First 911 questions

[colingreene]

As I mentioned before I had some grinding going into 3rd and occasionally first.
With what I found earlier the first second issues would make a lot of sense.
Third however could only be accounted for by a worn synchro band and dog teeth.




So I had some spare good used parts out of a 901 gear box that works for gears 3-5
And with all of the new parts for the 1-2 cluster I was ready to put it back together. Here's the mains haft still mostly together but removed from the trans.


The main bearing race was loose however not loose enough that it was terminal, I pressed it back in and then used sleeve lock to hold it there.
I know that this is not really the accepted solution but for the time being and budget at hand it would have to do. That being said I accept the risk, i also know that the motor I am building/did build will destroy this mag gearbox if i treat it harshly.



With some quality advice from Frank and use of a actual torque wrench, something that was lacking during the last assembly the gearbox went together.
I do have to say that before I began taking this transmission apart I was very apprehensive about my ability to tear the gear box down repair it and have it work. However with help from Frank and being careful it all went way better than I would have anticipated.


When I bought the car I previously mentioned that the brakes left a lot to be desired.
I had gone through the rear brakes as that was a easy solution.
The fronts obviously on a 911 leave you with more choices.
3.0 inch struts or 3.5. and then from there what calipers. I had found and decided to restore a pair of Bilstein front spindles.




Since I also have a 914 that I am building a 6 cylinder for and really like the whole idea of a GT build I moved my Late S calipers to the 911 and bought a set of Early S calipers for the 914 to be more period correct. Because you know that's important.
It made sense in my head....
However not before I tried a Boxster caliper on another strut i had floating around. During the time i was doing this (2019) I worked for a private shop that had extra parts around allowing me to do that. You may have noticed some of the cars in the back of the pictures.
I have not ruled out using these in the future however.




After this we got back to the engine build but that will likely be another post.

[colingreene]

This was back in 2019, At my old job in California. I needed to re assemble the motor before I moved to Mn for another job. (That I actually no longer have) wild I know.

Either way one of the unfun things that we found during the inspection of the motor was that the crank was ground undersized, I don't actually mind this other than the cost of main bearings is much higher. No obvious reason was found for this but it is what it is. Something I have found myself saying a lot over the years. I may also mention we checked all this out while we watched the 24 hours of lemans and ate steak and eggs.



We also noticed that as the bearings moved back towards the flywheel the clearances opened up. This indicated to us that the motor had been driven quite hard.
After speaking the the previous and original owner he confirmed that the car was used quite hard.

He bought the car new from Beverly hills Porsche after being goaded by friends that his targa was a "Girls car" I don't personally like targas but that's not how i would describe them. Either way He bought the car and drove it a bit but still had the hankering for more performance. he later had someone A shop I think, put a turbocharger on the 2.7. Honestly I wish I saw that. Everyone here likely knows what a bad idea that was. This did actually explain why in place of a clock it had a boost gauge.
Several times he lost the motor via piston failure or whatever else. Eventually he grew tired of all of this back and forth with the motor failures and paid the shop he used what he called "a large sum of money" to build him something reliable. and what that was is what eventually wound up in the car that I detailed earlier. He ultimately never drove the car much due to the motor failures and he also mentioned overheating. This leads me to believe that the car really does only have 42 ish thousand miles on it since new.

He sold the car to a flipper and i bought the car from the flipper.

Once the crank was inspected as mentioned above we moved on to picking what oil pump to run. Ultimately As you can see I chose to run my 930 oil pump, replacing the SC four rib that the motor had in it when we tore it down.




Dropping the IMS and oil pump in with new Iwiss racing chains.





Case prepped for assembly.

[colingreene]

Once you reach the point of laying down case sealant you dont have much time to stop and take pictures.
Plus I dont know how interesting this is to anyone since obviously this has been covered dozens and dozens of times by now.




Here is the case together



Next up was setting up the deck height. when we originally took this motor apart just about everything we found inside of it was suspect so in order to be able to feel even remotely comfortable everything needed to be checked on. These are 100mm Mahle motorsport pistons that I think are no longer made so I also wanted to not destroy those.




here is a shot of the 100mm cyls re plated. the car sat for a long long time so the cyls have some pitting damage that millennium could not fully get to go away.
They however remained unconcerned about this and the pistons checked easily within spec leading me to believe the history i had received from the previous owner was to be believed.
the car always ran exceptionally hot so he drove it sparingly. The car really only has like 40k on it overall.




In order to clean the crowns of the piston I aluminum taped the crap out of them then then vapor blasted them clean.


Here's a shot of the cyl heads being assembled into the towers getting ready to go onto the cyls.

[colingreene]

Primed and ready to drop on. Unfortunately late in the game we realized that while someone decked the heads to provide a nice sealing surface for the tops of the cyls they neglected to maintain the distance between the surface around the bottom of the heads. It made any hope for sealing the heads impossible. This meant that we had to hand surface them on a deck plate till they fit. I forget the exact measurement but it was enough I don't want to do it again. However it was some bizarre foreshadowing for the next flat six i wound up building for my 914.
below is the case with everything put together ready to go. Hopefully i wont have any leaks. You also may have noticed that I upgraded my chain holder from the last post.



time to torque.


Here's part of our work area, yes its a pallet held up by a forklift also known as the best engine crane ever.
Kind of a neat picture I thought I would include for fun.



Trans getting close to being finished and closed up at this point also. I really was concerned about my ability to rebuild the transmission but it actually turned out great.
I re freshed all the bushings in the factory shift linkage and its working very well at this point.

[porschedude996]

What else did you find in the trans?

[colingreene]

mostly just abused dog gears and tired synchros.
The main bearing being loose in the case as standard feature on these.
All of the first/second hardware short of the gears themselves was replaced.
I also made sure that things were torqued to spec, something that was not done before and it seems to be doing well. I do still have a bit of gear whine in 5th but nothing compared to what it was.

[porschedude996]

Originally Posted by colingreene

mostly just abused dog gears and tired synchros.
The main bearing being loose in the case as standard feature on these.
All of the first/second hardware short of the gears themselves was replaced.
I also made sure that things were torqued to spec, something that was not done before and it seems to be doing well. I do still have a bit of gear whine in 5th but nothing compared to what it was.

Thanks, I’m looking into an overhaul soon on my 83 SC. Fifth gear is where my cars whines the worst.

[colingreene]

Well if you are planning on doing it yourself you will need a few special tools but its not the end of the world.
If not and you are on a budget I may have someone that can help you out (its not me)
Keep in mind that if you do need to replace the dog teeth on first or second you will have to go to the updated asymmetrical dog teeth the later cars have. Not a big deal but it costs some money.
if your 83 has any extra power I would probably recommend adding a limited slip differential. I do have an extra wavetrac hanging around.
however your problem may be as simple as a loose nut like mine was.
Its not difficult to inspect and diagnose, its just the special tools i mentioned earlier.

I guess Ill keep posting the engine build pictures ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[chrisbalich]

Absolutely keep posting photos.
Some of us live for them.

[porschedude996]

Originally Posted by colingreene

Well if you are planning on doing it yourself you will need a few special tools but its not the end of the world.
If not and you are on a budget I may have someone that can help you out (its not me)
Keep in mind that if you do need to replace the dog teeth on first or second you will have to go to the updated asymmetrical dog teeth the later cars have. Not a big deal but it costs some money.
if your 83 has any extra power I would probably recommend adding a limited slip differential. I do have an extra wavetrac hanging around.
however your problem may be as simple as a loose nut like mine was.
Its not difficult to inspect and diagnose, its just the special tools i mentioned earlier.

I guess Ill keep posting the engine build pictures ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Please list the tools. Also would you PM me about the LSD you have.

[colingreene]

https://www.fvd.net/us-en/FVD721T225/synchro-remover-915345-901-all.html

This would be the tool used to pull the dog teeth off of 3-5. but you will need a large sturdy set of circlip pliers, leather gloves and some safety squints because those guys are on there tight and and slippery when covered in oil.
You can also consider any gearing changes you may want when you are in there. I chose to not mess with any of it.
The tool for 1-2 is different. I have access to the tools through friends.
That said if you want to set pinion to ring gear you will need a VW 385 and that is not cheap.

[porschedude996]

Originally Posted by colingreene

https://www.fvd.net/us-en/FVD721T225/synchro-remover-915345-901-all.html

This would be the tool used to pull the dog teeth off of 3-5. but you will need a large sturdy set of circlip pliers, leather gloves and some safety squints because those guys are on there tight and and slippery when covered in oil.
You can also consider any gearing changes you may want when you are in there. I chose to not mess with any of it.
The tool for 1-2 is different. I have access to the tools through friends.
That said if you want to set pinion to ring gear you will need a VW 385 and that is not cheap.

Thanks for the insight. I think I’ll employ someone who has the tools to do the job. It makes no economic sense to buy the tooling for one transmission overhaul.

[Bill Douglas]

The work area is so clean and orderly. Very professional.

Whenever I do the most minor of jobs I have tools scattered all over the place with oil and grease on the floor.

And of course, congrat's on the build.

[colingreene]

This build looks like a bomb went off compared to the current one I am doing for my 914.
Id link that but some asshat hacked 914 world.

[colingreene]

here is a picture of me sticking the heads onto the motor.
Honestly its one of the coolest pictures I have been in. guess I have a low bar.



And since the motor was pretty much together and closed up shortly after that here's a shot of the motor. Its actually very satisfying to see it together again.
Since this was my first full tear it apart of a 911 motor it made me somewhat uncomfortable.
Obviously once i got that out of the way i felt a lot better doing subsequent ones.



the thing about twin plugging a motor is its a lot more than just drilling some extra holes and adding a distributor. I needed a way to mount a second CDI box.
I'm sure that at this point you can figure out that I am somewhat fussy about how things look and operate. If you haven't, I am that way.
In order to add the box a custom mount had to be made, here it is all mounted up.



With the cams timed and set up I was able to see a visual representation of overlap.
The light you can see is coming into the chamber is from that overlap. I found this to be extremely cool.
Also here's a shot of the valve hardware.

[colingreene]

Also as mentioned about twin plugging its full of fun little things you never think about till you are in fact doing it.
Unfortunately being new to that meant that I had several complications in doing that.
One of those was the air duct for the heater. The larger distributor wanted to occupy the same space the heater duct did.
Little bit of trimming and some pattern making means we came up with something that fit.
Luckily the distributor cap is not held on by the spring clips but screws. this means that i could minimize the amount needed to be taken out of the duct.



I had some Carbon laying around from another project so thats what I used since it was naturally black and bound to blend in. Truthfully I have 0 affinity for carbon fiber other than its utility as a material. aesthetically it does very little for me. thats why this could be more beautiful or i could have modeled the entire part and made a tool to create the whole modified part out of carbon, maybe in the future.




The next problem would be that the timing chain box needed to be opened up for the spark plug wire end and so would the rear part of the tin for the rear lower spark plug on the left side. And a pass through for the lower six wires.



The shroud was in rough shape, I chose to just re paint it after fixing its defects.
Time has proven that the heat is a bit much for it so I may have to come up with a new solution but for now its fine.




A lot of the wiring harness was damaged so a majority of it had to be repaired or replaced. Also The usual routing all of the wires and cutting them to length.
I routed them over the fan as shown and made some clamps in order to hold them running over the fan. it came out fairly well i thought.
Later I attached the coils to the engine support bar 964 style. Not sure if i have any pictures of that around. Once all of this was sorted out the motor was ready to be put up into the car.
That will probably be the next post.

[colingreene]

Once all of the large number of small issues were solved it was time to get the motor ready to go into the car.
I opted to keep the pressure plate and flywheel but put a fresh disk into it.
The flywheel was surfaced however.

To put the motor into the car the carbs were removed. I also did some just general cleaning
and installed a new back pad.




the transmission was then attached and we lowered the car onto the motor on the table.
Ultimately I wound up blocking the motor up so the nose of the gearbox would walk into the shift rod opening.
and I chose to attach the exhaust later.

Next up I plan on replacing all the front bushings since the shock uprights and brakes have been restored and replaced up there
Im not sure how much enthusiasm i have for continuing to post updates however.

[GG Allin]

Originally Posted by colingreene

.............Im not sure how much enthusiasm i have for continuing to post updates however.

I have found them useful, thanks.

[Tremelune]

The Internet is read-once, read-many by several orders of magnitude. Rest assured your post will be appreciated by someone, even if it takes years...

[colingreene]

So I have mentioned a few times in passing that I also have a 914.
A few years ago I was given the chance to drive a 2.4E powered 914 so obviously I had to have one.

Anyway I have had this 2.7L core that I had been piling parts for and Finally put together.
I built it out as a bit of a hot rod.

92mm bore making it a 2.8
DC60 cams
10.5:1 compression CP Pistons
Ported heads
weber 40s
964 oil pump.
Here's some pictures of it fully assembled.





My 914 is in Minnesota and my 911 and this motor are in California. So I swapped the 2.8 into the 911.
Luckily for me I have friends with a lift and all the other critical tools for swapping motors. So, Out with the 3.3



and after some parts transfer in with the 2.8. I was unwilling to recut my spark plug wires and fuss with the distributor positioning so the spark plug wires are not as neat as they could be. but overall it went together just fine.



The 3.3 had been doing some weird leaking stuff like from the rocker shafts and smoking a bit.
I originally had EBS do the cyls for me and provide rings for the motor. The motor was using a ton of oil. I spoke to EBS a bunch about the oil consumption and the ring package.
Worryingly during one of those conversations they said "Why do you have those oil rings" "you should not have those" Referring to the one piece cast iron oil rings. That is what they sold me.
Either way the motor is out and pulled down to a short block.
The rings show signs of never seating and the cyls are glazed
I sent the cyls off today to have them check it out and see if we can come up with a solution together.
I also had oil on the back of the intake valves.
The case its self never showed any signs of leaking so ill be leaving that alone.


with the motor pulled and torn down I have found some other worrying things id like to solve. Like this below.



Really what's weird is even if it consumed tons of oil it always hauled ass. i am looking forward to getting it fixed and it running better.
As much as all of this sometimes makes me want to pull my hair out I constantly think about what makes me do all of this. and the picture below is really it.
Being able to go out and treat myself to a little vacation whenever I want either by myself or with friends.