were made of copper. Is there a reason for this and is it OK to replace them with standard alum or steel lines?
I'd like to introduce my side-kick Zazu. He actually retrieves dropped nuts and bolts and has been known to toss me a wrench, albeit a small one, now and again. He's a panic!!

By the way I tried the Vaseline on my stained Fuchs and man-o-man what a difference. There are still slight spots of haze but it's soooo much better. I will re-dose again and see what that does but what a quick great fix for those damn stains.

[img]
The emerg brake shoes are about $100 t0 $165 bucks on line. CRAZY and a total rip off. I got mine re-lined at a truck brake and spring shop for $40. They look like new.
Onto the front brakes tomorrow!

Be well

Gordon