Two weeks later...
 

Well I got the compression coupler and the ID of the hard line was 1 mm too large. Rather than order another fitting one size greater (which probably won't bite well) I got some 3/4" high pressure fuel hose and slid that over the hard line after cutting about 1" out where the abrasions were. Clamped that down really good and it's holding well with the fuel pumps on. So that enabled me to get back to getting vacuum leaks fixed. I've replaced all the vacuum hoses in the engine compartment except the two that run to the canister under the fender. I used up all the larger size silicon hose and I've emailed the vendor about the shortage. I also replaced the smaller vacuum hoses on the AC unit and all the windshield washer hoses. So I went to start up cold to see if all those replacement hoses made any difference and it did seem to start a little better but I'm still having to use ether (warm start is still good). While I was testing the head lights before an evening test drive, the damn washer pump came off it's mounts, got wedged up in the headlight mechanism and fractured the washer bottle slightly. I'm going to patch that with some fiberglass resin and stick that washer pump down for good. I did get to drive the car that evening and that went well. I've also taken delivery on some pretty decent early 944 seats from a Pelican member. The seats in this 924 are rapidly falling apart at the seams just getting in and out testing, etc. I won't put those newer seats in until this project is much further along. I've also ordered a new fuel tank sender and today I found a 931 brake booster on eBay. After confirming that the booster vacuum valve is good, I tested the brake booster and it's not sinking at all with my foot on it during start up. That's another potential source of vacuum leak that needs to be eliminated. It's unbelieveable how complex the vacuum system is on these cars!

Looking good, man. I've got to down my 87 944 soon and do some rust repair before it becomes a terminal case. I've had it going on 24 years (bought it Feb 1992) and it's been a damn good car.

I remember back in the early 90's a 931 sitting for sale at a car lot at a used car dealer in Abingdon, VA. Nice looking car. I wished I could go back in time and snag it (and fix a lot of other things too)..

They're still out there. I was looking at this one on eBay today...

Porsche 924 Blue | eBay

I probably paid a bit too much for mine but with it being a one owner car, I think I did okay. If I can get the engine running well and suspension refreshed, I'll then move on to the cosmetics - paint & body, interior. These Porsches just keep on teaching me and I pay them back with kindness :)

I've got too many projects going on at the moment to take on another.. LOL

Bit by bit
 

I took delivery on a couple more needed parts yesterday. The fuel tank sender installed quickly and easily. It's sure nice knowing how much is in the tank. I also put an ounce of Lucas Oil Ethanol Gas Treatment in while the sender was out. I'm going to use that every time I add fuel to mitigate corrosion. I also got a replacement interior light as I was really getting tired of those wires dangling out between the sun visors. And I replaced the last vacuum elbow. Note that the parts diagram says you need three of that size - NO you need four. Finally, I've found a replacement sports steering wheel for a decent price. Looks like the interior is going to come along quicker than I expected.

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Good vendor
 

I got an email from High Performance Store and they're sending more silicon hose. He explained that he had only two or three orders over the last five years for 931 kits so he wasn't exact on the amount or sizes needed for that model. So I replied with a thanks and said I'd give him exact sizes and lengths needed after I finished all the hose replacement. Good customer service so I would definitely recommend buying from...

Silicone Hose Kits

After you check prices with our host (of course) :) We all know what a great vendor Pelican Parts is!

Brake booster re-hab
 

Cleaned up and painted the 931 brake booster I bought on eBay.

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Merry Christmas
 

We opened gifts and had dinner last night so today was very casual. First I installed a new dish washer. Then went under to house to pull a failed sump pump. Household chores done I went to the shop to do some brake work on the 931. I siphoned off the brake fluid in the reservoir, clamped off the clutch supply hose and pulled that off the master cylinder. There was quite a bit of junk in the reservoir so I sprayed that out real good with brake cleaner. Then I pulled the hard lines off the MC and it had some rust so I cleaned it up. I've got a MC rebuild kit on order so I set that aside. Then I'm on my back in the floor board removing the nuts to get the brake booster off. It's a tight squeeze wrestling the booster out of the engine bay but I finally get that on the bench. there's quite a bit of brake fluid in the bottom of the booster so the seals on the MC were failing. Now is a great time to replace the breather hose from the crank case to the AOS. It's still a challenge to get to the clamp and it's turned in THE WORST possible position to get the clamp loose. I basically ripped the hose out, got one very painful turn on the clamp and then wiggled it off the pipe in the block. When I replace that hose there will be a clamp on there that you can get to. You can bet on that! When I get the replacement hose and MC kit, I'll put all this back together.

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Master cylinder fun
 

So the kit I got was almost a one-for-one match. 92835591300. It came complete with seals, pistons, cir-clip, etc. I got up early this morning and dis-assembled the master cylinder and laid everything out in order. There was some funk indeed inside that joker. Then I laid out the kit parts and started re-assembling from the bottom of the cylinder. I noted a slight difference in the two pistons from OE but was able to get the seals in the correct order and orientation. The first piston was the first spring attached by a small security torx screw (which I don't have) so i cleaned that up really good and re-used it. There's a seal retaining clip that would have come off with that spring but I was able to replace that seal by sliding it on from the other end of the piston. The kit came with some lube for the cylinder and that helped everything slide nicely back together. Getting the MC back onto the booster was uneventful as was putting the brake lines back on. I used the lube on the new grommets for the reservoir and the grommet on the check valve. The old feed hose to the clutch MC gave out when I started adding fluid so I replaced that. Thankfully the fluid in the clutch MC stayed high enough that I didn't get any air in that system. So now I'm using my power bleeder to get the air out of the brake lines. The brake peddle firms up okay. Put the wheels back on, get all the vaccum hoses back on, take the car off jacks, shoot a little either (didn't have to jump the fuel pumps) and start the car up. It's a cold morning so I let it get good a warm before taking it out for a test drive. Damn, the brake peddle goes spongy. So back to the garage for another bleed. Just a few bubbles out of the rear lines. So I'm going for a nice long drive down the back roads where I live and I'm still not happy with how these brakes feel. I'm not loosing any fluid. When I start the car with my foot on the brake peddle it does depress slightly (good booster and check valve). My buddy suggested that it could be the old rubber brake hoses swelling with pressure. Those are definitely toasty so I'll look into replacing them. I'm glad I was able to run the car for a good hour and maybe that helped cleanse out the fuel system some more :rolleyes:

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Suspension goodies
 

I found a smokin' deal on front Koni struts, rear Koni shocks and rear sway bar with bushings and hardware. The rear bar is 18 mm. I got those parts in yesterday evening and this evening I started taking a close look. The part numbers on the Konis match up with a 944 M474 package. The seller said they came off a '86 951 with 38,000 miles. Now remember that this 931 shipped without a rear sway bar so getting all the attaching hardware was huge. However, when I crawled under the car and looked - I'm not finding bolt holes for the brackets. I'm going to search for some photos that show exactly how the drop links and bar are orientated (yes, I did get the dual ended eccentric bolts). That bar was also a bit scratched, flaky so I wire brushed it down to bare metal, primed and painted it. Then I'm looking at the rear shocks and the bump stops are toasted so out those come. I also set them medium soft with compression and rebound feeling nice. The seller warned me that the struts wouldn't fit the early style front spindles and I confirmed that. The camber eccentric is 1/4" further from the lower mount bolt on the late struts compared to early struts. No worries, I'll simply unmount the OE struts, pull the shot shock inserts, paint the tubes Koni yellow and re-build with the M474 springs and Koni inserts. Probably use the 951 top mount too if they'll fit. Suspension work is mostly cake.

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A day under the car
 

Well, not quite all day but all morning for sure. I had painted the rear sway bar a couple nights before and picked up the 3.5" clamps yesterday after work. So when I got up this morning I had everything I needed to get the rear suspension squared away. First I squeezed the clamps under the floor board and around the torsion carrier. That took a little hammering and prying as it's pretty tight under there. Then I marked and drilled the clamp closing bracket for the bolts joining the sway bar bracket. I used some 10 x 30 mm bolts and found the 13 mm heads were a tight fit in those clamp brackets. I spread that open a bit and pounded the bolts in and then used the 13 mm nuts to pull them tight. In fact I left those nuts under the sway bar brackets when I placed the bar over the exhaust, slid on the bushings and bolted the brackets down with another set of 13 mm nuts. Then I used my impact wrench to pull the one sided camber adjust bolts and put in the two sided ones that came with the sway bar. On goes the drop links and everything is tightened up nicely. Now on to the rear shocks which are very simple. The OE Boge shocks still have some compression but zero rebound. The Konis go on nicely and I'm done on the rear.

So the plan on the front was to pull the OE struts by using a floor jack on the control arm to compress the spring, pull out the OE shock insert and use the Koni inserts from the 951 struts. So I got the OE struts off and dis-assembled but needed to compress the spring on the 951 struts to take them apart. I just put the 951 top mount in the car and although the bracket won't fit on the spindle - I wedged the bottom of the strut on the control arm and used the jack to compress the spring. Worked fine and much quicker than spring compressors. But when I got the 951 strut tube to the bench I noticed that the cap on the tube has crimps and it appears that is a sealed strut. Crap! I'm disappointed but all is not lost. The Boge inserts have okay compression and the 951 springs are definitely heavier. So I cleaned up the 931 tubes, stuffed the OE Boge shocks back in and put the 951 springs on those struts. I also cleaned up the OE bump stops and dust covers and re-used those. And I used the 951 top mounts as those were in good condition. Noted that the OE springs were three blue marks and the 951 springs are two yellow marks. While putting the struts back on I went ahead a set camber full negative (probably about 1 degree).

The test drive following reassembly revealed some improvement with handling. The car doesn't body roll as much in turns and feels a bit stiffer. I will definitely get some single adjustable Koni inserts for those front struts however. Those and a 30 mm front sway bar ;)

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Rocker fun
 

Today I removed the rocker covers for cleaning. I had noticed. while working under the car, that the bottom of of the rockers were pretty bent up from poor jack and lift placement. That was definitely the case on the passenger side so I set about bending that sheet metal back in to shape with locking pliers. I also noticed that most of the paint on that bottom strip was flaking off and exposed metal. I decided to strip that section and prime it to prevent corrosion. That area was not primed very well and the finish coat was applied directly to the metal at the factory. They just didn't shoot the rockers at the correct angle. Thank goodness for galvanized metal though. Very little corrosion was present. When I moved to the drivers side there was some body work that had been done the the lower front fender just in back of the wheel opening. That's a prime spot for road objects to monkey things up. The fender had been bent back into shape and there was about 1/8" of body filler. It's odd that a shop would do that in an area that's hidden by the rocker cover. Anyway, I stripped that area of paint and filler. Also stripped the same lower area all the way back to the rear wheel opening. After cleaning and wiping both sides with a tack cloth, I masked those areas off and sprayed primer.

Later we stopped by the 944 Orphanage and traded those 951 front shocks for some interior parts. Late 944 sun visors, a visor clip, passenger window switch bezel and dash gauge bezel. The visors installed easily and look much better than the OE with swollen foam. The passenger visor clip was missing so I replaced that but unfortunately the drivers side clip broke so now I'll have to get another for that side. The OE gauge bezel was cracked under the speedo so I pulled the steering wheel, pried out the bezel, disconnected and removed the gauges. Now the replacement bezel was from a 944 so it had a silver face. I scruffed that with sandpaper and sprayed it with satin black. I also had to drill out the right side idiot light position because the early 944 doesn't have the light. I'm letting that paint cure overnight and I'll put the gauges back in tomorrow.

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Back together
 

I was able to get the instrument cluster back in this morning. To re-attach the speedo cable, I pulled the other end off the counter switch. Then when I got everything stuffed back in, as I was re-attaching the cable to that box, the threaded top portion broke off. So I'll order a ROW cable and delete the switch.

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Pressure test in the artic
 

Only about 20 deg. in the garage today. I went to a hose company and bought some adapters for my CIS gauge. I also asked the counter guy about rebuilding the fuel lines and he thinks they can. Anyway, I got back and hooked up the gauge. I did find that I had to loosen and move the washer tank a few inches to get the gauge fittings on the fuel distributor. I jumped the FP circuit and here's what I read...

System pressure-
79 PSI
5.5 bar
Cold control pressure-
77 PSI
5.1 bar
Leak down on system pressure-
gauge sat at 25 PSI for 10 minutes

So the control pressure is incredibly high. That reading was with the gauge valve open, fuel pumps running but ignition off. I didn't start the car to get warm readings.

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A couple of fixes
 

Yesterday I finally received the make-up silicon hoses the vendor promised so I got in the drivers side wheel house to replace those canister vacuum hoses. That was fairly straight forward but I did discover a rip in the bottom of the charcoal canister and confirmed that wasn't air tight by covering one port and blowing into the other. So I sealed that with some RTV after cleaning everything up. I didn't find any rust in the fender well except for an area just beside the tire and to the rear. I suspect the driver side wish bone on this car failed, the wheel lodged to the rear, tore a hole in the canister and bent the lower rear section of the wheel arch. The wish bone on that side is newer than the passenger side. Anyway, with that done, I went ahead and put the rocker covers back on after figuring out those must slide on front to back to get everything nested. It also helps to clean the backside of those covers with some Amour All to get them slippery. Started the car up and went for a quick drive. The brakes were still spongy so when I got back I bled them again and got a few more bubbles out of the lines. Onward!

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Speedo and springs
 

After a week or so wrestling 914 transmissions, I was back on the 931 today. First on the list was to replace the speedo cable. Pretty damn cold this morning so I started the car up and put the heater on high to warm the interior. I wasn't going to be cracking any cold plastic parts! Pulled the steering wheel, got the instrument bezel out and disconnected the cable. I pulled that out of the firewall and I'm ready to install the new cable. Next time I'll remember to attach a string to the old so I can pull the new through. After fishing the new cable through the bowels of the dash, I'm digging the OXS box out of the engine compartment. That requires loosening the AOS to get it out. Then I got the car up on jacks and pulled the driver side front wheel. There's a tiny piece of wire holding the end of the cable in the dust cap so snip that and pull that joker out. Slide the new one in and wrap a piece of small gauge wire around the end. Done.

Several years ago my racing buddy gave me some lowering springs and I'm thinking "what the hell" I'm going to give those a try. Those are orange, shorter than OEM, much thicker and have HD-2 stamped on them. I'm going to assume 200 lb. Weltmeister. Anyway, I had the jacks under the front, dropped the sway bar ends and used my floor jack to compress the struts under the control arms. It didn't take long to get the springs swoped out and everything back together. Note that you've got to be careful seating the lowering springs into the top hats as there's more space than with the OEM. Before changing the springs I measured about 6" floor to bottom of rocker on all four corners. After changing the front springs the front rockers are down to 4". Quite the difference but now the rear needs to come down. So I move to the back, place my jacks, pull the wheels and use a large breaker bar to loosen the height adjustment nuts on the trailing arms. Once that's done, I take the car for a quick test drive and there's a real difference in ride. The front is much stiffer but the rear is still sloppy. When I get back in the garage and measured, the front is 4 1/2" and the rear is 5". Pretty damn good. I noted that the exhaust pipe just downstream of the wastegate is only about 3" off the ground and I've got a clamp there I need to spin. This car won't be going over speed bumps anyway.

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Some brake love
 

I've been devoting my garage time to the 914 race car for the last two weeks. Swoping the transmission in that beast with mixed results. The last two nights however I decided to give the 931 a little brake love. I had ordered front caliper rebuild kits, pads and hoses several weeks ago with funds from 914 parts sales. I've rebuilt calipers before so this was mostly routine. When driving the car, I felt the front brakes were doing their job but the drivers side was hanging somewhat closed as evident from excessive pad dust. I started with what I thought was the better side, drivers; but when I clamped the piston head in the vice and extracted it from the bore - wow, a lot of junk in that cylinder. You can see from the photo the corrosion under the dust boot but there were deposits in the bore below the inner seal. I was able to clean all that up with brake cleaner and using a soft wire brush on a Dremel. Then I took all the pieces to the bench brush and got all that brake dust and surface rust off. Put the new inner seal in, pressed in the piston and re-assembled. Looks much better. Last night I did the drivers side and the piston was much harder to extract. So that was definitely hanging up. Not as much corrosion or deposits in the cylinder but the inner seal was really bad. Both sides are back on with new hoses but I'll need to bleed. After seeing the fronts condition, I'm thinking I really need to do the rears also.

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Quick update
 

I was side tracked for a while by a '87 924S Craigslist car that I couldn't pass on. That one was relatively easy to get on the road and the 914 took up some time following. So just minor things have been done to the 931. I scraped off all the deteriorating foam under the front hood. That's some nasty adhesive the factory used there. Goo Gone and a dull scraper got the majority. I still start the car weekly and usually take a quick run down the road. I've got the 15" phone dials off the '87 924S on it and I like that look with the 931 lowered.

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Carpet and seat refresh
 

Yesterday I pulled out the original front seats which were split and mushy. Then I vacuumed the carpets real good and painted them with gloss black interior spray. I'm really liking that product for sprucing up interiors. I didn't pull the carpet, just masked off the console, rear seats, dash etc. Eventually I'll pull the console and paint it also. I had purchased some nice 944 seats from Just Joshin' parts back in the winter and transferred the original seat rails to those. Those two tasks really changed the interior appearance. The seat foam is nice a firm and now I don't feel like the seat is shallowing me up!

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Car is coming along nice! Did You do a dash cap, and where do you purchase the interior paint from?