Newbie Questions

kenstep2it · 07-06-2009, 12:10 AM

I have a 93 carrera 2 cab which ended up in my garage (won't get into the details of how that came to be). Car had less than 40k on the ticker but looked really rough. Spent the weekend detailing it and man was I wrong. It looks brand new now. Took it to the dealership to have the valves adjusted (they were clicking) and that along with an oil change came out to about 1200 bucks. Won't make that mistake again. I'm no mechanic but I'm not an idiot either and love to tinker. Car sat in a warehouse for God knows how long and here are the issues I'd like to resolve: 1)Dead battery that wont hold a charge even after putting it on a charger then driving it around. 2)loud whining from engine compartment. Guess this is the alternator which ties back to #1? Which leads to 3) voltage regulator. What is this and where are they located? How do I test it? 4) AC blows cold, but not REALLY cold. Could this be the whine? 5) When the car gets to operating temp the clutch only comes to about 3/4 the way back up, oh, AND I have to push it through the frickin floor to get it into 1st (the guy at the dealership said, and I quote "yeahhhh it's got a hydrolic clutch soooooo, nothing you can really do about that. sorryyyyyy" then he told me some bushings on the rear axles were worn or something which would throw grease and cost like 900 bucks to fix but at that point I didn't trust the dude. 6) At operating temp, the tach bobs up and down, up and down, up and down, then cuts off. 7) the passenger airbag light is on for no reason. 8) shift knob is wood with leather gate pattern but its worn and cracked... would love to find a new one. 9) gas pedal seems harder to push than it should. 10)would love to do some power mods in the future but don't know where to start (exhaust/intake maybe?) Hope i can learn from you guys but gotta crawl before I can walk.

Newsboy · Newsboy's Garage

You have allot of issues to address here. First, oil change is easy, and valve adjustment not too hard. You can search this forum, and also Rennlist for answers to most of your questions.
The clutch is hydraulic, and cannot be adjusted, except for the pedal height itself. Bleeding the clutch slave cylinder may help with this. Your whining could be a bad alternator bearing, your battery could still be bad. Get it tested at sears. The A/C is famous for not being too cold. You may need a re-charge. If it's R-12, the stuff is expensive & hard to find.Bushings on the rear axle's? Do you mean CV joints? Take it one thing at a time. The more specific you can be with your posts, the easier it will be for people to advise you on how to fix. Again, use the search function.

pjo046 · 07-06-2009, 02:54 AM

I'm sure he means C/V boots that are cracked and needs to be replaced. It's not an urgent problem, and can easily be dealt with in conjunction with taking the engine out of the car, if that is something that will happen in the future. (To change various gaskets and give the engine a good tune-up.

If the brake-fluid in the hydraulic clutch system hasn't been changes since the car was new, then most definately that is what is causing the problems there. Change the fluid and bleed the system, and the clutch will most likely be ok once again.

The voltage regulators are most often located within the alternator, not sure how it is on porshce engines. So if you buy a new alternator most likely both problem 1, 2 and 3 will be solved. I would recommend buying a new battery once the new alternator is in place, as the battery is probably not the best either due to under-charging.

Most important, buy a "Haynes manua"l, and the "101 projects for your porshce 911" by Wayne Dempsey.

The AC is really not that good on these cars, or so I have read. So you will probably never get it to blow REALLY cold like on newer cars.

Mitch Leland · Mitch Leland's Garage

Ken,

If you decide or need to change out your battery, Ed Hughe's Mod for the Optima battery is about as good as it gets. It removes the acid battery which is always a rust problem for our cars. The Optima battery is a dry storage battery. I'm assuming that your battery location is the same as in Ed's mod.

Optima power!