Sunday Stephen and I tackled a clutch job that he needed to get done for a mutual freind. His initial plan was to do it on jackstands, and when he asked me to help, I just laughed at him. After the last fiasco of trying to bench press a tranny into a 996, I wasn’t going to fall for that again (you know the saying, “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice….oh hell, nobody fools me twice”). Instead, …

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I’ve been slacking. Actually, I have been trying to cure myself of a typing error of many years. It appears that you are no longer to put 2 spaces after a period anymore due to the advances in computers, lol. I’ve hit that spacebar twice for the last 20 years or so. Not sure if I will be able to break the habit, but i’ll try. In the December 2010 issue of Excellence magazine, there was a great article about …

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Helped a freind out with an emergency on Friday afternoon. Turns out his boxster started smoking excessively out the tailpipe. On most cars you would fear the worst that maybe a headgasket was blown, but the M96 engines use an oil air seperator that can go bad and allow oil vapor back into the intake stream, where it is burned off in the cylinders and causes the smoke. Pearing up over the passenger axle, you can see the OAS attached …

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Finished up the turbo swap in the 951 the other day. Downpipe swapped on to the new turbo. Turbo installed. Then on went the piping and intake. Once that was done, I needed to pull the intercooler to clean any foreign debris out of that. Header panel removed to expose the intercooler. Peering in the one end, you can see some old crusty particles caked onto the surface. A trip to the power washer cleaned it right up. Intecooler out …

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I am always preaching to people that you do not purchase a used car without having a qualified shop perform a pre purchase inspection to check for potential issues a new owner might be faced with. I helped out an old freind in Colorado who had found this car for a client. The intended purpose would be a Driver’s Education car. A nice little example of a 964, with about 140k miles on it. Standard engine bay with a K&N …

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Audi A4

Had a freind bring by his A4 in preparation for a move to Flordia! We had a couple of coolant leaks to try and stop, as well as topping off the diff fluids. A hose clamp cured one leak, and a rubber cap hopefully cured the other. The drain valve was leaking slightly on the radiator, and it is only available by purchasing a new radiator. We capped it off in hopes that will prevent the leak. Topping off the …

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Was the RX-7 utilizing a rotary engine. The cars are actually quite fun to drive and were pretty popular. A freind of mine brought over his son’s TX-7 Turbo II (now don’t get excited, that doesn’t mean twin turbos) so we could put in a new brake master cylinder. It had started to puke fluid everywhere, so a replacement was needed. Oreilly’s was able to order us the part, and it was definitely not “porsche pricing.” A little wet and …

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More 951 Progress

Got back to the 951 after the holidays to finish up some items. I started by tearing apart the exhaust to upgrade to a Fabspeed 3″ full system, and Tial 38mm wastegate. When I crawled under the car, I realized the car, being an early 86 model, had the 1 piece crossover pipe….DOH! The wastegate doesn’t exactly fit with the one piece, so I went and got my 2 piece pipe to install in it’s place. This will also save …

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Project LS1?

Sigh….no not yet. But this project does have an LS1 in it! Today I took on a gauge install in a 2004 GTO. The pod and gauges were a craigslist find at a discount from what I hear, only there wasn’t any wiring bundle or oil pressure sending unit included, so it was not just a plug an play so to speak. Up and ready to go. Pod out of the car. Well, we have some work do to here. …

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Had a freind drop off his 951 that was making some noise from the rear end. Quickly diagnosed the patient as….you guessed it, a bad CV joint. I quickly had horrible flashback’s of the 993 axles, but at least these wouldn’t be nearly as hard to get out….still messy, but not hard, lol. Driver’s side axle out. While the boots were in good shape on this axle, the grease had dried up over the years and caused the joint to …

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