Rear Dust Shields..Disaster (almost!)..

[Wil Ferch]

Well, I thought I'd take the "easy way" out by removing the rear brake dust shields first, on my 85 Carrera with stock calipers.

Unlike the fronts ( which require rotor removal for bolt access)...the rears are "supposed" to come off easy and the "C" shape of the dust shields just slip off.....yeah right !!

Only one of the three bolts has the bolt head on the "outside" ( facing inboard toward centerline of car)...the other two are "captive" with the bolt heads facing the inside surface of the rotor ( arghhh!@). OK.....so I use either a grinding wheel or a saws-all to cut the offending bolts in half after they're loosened. The "stub" can be pulled out from the outside and the head will fall harmlessly on the inside rotor surface. The shield then comes off.

Fine for the driver's side. On the passenger side, the bolt head miraculously finds itself into the only opening on the top of the hub carrier. OK.....so now I'm back to doing work I was hoping to avoid....take the caliper and rotor off ( need to split the hydraulic line too.....just barely not enough clearance to wiggle the hard/soft line connection when the clip is removed). Surprise.....even though I had seen a "glint" of the cut off bolt head inside the "works" before...now it's not there !!!! What the heck....where is it? I can't drive around with a bolt head inside the brake mechanism. Although I've done it before...I double check the small ledge formed under the CV joint as part of the banana arm. Sure enough...it worked itself out to the "outside" through some opening in the bottom, and landed there. It's possible I might not have needed to disassemble as much as I did...double arghh!

So much for how "easy" the rear dust shields come off. Anyone else do this and find an easier way?

Wil

[ttweed]

Why not just take the rear caliper and rotor off to get to the bolt heads? Sounds like it would have been easier and faster than what you went thru, Wil. Two bolts for the caliper, hang it somewhere in the fender well so you don't have to break open the lines, then two screws for the rotor and you're there. What am I missing?

I took the rear shields off my '67S last week because I was going to run a continuous lapping event in it for the first time, and they were easy- each shield was in two pieces and all the bolt heads faced to the inside of the car.

TT

[Wil Ferch]

What you're missing is....

1.) All prior posts indicate the rears come of without having to remove rotor....apparently not true...where did this tale come from??

2.) As I undid the clip that held the hard/soft brake line ( in an attempt to NOT break the hydraulic line while removing the caliper)....it just wasn't in the cards....even had to break the hydraulic line. So yeah...I ended up doing what you suggested....but my point was why was it advertised so differently?

Wil

[gost]

Hey Will, Sorry to hear about a simple task turning a PIA. I'm starting alot of work on my 85 which will include brakes and rebuild the calipers all around ( check out my post earlier this morn "proj start") and since I'll have things apart I was wondering aside from having the brakes run a bit cooler what other advantages are there to removing the dust shields. I'm not using the car for track events just street cruising.

Thanks

Gost

[ttweed]

Originally posted by Wil Ferch
What you're missing is....

1.) All prior posts indicate the rears come of without having to remove rotor.

Ooops, I must have missed those, but it is true that on other models (obviously not the Carrera) they come off easily without removing anything else. I know they did on my '73 911 as well as the '67. The design change for later years doesn't sound like an improvement.

I hate it when what you anticipate being a quick easy job turns into a fubar slog! So you had to bleed the brakes afterwards too, eh?

TT

[Wil Ferch]

Yeppers......I had to bleed the brakes......this whole job was one of those..."Hey, its 10:30 PM and I'll get these puppies off before bedtime and not have to worry about it tomorrow"...types of project. Or so I thought.

The design stinks. Why would ONE bolt be attached from the outside-toward-in...and the two others be inside-toward-out ??? Obviously meant to be "built" along an assembly line....but not to be "repaired" easily.

Wil

[gost]

I took my rear shields off the other night on an 85 and I don't get what your situation must have been. Both sides came off literally in about a minute. 3 small bolts that face inward, unscrew them and pull the shields off. You have to slightly twist the shields to get them past the hub but no big deal and no bent shields. I can't imagine what you went through and what was different.

[Wil Ferch]

Well..let's see what's different...

As I said, one bolt was totally accessible from the outside....two bolts were accessible only from the inside ( bolt head faces inside rotor surface).....what's not to understand????

How is it that yours had three *outside* bolts ???

Wil

[gost]

Strange, all 3 bolt heads were on the inside of the car (facing centerline) and the bolts were very short, just enough to capture the nut which was by the way not typically thick or tall. Only thing I can think of is that the previous owner or his wrench modified the hardware to low profile and switched the bolt heads to face inward. I undid the bolts and the nuts just fell to the floor. I guess I was lucky without even being aware of it. Think about modifying the hardware if you want to ever put them back on.

Gost

[Emission]

My car is up in the air tonight ready for a brake bleed in the AM. I think I am going to pull my rear shields too... hope my bolts are in the correct orientation!

[Emission]

Originally posted by gost
Hey Will, Sorry to hear about a simple task turning a PIA. I'm starting alot of work on my 85 which will include brakes and rebuild the calipers all around ( check out my post earlier this morn "proj start") and since I'll have things apart I was wondering aside from having the brakes run a bit cooler what other advantages are there to removing the dust shields. I'm not using the car for track events just street cruising.

Thanks

Gost

No other real advantage other than better cooling...

In fact, the shields prevent water from splashing on the rotor surface. If you drive in the rain a lot, I'd leave them on!

[gost]

Thanks emission. I never drive the car in wet/bad weather. I will leave them off for now. Can always put them back on!

[Wil Ferch]

Coupla things....

Strange that the rear dust shields for my car were set up in identical manner left and right.....the "one" bolt that had its head toward the car's centerline (the "outside" bolt, as it were), screwed into a boss. The other two required a backing nut that was "outside". Car never looked like it was touched by a prior mechanic in this area. Car was purchased as a low mileage car with plenty of "original-as-shipped" stuff in-place.

Others who do this on mid 80's Carrera'a..please report back your findings.

I don't think the lack of shields will impact wet weather driving characterisitics. If you look very close how the shields are built, I think they allow the rotor surfaces to get plenty wet. Looks like "rock-guard" is a better term. Modern 986/996's use a smallish square plate that barely covers the innermost diameter of the disc.....

Endurance racing cars of yore were known to run in the wet ( ! ) without shields too.

Wil

[gost]

Yes Wil, I also had that one bolt that screwed into a boss on each side. the other 2 were short bolts with low profile nuts as I mentioned so the nut did not stick out into the rotor more that the bolt head would have if it was installed as yours was. next time if I ever put them on and take them off again I would use a slim ratchet wrench or combo wrench to hold onto the nut. Again perhaps I was lucky the nuts just fell to the floor and not where yours did. I don't think the likelyhood of re-installing them is high. Also I did not mean to make my post sound like you were crazy ( I'm sure you are a bit nutty, all Porsche owners seem to be ) it's just that I could not for the life of me figure out what happened to you and was curious. Hopefully we learned something here and how to avoid a problem in the future which is what this forum accels in doing and makes it so valuable.

Regards Gost

[Wil Ferch]

Gost:

Hopefully you understood that my rantings weren't in any way directed towards you...although your last post here may indicate I overstepped a bit. If so, my apologies.

My rants were with the state of my car as I found it. I then automatically become curious what the "standard" set up is.... since yours and mine were found so much different from each other....

Still an open question of what other '85 ( or thereabouts) owners find..

You also say, " I'm sure you are a bit nutty, all Porsche owners seem to be..."

Ain't THAT the truth !!! .... LOL !!

Wil

[gost]

I understood your frustration believe me, I've been there. I just did not want you to think I was questioning your capability to turn wrenches on your car. Looking back at my post and if I were you that's probably the way I would have taken it, "who's this guy think he is?" No problem....Nut!

Be well

Gordon

[Wil Ferch]

Resurrecting this thread...to explain what I saw as to the bolt that had its head on the inside surface of the splash shield....

See here on an unrelated thread...look at the cooling slots and move your eye to the left ( i.e. ...counterclockwise) along that row of slots until you see a bolt head at about 12 0'clock or so...

That's the one..... http://public.fotki.com/Rbertalotto/porsche_911/studs5.html

- Wil