My 944 has lost blood pressure ?????

porschetub · porschetub's Garage

My beloved 85 944 dropped all oil pressure, pulled over after stopping engine first, lifted bonnet and found power steering pulley and retaining bolt sitting in engine pan what damage has happened????.
Local european car expert ?? changed belts @ 93,000kms (now @ 107,000) and didn't tighten the retaining bolt, have refitted pulley,checked OPRV,changed oil and filter,I believe my oil pump seal and drive sleeve are toast as I have "0'' oil pressure can someone help ???,thanks

Slam · 10-15-2009, 12:01 PM

Try dropping the starter, installing a flywheel lock and retorquing the crank pulley bolt. 145ft-lbs (better check that with Clark's Garage Home Page to make sure). I'll bet your car's fine.

HondaDustR · 10-15-2009, 08:38 PM

yeah, someone forgot to torque the crank bolt, or they got the power steering pulley pinched between the bolt and the end of the crank rather than seated around the crank. There's not really any other way for that bolt to come loose, since 155 ft lb is pretty darn tight. The oil pump drive is a sleave that fits around the end of the crank behind the front pulleys and is not keyed, so it depends on the torque in order to not slip.

porschetub · porschetub's Garage

Cheers for the reply,one of my concerns is the oil pump drive sleeve may be damaged (no 100% sure),but my oil pump seal hasn't leaked during this entire bad experience ,so maybe thats a good sign?.
Is this sleeve purely relying on the torque of the pulley bolt to hold it in a fixed position to drive the pump gear as it has no key ?
The torque on this bolt is 155 ft/lbs and their is no way it is that tight now.
Nearly forgot to mention my oil pressure previous to this was way higher than normal,thanks

blown 944 · 10-15-2009, 08:58 PM

the sleeve is held on with just the TQ of the pulley.

HondaDustR · 10-15-2009, 09:02 PM

The pump drive sleeve should be fine.

porschetub · porschetub's Garage

Update time ,made my own flywheel lock (a bit of flat bar steel and an old 12v VW starter pinion ),worked a treat ,locked up the crank nut and instant oil pressure,was happy as untill I saw the "nose "of the crank was bent and everything running anything less that straight???%###!!!!!,and to go one better the motor sounded rattly with cold oil,my Porsche experience is not to be talked about @ this stage!!!!.

HondaDustR · 05:23 PM

What exactly do you mean? If it ran fine before, then something must not have been installed correctly before. It would take something pretty serious to bend the actual crank so it is visible. Does the entire pulley and timing sprocket wobble or just the power steering drive pulley. Does the rattling noise sound like lifters or worse? The lifters probably lost some oil running without pressure before and could take some time to pump back up and quiet down. Something simpler must be wrong. Maybe the PS pulley is just bent. Don't know how the weather is in NZ around this time, but if it's getting cold and you have a heavy weight oil, like 20W-50, it can sound a little noisy right at first, since it doesn't get pumped to everything right away being that thick. But right away will be like 5 seconds max in that case.

This happens very easily if you don't watch out, will make the PS pulley wobble, and will prevent everything from clamping the oil pump drive. Here's a picture just to be sure we're talking about the same thing.