engine whine

[greenwood]

I was driving down the road today, came to a stop light and noticed a faint whine coming from the engine. Stopped again and it was louder. Got out to inspect...at first I thought it was coming from the fan belt pully on the passenger side but I finally decided it was coming from the middle front of the engine. The whine doesn't seem to change tone, pitch, volume and/or speed when the engine rpm changes. The engine is in good shape w/ about 10k-15k miles since being rebuilt and maybe 1.5k since a full tune up.
Any ideas??

thanks,
greenwood

[greenwood]

ok ok ok so here's what happened....I took my beloved 914 by the local Porsche shop(KMA Racing) on the the off chance that the self-proclaimed "914 guru" was hanging out. To my surprise he was, I said "do you hear that", and he looked and listened and looked and listened and said "cut the engine." I cut the engine and he reached behind the fan housing and pulled out a belt that was half ripped to shreds. He looked at the part number and said "yep that's the alternator belt." He felt around some more and discovered that the alternator belt was still intact. What? How could that be? It turns out that the belt must have broken on a PO, but when he replaced it he never took the old on off! I've had my car for 6 months and this was the first hint of the belt being back there. Too weird....

Also my car rolled off the showroom floor with A/C, most of which was ripped out by a PO. The only thing left being the compressor, so the Guru clipped the belt that the PO left to make sure that that wasn't the cause of my whine and what do you know, no more whine

Previous Owners, can't live with 'em, wouldn't have our 914s without 'em.

Does anybody else have any "stupid PO tricks" to share?

[This message has been edited by greenwood (edited 06-17-2000).]

[campbellcj]

Nice one!

Well, the PO of my car had his Mickey Mouse ears on whenever he did anything electrical. For instance, the stereo was totally hooked up wrong -- the 'memory save' power was connected via the ignition switch and the 'main' power was connected to the battery. The speakers were wired out of phase. The voltmeter and temp gauges on the center console were unplugged. I plugged them back in and they work fine. The interior light door switches were unplugged. Again, hooked back up and they work fine. Some Taiwanese Pep Boys fog lights graced the front foghorn openings -- trashed 'em and put in euro H3's. The fresh air blower motor was disconnected. It seems to be fried so that's an upcoming project. The horns were disconnected. Starting to see a pattern here? It's as if the guy had one problem some time, and unhooked every connector on the car, and left it like that!

Well, if it weren't for P.O.'s, this BB wouldn't have nearly as much going on, right?

Chris C.

[mejulihn]

I am not surprised that you traced the whine to the remaining air conditioning compressor/belt. I know that sound! My car has the same whine you described until I turn the A/C unit on -- under load it disappears.

[BenI]

I bought 4 914s to use to make one. I used the body from the 790th 914 to roll off the line in Nov, 1969-it looked straight, no body work, floors were in great looking shape. When I stripped it down, I noticed rivets on the bottom of the floor pan. As I investigated, I found that there were pieces of sheetmetal riveted to the floor, so I decided to start removing them to see what was going on. To make a long story short, a PO had had floor problems, so to fix them he first riveted very thin aluminum to both top and bottom of the floors, then covered EVERYTHING inside with fiberglass, then, just for aesthetics (I guess) decided to add 1/4" of bondo to the inside floors. I finally pried all that crap off and completely replaced both pans. I understand being lazy and decideing to fix something the wrong way, but the work he did couldn't have been easier than welding (or getting welded) new floors.

[turbo2.0]

Dunb PO tricks? How bout this one: I bought my car, and after spending a coule months sorting out the engine/mechanical stuff, it was on the road. After a while, I noticed a clunk in the front that wasn't there. I jacked it up and the front wheel bearing had some play (it wasn't there when I brought the car home). I removed the wheel, and he had neglected to install the cap that goes over the bearing. No grease, no cap. I replaced the bearing, snagged a cap from a junkyard, and I was back on the road. Not only was this guy lazy, IMO he was dishonest and dangerous. I kept thinking that I could have lost the wheel at speed. I proceeded to put the car back in the garage and do a more detailed check of everything on the car, just in case.

[JP Noonan]

Wondered why my friend had a 75 front bumper and a 74 rear on his 74. Well some PO had welded on a clip from the wrong year.

Solid core in-wall house wiring soldered onto the main harness with a 3/" glob of solder.

Door topps and bottoms replaced with door skin patches...unfortunately it was done over the existing rust and was blazened on not welded. Gee, wonder why the rust came back?

Old style hypodermic neeles (the removeable kind from the glass syringes. I'm not a addict, my late father was a DVM) and "TAB" bottle caps in the rear of the floor pan where it rotted out.

Masking tape used to insulate radio wires.

Webber carb conversion