I knew I wanted to go to track days, probably some autocross events too. Not make a race car out of it, but it was going to need to be mechanically sound. How to get there?
The reality is the car is 34 years old. Regardless of actual mileage, changes will have taken place. Things wear out, oxidize, and so on. Cars are very harsh environments with possible exposure to extreme heat, vibration, sunlight & chemicals. Fortunately, Porsche was galvanizing the entire chassis of the car by 1977. This goes a long way to keep them from rusting. With a solid chassis, we can focus on the 'soft parts'.
*Update - I got called a "pessimist" the other day, online of course, for suggesting that 35+ year old cars will need a body of work that will not show up in a PPI. Having worked around lots of old cars (working at a resto shop for several years) if you are looking at an old car, you should be anticipating & budgeting for some work. Nothing on your car was designed or tested to run 30+ years. Yes, make sure it is not leaking oil, has good compression, does not show signs of an major accident and all of that. But even a minty well cared for car is going to have beat suspension bushings, and so on. The biggest improvement I have noticed honestly is how well the wiring harnesses have held up. In the 50's and 60's cars we focused on, the harness was usually disintegrating and we would replace the whole thing out of necessity. My 88s looks great. Anyhow, just do yourself a favor and keep that in mind. Realist >< pessimist. If you put 10 miles on thing a year, maybe you don't care. If you are going to drive it and put your loved ones in it, please act accordingly.
To start out:
When the car arrived, I had slips for a lot of older maintenance, but nothing recent. That made me a bit nervous. Did it just sit for a while? Or was it driven & neglected? The car had 113,000 miles; the major services happen at 60,000 & 120,000 miles. So I went with a modified version of that. What it amounted to in phase 1 was:
* All fluids and filters (air, fuel, oil, transaxle)
* New tires (it arrived with 10 year old tires. That's about the limit for safety)
* New stainless steel flex lines and a complete brake fluid flush).
* Setting the valve clearances (requires draining the oil, removing spark plugs and moving the AC compressor)
* New rotor, cap, leads and spark plugs (while the AC compressor is out of the way and plugs are out). The old leads were dry rotted and cracking.
* New belts (alternator & AC)
* New steering column bushing (a common wear item)
* New O2 sensor
* Battery
* Lots of odd repairs, mostly lighting related. (broken fog lights, bad bulbs, etc)
* Hood struts, front and rear
With these items dealt with, the car started, ran, turned and stopped remarkably well. The hot start issue we had seen sometimes was also gone (perhaps?). A normal human might stop there and be happy. Mais non. I am wired to restore cars. I want to pull them apart and fix every.single.piece. And then drive them really fast. I am not sure there is a name for that; if you think of one, let me know.
Our second DE day, with the CVR PCA. Getting a little sideways. (Photo: Bob Reinckens)
The two big issues the car arrived with that escaped the PPI were a broken driver's side mirror and broken rear sway bar mounts; a common ailment for this model it seems. The mirror was a genuine pain to fix; that will get its own page (https://www.joepampel.com/post/mirror-mirror).
The sway bar mounts would be dealt with in phase II: electric boogaloo.
Phase II - Safety items (steering, brakes etc)
The steering while ok, was not very direct. I might go as far as disappointing. The conventional wisdom here says that replacing the tie rod arms (what you turn the car with ultimately) with the units from the 930 turbo is the hot setup. The stock 911 units use rubber to isolate them, while the so-called "turbo tie rods" do not. So I ordered a pair. They made a nice and very noticeable difference. Great bang for the buck. In PCA auto-x they will bump you from Stock class to Production class, so just be aware.
The new tie rods.
Next, the brakes worked well enough, but the disks were dished and the pads were of unknown origin, so I wanted to replace the pads but could not do so economically. If you have to pull it all apart to machine it, you may as well replace it. Never save money on brakes, that is my motto. So I budgeted for all new disks, pads and hardware. For the extra $30 we did the parking brake shoes as well. I mean, while you are there. . . I "upgraded" to coated Zimmerman disks to help prevent rust. It may as well look nice for a while. The pads are Porterfield R4-S to handle the heat of mild track days & autocrosses while still being usable on the street. And we used all new hardware for the pads. My friend's shop was able to do the welding to fix up the rear sway bar mounts, install the tie rods and refurb the brakes. I am very fortunate to have friends who do this stuff for a living who I have total faith in. I've done brakes before on lots of cars. It's a basic skill and they are nearly the same on every car. The brakes are a bit more involved on the 911 than on my old Triumph though. On the Spitfire you don't have to open the hydraulic system and bleed it, and the clutch and brake hydraulics are entirely separate. On the 911 they feed off the same reservoir and you have to disconnect hard lines to work on the brakes, which means you have to bleed it afterwards. Which is not a big deal except you have to also bleed the clutch cylinder which is very hard to get to without a real lift, which I do not have. I wind up removing the DS rear wheel and reaching across. The cylinder is located above the transmission, blocked by its own hard hydraulic line. Between my tendonitis and its location, I am happy to pay someone else to handle that. I did it twice, that was enough. If you are going to do it, make sure you have a pressure bleeder. They are worth their weight in gold. The nuisance location in the 911 was surely a cost saving measure as they moved from a cable clutch to hydraulic near the end of the model's life.
Rear Brakes
Front Brakes
The clutch cylinder is where? (they have to be on the bell housing but...) #shootmenow
Broken rear sway bar mount (PS shown but both were bad)
...And fixed using Elephant Racing mounts, and some ace welding courtesy of Round Hill Service in Greenwich.
Phase III
We continue with our safety focus. After more careful review it appears that my fuel lines are 34 years old. They pre-date our alcohol infused fuels, which can eat older fuel lines. This flat, air-cooled engine uses fuel injection (fuel under a lot of pressure, around 30psi) and the fuel lines sit above very hot exhaust manifolds. Net net, a fuel leak can easily become a giant car-ending bonfire, so we're budgeting for that work now instead of the suspension. Also looking at a new windshield because this one is hard to see through at night after 34 years of sandblasting. Safety first. One step at a time. After all that, we will get to work on the suspension.
Follow up
Fuel lines are done; pleased to say the Griffiths lines we purchased fit perfectly and their install directions were on the money. Big Kudos there. :)
The driver's side rear sway bar mount came apart during an event so that's going to get replaced. At least we know it was doing something. The car seemed to understeer noticeably more without it, which is intuitively what you would expect.
The throttle bellcrank on the transmission is continuing to stick and caused me to have a pair of off track adventures so I've ordered all new bits for that. Nothing like having the throttle stick at 5,000 rpm as you dive into a slow corner... thank goodness for lots of runoff room. More here: https://www.joepampel.com/post/fixing-a-sticky-throttle
The glass shop that was recommended for the windshield work has not been able to source the glass, yet. So I am calling back monthly. We'll get there.
Update (Aug 2023) We have obtained the glass but in order to make sure we make as much of the PCA Auto-X season as possible we'll wait to pull the glass just in case there is any rust under it that needs dealing with.
The Porterfield pads are nothing short of amazing now that they are all bedded in. I gave Mrs P a demo and she compared it to a roller coaster stopping. It's pretty close. ABS? We don't need to stinking ABS...
November 2022
Replaced the broken sway bar end link on the driver's side, only to go on and break the one on the passenger's side, lol. I seem to be gifted. I ordered a part that was a step-up price-wise for the left and it looks fine. We'll see if they both hold up now. Same failure mode; the rubber just popped out of the ring it is supposed to be glued into. This can happen if you tighten the things down with the suspension extended although that isn't what happened here. If you haven't done suspension work, as a general rule you don't want to tighten things down until the suspension is loaded normally, sitting on all 4 tires. Best case you get squeaks. Worst case, stuff comes apart. Here it's just a badly made part.
Another broken sway bar link.
Adjacent item - transmission mounts. They should be sitting more centered, mine are sitting towards their bottom. Pretty tired. One more thing for the list.
Recently I found a local specialist shop and made an appointment to get the car inspected. The shop insists on an inspection before taking a new car in for work, which makes a lot of sense. They got it up on a lift and went through everything, and then took it out for a drive. Very thorough, and smart. One thing they really dug into were my oil leaks. Nothing that is enough to make drips on the floor, but a bunch of places where oil is either weeping out of old connectors, or various engine locations and other hoses. They also called out where my hard lines had been partly crushed when the car was put on a lift improperly at some point in the past. Seems that this is fairly common. The front was partly flattened (near the jack point) as was the rear. Not an emergency, but something to get in the queue. The PPI had called these out - but again, not as an urgent thing; more like a common issue with these older cars. Someone along the line just did not know how to jack them up.
Front right side crush, oil line & rocker extension.
Rear line crush damage. The sill is crushed here too, just hard to see from this angle
Engine based leaks appear to be happening on the left side rocker shaft, timing chain cover and in a few spots on the case. Nothing exciting, but just keeping things oily and dirty. We'll keep an eye on those, possibly attacking the timing chain cover and rocker shaft at some point depending on how things are going. It can be done with the engine in by removing the bumper, muffler and dropping the engine on a jack I am told. So it's a big job but not a huge job.
You can see that the timing chain cover is coated. Just forward of it, the rocker housing appears to be leaking, perhaps from the end of the rocker shaft. This will get cleaned up and observed to make a positive ID before we attack it.
The S-line from the oil tank to the engine has also plasticized. Not having much experience with these cars I didn't know what to feel for. The issue is they get hard over time and crack. It's a $25 part that can destroy your engine if it goes. So guess what I just ordered. If you guessed S-line and a new right rear sway bar end link, you win. I have an oil change coming up in a few hundred miles, I'll just do it then after the engine has been drained.
S-line from oil tank to engine. you can see one of the "weepy" line behind it.
There are other weepy oil leaks; up front there are 2 short flex lines that run to the cooler from the hard lines. There are also the lines in the rear right wheel well, and lines around the engine. Several of them are weeping, just covered in a film of oil as the fittings deteriorate.
The hard lines are not hard to install but you have to disconnect the oil thermostat (rear right wheel well) which can be tricky. The lines themselves are pretty expensive too, so once again I am happy to let seasoned pros do it right.
This next group will be the windshield and the oil lines. This will make it possible to see at night and in glare, and stop the old weeping oil lines from getting any worse. I will fix the sunroof ramps, remaining engine mount and fuse panel. Do what you you can, but know your limitations. After that I think we'll be able to look at the suspension. Finally. You can see the oil lines going in here: https://www.joepampel.com/post/let-the-pros-handle-it
Less to see with the windshield (no pun intended !) but briefly it has been one of the best things we've done for the car:
"How It Started" - it was even worse at night in the rain. 35 years of rocks hitting it.
Once again, our friends at Butzigear jumped in.
There was a ton of old sealer that had to be removed first, slow work but important.
More old sealer.
And here we are driving at night with the new windshield. It's a different car.
Sweating the details
And here, just consider that this packaging job was done decades before CAD, it's pretty amazing. Even little details, like making the same part work as the heat exchanger for both sides. All 6 cylinders are the same part. The cam & rocker arm housing is also the same on both sides. The details are really wonderful to see. Every detail was sweated over.
Jan 2023
Changed the oil again after about 3,600mi. Good news all around there. No filings on the drain plugs. Replaced the oil filler hose (S hose) and clamps and fixed the passenger side sway bar link. These "golden" colored ones (yellow cad?) that are holding up (so far) are the URO links. We'll see how they do.
Old one just separated. No bueno.
Not sure how this happens, there is no tension on the assembly at rest.
New URO link (L)
Perfect fit and almost too easy to install. Only issue was they supplied two new screws but the screw into the trailing arm has a finer thread than what was included so you have to re-use the old one. No big deal, but someone somewhere might strip their trailing arm.
Feb20, 2023
Bought a set of Rennline transmission mounts and a 6 ton bench top press from Jegs and replaced my transmission mounts in about an hour. The only original mount left is the passenger side engine mount which is blocked by the AC compressor. It is really easy to do if you have a press and made my shifter feel a lot better.
May 2023
We replaced the rear shocks https://www.joepampel.com/post/replace-your-rear-shocks The originals were, well, original and overdue for retirement.
June 2023
We finally got to take on the front suspension: https://www.joepampel.com/post/replace-your-ball-joints-control-arms What an amazing difference!
July/Aug 2023
The car is in the shop getting expert care; new oil lines, a new windshield and front strut inserts. That will complete the front end re-build. (See above)
The next big body of work will be re-building the rear suspension, and then getting a full alignment with corner weighting. The oil leak by the driver's side cam journal is getting worse so a top end rebuild may happen as well. We can't fix that with the engine in the car. That will be Summer 2024 probably.
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