Thanks!! I've come to realize that love and insanity are very closely related. :D

The turn signal bulbs are just standard yellow LEDs from Superbright LED.

I love your black car.

This car was the first S2 Cab I found for sale in (seemingly)good shape at a good price.
The previous owner was not honest about the true condition of the car and it's previous accident history. I just confirmed some additional accident damage in the rear when I was working on the clear tail light lenses. You can't tell unless you know exactly where to look and what to look at but now I know it is there. There were a couple of small curves in the metal that just didn't look quite right to me, and now I know for sure that there is body work and bondo in those spots.

I have to decide how badly I want to fix it in the future. The whole car is in need of a paint job. How far down the rabbit hole do I want to go to make the body as close to perfect as possible.???? :confused:

One of the plans I have is to change from the factory Alpine White to Pearl White from a first year 944 Turbo. I love that color. I think I will have the only Pearl White 944 S2 Cabriolet Turbo on the planet.


I bought new tie-rod ends but they did not have the opening in the top for a hex wrench. I was having a problem getting the nuts to tighten.
I pulled them back off the car, used a cut-off wheel to put a slot in the top and used a couple wrenches and a flat blade screwdriver to get them on and mostly tight. Once they were close to the correct torque, I was able to finish them with a real torque wrench.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1709778408.jpg

The rack was rebuilt and installed before the tie-rod fix,

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1709779271.jpg

Easier way to get the nuts on is to place a jack under the tie rod and put some pressure on it.

Tighten the nut and the shaft will not spin on you.

standard hex head usually have a system of lines on the head to indicate quality and hardness, you can look it up, Metric ones usually have a numerical marking for the same reason.

I have int the past bought stainless just so they dint need paint, which have 2 lines and filed the lines off just to make them look pretty..


Just be aware that if the bolts need to stand up to fatigue or vibration or are torqued , that the grade of bolt may actually be more important than the color.

in the last 10 years Ive noticed an increase in the number of metric fasteners wiht no markings in newer machinery. these are ungraded fasteners and generally strip easily. akin to the stuff you get in a bubble pack in a hardware store..

socket head cap screws ( allen head) may not have such markings.. the grade you could compare when buying... It might be all just fine, just a thing to be aware of, that's all.

Thanks for the info. I was generally aware of that but I am hoping proper torque will be enough. I plan to check the torque on all the replacement bolts. I was planning on checking at about 500 miles but I might do a quick check at 100 miles. I've had the engine up to temp multiple times and all the engine bolts are still to spec and I have no oil leaks.

nice work. glad you documented it AZ. I wish I documented mine. it would prob would have been with polaroid pics its been so long though. haha

second picture down on the left, I think there is a little black smudge in the paint you can clean off ;-)

- yes, I'm kidding !

Yeah, yeah, I'll get to it. It's item number 961 on my to-do list.

Fun with starters.

My starter was sounding funny and then just quit working
So I bought a replacement from Oreillys.
It didn't work. The gear spun but it didn't extend. I figured it was either the solenoid or the lever fork that extends the gear.
I called Oreillys and they ordered me another replacement.
I brought it home and installed it.
Same thing. Spins but doesn't extend.
I don't want to wait another week to get another possibly broken replacement so I did some troubleshooting.
I puller the solenoid off my old starter and put it on the new starter.
Works perfectly!!!
Just for giggles, I put the new solenoid on the old starter.
Now the old starter spins like a champ but again, the gear doesn't extend.
Yes, we have a bad solenoid(or two if you count the first replacement)
O reillys won't give me a refund unless I bring the new starter back just like I bought it.
I don't want to wait another week for another possibly/probably bad starter and pull everything apart again.
Now to get to work on the front sway bar.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1710642300.jpg

I always use a rubber mallet to tap in place or a block of wood and regular hammer.

The sway bar is in.
The rear mounting lug on the AC compressor was in the way.
It's gone now.
One thing that concerns me is that the links from the control arm to the sway bar are not vertical. The swaybar is inboard of the control arm mounting holes and the bracket on the swaybar is behind the mounting hole as well. I could move the bracket forward so the link is vertical in the front to back plane but that would make it much stiffer.
I am assuming that this bar was built for an early offset car and mine is late offset.


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1710781946.jpg

Your car is insanely clean! This bothers me.

This most recent round of work started about 4 years ago when I took it off the road due several oil leaks. Everything from the front of the engine to the rear bumper was filthy and covered with oil.
The mechanicals are now very clean but the underside of the car still has a coating of oil/dirt.
It will get power washed as soon as I can get it out of the garage.
To put a spin on a quote from Lightning McQueen, "I hate working on dirty cars"

Oh, we have a scammer in our midst. He has been copying and pasting comments in a bunch of threads. Boosting his thread count so he can DM people in the for sale sections and scam them out of money.

oil and grease are good at preventing rust. Ive even heard of mechanics spraying their cars from underneath, not very environmental, and I guess it doesn't do the rubber parts a lot of good.
I guess mine is pretty well preserved .. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it;-)

Rust???? Never heard of her. I live in Arizona.

:p


My car spent some of its life in Ohio so it has some very minor rust in a couple spots but it doesn't expand due to the low humidity here. I will fix all the rust spots when I have it repainted.

(I also have a couple 914s and they came from the factory with rust as a mandatory option so I really do know what rust is :D)

The plan is to never drive this car in anything but perfect weather and keep it in the garage any time it rains or snows.

I've spent almost as much time cleaning parts as as I have anything else this time around. I don't want to have to do that again when I put the turbo engine in it.

when you clean and repaint stuff it gives you a sense of accomplishment on every step. you can step back and say wow that's soooo much nicer.. you dont get quite the same "charge" from repacking your bearings or doing brakes..
I think most of us can totally relate to that.

my brother bought an old 60's Massey Ferguson tractor, brought it in his shop to fix an oil leak,, well he went a bit off the deep end and totally rebuilt the engine , took every bit of paint off and repainted every part.. He;s getting close to the end of it , i think.. he has 5 acres and its not even really a farm.. I think he mostly just got a charge out of doing it all.

for me it was my 66 volvo,, I went deep into everything, Never had the money to quite do everything I wanted, especially with the paintwork, but I spent many hours taking it all apart, rebuilding every part, stripping rust, repainting stuff as best I could.. I always tried to reassemble it and drive it and not go so far in that it became a project set aside.. I love the old thing but it certainly does have rust.. it lives in a tent not a garage.. each year Its a bit worse and I long for a workshop , one day.. Hoping when I retire Ill make that, and probably my Porsche a bit of a retirement project.. No rush , baby steps.. I lived in the interior of BC and its like that up there. you leave an old car outside and the paint wears off and still it doesn't' rust.. its all sagebrush long yellow grass , there is tumbleweed and little round cactus. it gets cold in winter but it's arid.

arizona must be even more dry.. I've been to Ohio, Columbus Cleveland and west of there, near toledo, and to California , Boston, etc.. Rochester.. It would be cool to go further south and to drive down and see the eastern seaboard, maybe Maine, and down to Florida, Miami..

I'm not sure what extent Porsche went to with galvanizing but mine seems good that way.. I spoke to an ex-mechanic here and he told me a story of going to Germany around the time the 944 was created. he said outside the factory they had one on display , roped off , but in the weather without any paint, He said Porsche did that to show how well the galvanizing worked. I always wondered of others here had seen or heard of this car..

on my old volvo the front nose cone had galvanizing, it did work, too bad they stopped there.

I still have to figure out what to do about the sway bar
Alignment tomorrow
Paint touch up and rear spoiler next week
A few minor issues

But with all that,

She is on the ground and drove out of the garage under her own power tonight. First time in about 4 years. I can't wait to go for a drive.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1711253023.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1711253023.jpg

I took a bunch of pictures and some video.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1711253183.jpg

Looking so beautiful! Nice work !