While I'm waiting for my ring compressor I'm dotting the I's on the case and accessories.

Wayne's book recommends JB welding the posts which are flush with the surrounding case at the front and back. Are we supposed to JB Weld the recessed "caps" as well?

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Getting back to my cracked airbox, I also noticed that there appeared to be a small ~3mm air port added by someone at some point (see light colored tube, upper right) Can't see this in the PET and it looks homespun. What would this be for? Seeing as the crack is decently sized and it has this unknown mod, anyone have an airbox for sale? Really I just need the half that attaches to the MAF.

I suppose I'd use a K&N or this guy if it doesn't drain power. A bit more sound wouldn't be a problem...

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I did the flush one but not the recess cap one.

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No Power gain, look/sound good, more room and does cleanup the engine bay.

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We use the stock air filter in our race cars, K&N lets of ton of fine particles in.. Just $.02 from a Dan Jacob's disciple..

What he said...had a K&N on my hot rod in dusty Az, oiled every 6k....so much dust in the carburetor you could scoop it with your finger....your basic paper filter and 15k later no dust at all.

Yeah I'm with you all... the only reason for the K&N style would be if its cheaper and faster than sourcing a replacement airbox. I'll post a want ad and see what I come up with.

I'll be installing the pistons in the bores before installing the assembly onto the conrods. Wayne's book has a diagram showing the order as 1-2-3-4-5-6 but in the text mentions something to the tune of "do it in the right order, for instance if you install 1 & 3 without installing 2, you won't be able to get to the wristpin circlip for 2. I left the right side wrist pins in all pistons. Shouldn't be any prob installing them sequentially, should there?

On that airbox - there's supposed to be a nipple there to which a hose from the evap canister attaches. There are many threads on JB Weld airbox repair - these things get brittle - so if you can't find one right away, a little creativity might cover the gap until you can find one.

I followed the same plan you described for your wrist pin installation, but installation wasn't really sequential. I left the circlip in place in the deep-recess side (I'm pretty sure it was the right side) and installed the piston/cylinder assemblies 1-2-3-6-5-4 to make sure that the left side of the piston I was installing was accessible. Doing it this way means that you're installing the wristpin and circlip in the shallow left-side, while juggling the piston/cylinder assembly.

Stuff those spigots with rags so they don't catch any fliers!

GK

Yeah it looks like somebody got physical on the airbox when they didn't know there's a hose nipple on there, as well as the hose carrier for the breather hoses. Looks like the nipple was busted clean off so they cooked up a makeshift barbed nipple that is smaller than the original. No big deal, just get 'er hooked back up. It's an emissions thing that doesn't really affect performance, nor do you typically smell anything since the evap can intercepts the gas tank fumes with a charcoal filter. The engine does the sucking thru the filter.

No need to put JB Weld on the recessed sheetmetal plug fitting down in the recess itself. But do indeed put the epoxy on the edges of the plug. It's an oil gallery plug that has same purpose as the flat plug. See this excerpt from the 993 manual

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1384206336.jpg

Love Porsche telling us to use a "home-made extractor" ha.

Thanks for the tips on the recessed plugs, I'll hit them tonight. Curious how often these are the source of leaks as the JB weld was basically gone from all of mine. I'm using this high temp JB weld - its funny stuff, has the consistency of dry play-doh but seems to set up nicely.

I had success at the local mom n pop hydraulic hose store today. Super nice people who were able to sell me 1' of 7/8" (22mm) ID high temp & pressure oil hose to replace the thermostat-tank line that was leaking on my car. I brought the little 90 degree fuel line that's been giving me trouble. The lady behind the counter pulled out some fuel line (happened to be 1/4", all she had) that had a VERY thick wall, and could be bent into any shape at all without kinking. Ethanol & high pressure rated. She ordered up some 5/16" for me, should have it soon, which is good since the postal money order (groan) I sent to Len for the $66 replacement is apparently lost in transit.

Got the oil caps JB welded up along with the flush studs.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1384232999.jpg

Re-assembly work progressing on the intake manifold. Used some "rescue tape" to fix the "pipeline" per advice here. Somehow, even though I matched the length of the old x-over fuel line exactly when I re-hosed it, I came up about 1" short. Guess its back to Car Quest for more 3/8" hose.

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In prepping for tomorrow's piston install I noticed that the wrist pin on #3 is tighter than the rest, which slid in freely after 30 seconds of heat-gun. A closer look at the bearing surface on the piston shows some discoloration that looks like staining more than wear. What would be an appropriate step to take? I can easily tap the wrist pin in with a drift, or should I try to open up the bore a bit?

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http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1384233330.jpg

Did you use assembly lube? I would clean up the varnish a bit but that's it.

Yep used assembly lube. I'll try to get the varnish out. Presume I should not use anything aggressive, just carb cleaner and shop rags...

How did the wrist pin look?

They all had similar varnish banding but all felt 100% smooth.

Take a close look at #3 piston pin bores. Maybe there's a slight bur there from picking out the circlips.

I recently measured a set of Mahle piston pins & bores to check clearance. Clearance checked out OK but the pin was a bit futzy inserting it. Had to wiggle it a bit and it'd go in with a little bit of resistance. But not so much resistance that you had to force it in. I grabbed a finger full of #0000 extra super fine steel wool and rubbed the piston bore with it to clean up the surface a bit. Made a considerable difference.

So check the area around the clip grooves and also a little bit of very fine polishing goes a long way toward improving the fit. The clearances I measured were around 0.0007" for all the pistons. That's seven ten-thousands. Pretty tight fit that can easily be fouled by a bit of crud!

Fine steel wool is a great idea, thanks.

A word of warning to anyone with the Rauch&Speigel aluminum collapsible oil return tubes: the correct INNER seals are not on the PP website, but they DO sell them. 10-4730-010. Same price, but very much NOT the same size as those for the OEM steel tubes. Ask me how I know.

Didn't realize how nice it is that the PO of my car bought $200 worth of machined billet OR tubes. Very fancy!

Getting there!
 

Big day... got all the pistons and cylinders installed. My OTC ring compressor is better than the coil type... but still needs a lot of finesse to use right. Only by #6 did I get the piston in the bore on my first try.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1384317680.jpg

Laid out all the clean cylinder and pistons, circlips pre-installed on one side, base gaskets lightly dressed in Curil-T.

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First three in place. Feeling good. Tell me if you spot mistakes!

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Next bank going in.

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Orientations right?

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Don't need to explain how good this feels...

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Don't forget to put your engine tin in place before you secure the heads to the cyls. Once you snug the cyls down, you can't fit the tin between the cyls. Well, you can but you have to squash the stamped "lip" on the tin to slip it between the cyls and then pry it back out. Been there, done that.

Mine must be pre-smushed cause I always put the tin on after the fact, no problems.

The middle t-shaped pieces will slip thru. It's the end pieces that have the punched area the holder spring things hook into. You know, the punched area that rips open with age and the tin doesn't stay in place tightly

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Guys I'm really frustrated with this damn 90deg hose. My hydraulic hose shop doesn't have the 5/16" heavy wall hose they thought they could get.

Smoove said he managed to avoid kinking the hose by sheathing it in some SS braided material he had left over. Wondering if something like this would do the trick?

Goodridge Goodridge Universal Braided Steel Oil/Fuel Hose - JCWhitney

5 16" 8mm Stainless Steel Braided PTFE Teflon Fuel Hose Line Oil Petrol 3ft | eBay

Also wondering why that line had to be soft in the first place. Why on earth isn't it a hard line? There is no flex in that connection so far as I can tell.

Forgot my camera for the most fun part of assembly! Some pictures from my antique phone...

Boy things go much faster when the parts are all clean. I used loctite copper antiseize on the headstuds & nuts and torqued them in two steps per Bentely and Wayne's book. Noticed that 23.5 ft-lbs (wayne) is slightly less than an extra 90 degrees (bentley) by my torque wrench.

Drawing gaskets with Loctite 574. Philosophical question: why did porsche not use a solid gasket in this location?

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Looking suspiciously like a 911 longblock... Oil return tubes are collapsable type and will be installed after the cam carriers when I get the correct seals later this week. That is pretty easy to do, right?

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Damn, you are taking the lead ahead of me big time!! Nice work!!

On the next cam housing, use a LOT less sealant. Brush it on thin and uniformly.

Also, no reason to run the sealant across the middle area. There's no oil to seal in that area. Only need to seal around the valve spring openings and those four bolt holes surrounding each opening.

When you tighten up the cam housing to the heads, you'll see a lot of excess sealant squeeze out. That's a gauge of how much sealant is needed, which is not much at all. Just a thin skim coat.

Henry @ Supertec makes some spacers/gaskets for the cam housings. They're used for adjusting the alignment of the cam housing, head, cylinder "stack" when the parts have been machined for various reasons

Kevin I was following this video: Nick Fulljames fits cam housing & talks ramps.wmv - YouTube

He mentions running a bead 1-1.5mm tall. I was going to clean up the squeeze-out today.

I don't like a lot of the things that guy says.

That amount of sealant is just too much. If you get a big amount of squeeze out, then that says to me a lot of sealant was wasted. Instead, brush it on uniformly to get just a tiny bit of squeeze out. This stuff does not brush on super thin, so there's no worry of not using enough.

His perspective on RSR seals for the rockers not working is sorta silly. His caps with o-rings are really no different than the RSR seals. Both are a light interference fit in the rocker shaft bore. The only thing his caps provide is a means for sealing the end and keeps dirt out of the bore. So when you remove the caps, the bore is clean and shaft removal won't scratch the bore. But the rocker shaft sealing isn't a huge epidemic problem. Tightening them sufficiently will arrest walking shafts and most leakage. If not, big deal. Get a good set of used cam housings. These things are incredibly cheap when bought used and are not hard to find. Recyclers like DC Automotive, Parts Heaven, etc. have piles of these things on their shelves.

Fair enough re sealant. I do think Nick's seals are an improvement on RSR style for the reason he mentions - his design lets the shaft install easily and then it actually expands the seal. However I think he sees the need for the seals for older cars that may have suffered long sitting and or many rebuilds over the years. For a 3.2 like mine the plan is to install the rockers per your link, dry, higher torque than the "new" spec.

I did not like his suggestion of 574 on the OR tubes - my understanding is that they're supposed to slide back and forth in their bores and loctite would prevent that once cured.

BTW someone confirm I'm not stupid - its easy to install the 2 part tubes even with the cam carrier in place, right?

574 is a hardening sealant. There is no reason to use that on the oil return tubes. That's an improper application of the stuff. It's a flange sealant for flat mating surfaces with or without gaskets. O-rings for the return bores need to have some room to move around.

Yep it's easy to install the tubes with the cam housing in place. But it's not a walk in the park. New o-rings, even when lubed are stubborn to allow the tubes to expand. You need to leverage them to expand. Common trick is to use some typical hose clamps on each tube piece, with the screw body part of the clamps aligned with each other. Then use a tool of some sort to lean on the screw bodies to move the tubes apart. Do a search for the various tools people have cooked up for this.

I have the case sides of the OR tubes installed, using the green o-rings provided in my Wrightwood racing kit. Went in pretty easy. Also just want to check that there is only one style of OUTER o-ring and they suit factory one piece, two piece and billet two piece OR tubes? I ask because it looked like the o-ring I removed from my billet two piece OR tubes, which was red, was squared off. I presume this is just from age and compression/heat cycling...

That was for removal. To install, on clip on each half and spread them out with a flat bar between the bandit screw.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1298152862.jpg

More removal pics @ http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/592674-oil-tubes-removing-refurbishing.html#post5856532

Got both cam carriers and cams installed. I test fitted the left side cam dry, but with the cam housing fully torqued down. It spun very freely, as in just a few fingers worth of torque. When I went back and assembled everything "wet" with 574 on the mating srfs and assembly lube on all cam bearing srfs & lobes, it was a good deal harder to spin. I'm putting this up to the assembly lube closing up tolerences. There were no tight spots around, but it did take a fist around the camshaft and an tacky glove to rotate it. Sound kosher?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1384491497.jpg

Cams were in great shape, no pitting anywhere to be seen

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Almost a sin to cover them up

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Both carriers on

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Then it got slightly tricky. The R chain housing was not sitting right with regards to the cam carrier. After some fiddling I realized that I was overzealous with the JB weld and it was causing the carrier to push rearward. Sanded it down and all was well.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1384491727.jpg


Then, one of the M8 nuts on the chain carrier stripped while being torqued down! I'm surprised since these nuts lived a leisurely oil bathed life. Really not sure what lead to this. Luckily I have a big old sack of yellow chromate M8s arriving tomorrow.

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Got the paper gasket, green o-ring (both lightly curil-t'd) and cover plate installed.

Ran out of time for the night but really wondering how on earth its possible to install the chain around the cam sprocket at this point.

Also - any tips on woodruff key install? Gave it a quick go before retiring for the night and it did not seem fun. Getting them out was hard and destructive. I have two new ones.


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Here's how I handle the key install:

http://i458.photobucket.com/albums/q...ps1fc1c25c.jpg

Don't forget the shims first.

Russ,

Did you replace all six chain ramps?

Lapkritis - thanks will give it a shot. Happen to recall the ID of the pipe? edit - i see the pipe goes OVER the woodruff key. Okay so its really just a matter of protecting the jaws of some sort of pliers. Will give it a shot.

Mike - nope, just the two in the outer chain housings. I messed them both up getting them off. Found that heat really helps with install/removal. Pretty sure its next to impossible to replace the others without splitting the case, which mercifully I am not.

This is a great thread. I just spent the last few hours (at work....shhh :)...!) going through it.

I'm sure my never-been-rebuilt 2.7 is going to need this (and more probably) at some point. I've owned it and driven it for 27.5 years and counting.

thanks for the outstanding play by play.

Glad you like it. I appreciate everyone who reads and comments. And I love that you have been driving a never rebuilt 2.7 for 27 years! If we believed the internet, every 2.7 will overheat while simultaneously pulling studs and eating valve guides. You must have one of the good ones. Keep driving!!

1/2" PVC pipe from Home Depot. Used it in many places during the build... such as holding the cylinders on before the heads,insulating while moving stubborn rocker shafts, getting the tensioner bits over the pivot posts etc...

I found the inners were easier to remove than the outers. As I loosened the bolts that hold them in place, the machined ends that attach to the ramps tended to ease out of the plastic clips/tabs. The outers needed prying, which tended to break the tabs - one more thing to worry about falling into the case... The inners on mine showed wear - my chains looked more worn than yours as well. I was more concerned about these plastic parts being embrittled over time and heat cycles than wear though.

I think you're OK with the cam as you described it's rotation. The assembly lube is some pretty thick stuff. That said, use it really sparingly. You don't want it to build up around the cam bearing oiling bores. I suspect when oil pressure is generated at initial startup (ignition & fuel disabled, crank engine over w/starter until you see oil pressure gauge needle start to show pressure/flickering) the oil will push thru the assembly lube.

The sprockets are a bit tough to get in place with the chain box on. You can do it though. Just have to fiddle with the positioning of the chain rollers on the sprocket teeth. When you do the left box, put the sprocket on the chain at the same time you are setting the box in place.

Double check that chain box stud where the nut stripped and make sure the stud isn't spinning in the case, or that the stud itself stripped.

That's a neat trick to install the woodruff keys Andrew! I typically use a tiny hammer with light tapping on the key to set it down in the groove. Have to tap it down and play with its position to get it level so it'll accept the keyed hub that you slip onto the cam snout. You'll find that you have to play with the key a little bit because as you push/tap the hub onto the snout, it sometimes pushes the key out. So you have to make sure the leading end of the key is a teensy bit lower than the groove in the hub so that it pushes the key down and holds it in place vs. pushing it up & out of the groove. YOu'll see what I mean when you start playing with it. Shove a paper towel(s) in the case opening so a key that pushes itself out doesn't tumble down into the case.......

The inner chain ramps can be a bit of a pain to fiddle with but they can be replaced with the case assembled. You just have to make sure the ramp seats onto the special bolt properly. Its sort of easy to get them on only 1/2 way. Easy way to remove them w/out dropping into the case is to clamp a pair of needle nose vise grips on the end of the ramp as you're loosening the bolts. Bolts "press" themselves out of the ramps via the bolt threads. Reinstallation requires a bit of patience to get the ramp pressed into the nubs on the bolts. Really not that hard though.

I'd use some silicone paste or just plain oil on the cam plate o-ring. Lets it move freely vs. the stickiness of the Curil. The Curil T is OK for the paper gasket but it's stickiness can also displace the gasket as you're pushing the cover plate home. 574 is better to use on the paper gasket since it's not sticky.

Be sure to take a close look at the gasket now that the chain box is in place and look to see if it stayed aligned with the cam housing bore. If it moved and you can see an exposed amount of paper edge hanging off, re-do the gasket install. Andrew can attest to this, as he discovered it during his reassembly.

That leak is a sucky one to fix after the fact. You don't want that sucker to leak because you're pretty much guaranteed to pull the engine back out. Since you have to get the sprocket off, which means re-timing the cam, to get at that gasket? Cam timing isn't easy to do with the engine in the car. Too much hassle with trying to tighten the cam bolt, setting up the dial indicator, turning the engine over, etc. Best to take the engine out. Obviously you want to avoid the engine coming back out after all the work you put into it, just for a pesky leak. That leak is a steady one since the cam cover plate sees actual oil pressure, not just splash oil, due to it being right next to the cam bearing bore that is under pressure from the spraybar.