Floor time

Well after 3 years of some pretty serious abuse, I was able to secure a few days to refinish the garage floor. The epoxy coating was starting to peel pretty badly after abuse from jack stands, engine stands, jacks, etc being drug around on the floor. So this afternoon, I started sanding with my 4.5″ angle grinder. 6 hours later, I had the floor de-epoxy’d. The 24 grit discs chewed through the epoxy pretty well until they heat up and …

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944 S2 Clutch

Saturday I headed over to the headquarters of the infamous KCWS and helped some good friends do a clutch job on a 944 S2 Cab. The car had died abruptly with no power getting to the rear wheels, so I figured the clutch center had blown out. The car has about 90k ish miles on it. Up in the air and ready to go. Everything behind the engine block needs to come out. Transaxle, torque tube (slide back), bellhousing, and …

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My buddy Dan brought by his ’11 GT3 today so we could flush the brake fluid for an upcoming DE event, and install a set of low mileage GMG headers! Up in the air and ready to start. First we started with the brake fluid flush. Pretty standard really…..reservoir filled up with new fluid, and then I use the vacuum bleeder to pull it through the system. Taking a picture of Dan…..taking a picture, lol. Stock headers ready to come …

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Oil Change Day

First thing I knocked out an 86 911 Targa for it’s 6 months oil change. It has likely sat most of the winter, but with 60 degree weather on the way, it was time to get it ready for the season. Up in the air and ready to go. First thing I noticed was oil buildup around the oil cooler and bellhousing. This is typically due to a bad oil thermostat o ring and/or the breather plate gasket. I cleaned …

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This procedure is the same whether you are updating to carbon fiber mirrors, or say if you backed out of the garage and caught the mirror on the edge of the garage door and bent it in a direction it wasn’t meant to bend 😉 I ran out to Fairway to check out the mirror off a Cayman today. Figured I knew what was wrong, but wanted to confirm in person. Figured it out pretty quickly after removing the mirror …

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I wrote this article a few years ago and posted it over at the old Porsche Forums/German Auto Forums, and I still get a lot of emails every week about it.  Essentially, the same questions were popping up over and over, so I compiled some information related to my experiences working on 996’s. Pre Purchase Inspection: I can not recommend a PPI enough, unless you are a professional Porsche mechanic. Typically they run from $150-500, and is money well spent. …

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Every year auto dealers and manufacturers present their shiny new wares to the public at the Kansas City Auto Show. We headed down again this year to see what was new! I still cringe to think of the number of people, kids, etc that climb through these cars, many with no respect for the car, lol. Feel bad for the people buying these examples! Most of the cars there were…well….appliances IMHO. There are a lot of cool technology packages and …

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More Internals

Took a couple of pictures of the camshafts this afternoon. This is the passenger intake camshaft. Notice the missing ring in the middle groove, there should be 3 on each cam. Again, this missing ring rides directly in path where this groove appeared in the front cam housing. And the driver side camshaft. All 3 rings present. And another close up of one of the cracked camshaft housing brackets.

996TT Top End

Tonight Stephen (PorschePhD) came by with the magical cam tools we needed to pull the motor down the rest of the way for inspection. This evening I pulled the driver’s side apart down to the cams and cleaned everything up so we could do both sides. Glad we did. As many 930 motors as I have pulled apart, I have never done anything internal to the 996TT motors as that was always Stephen’s department at the shop. It was a …

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Got the clutch installed this afternoon, and sent the car on it’s way. Since the disc was down to the metal, it did enough damage to the flywheel that I had to order a new flywheel. I think my machine shop could have probably turned the surface on the end mill and it would have been fine, but due to time constraints of the owners, we just went ahead with a new flywheel. New flywheel installed. What a new clutch …

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