Porsche 968. Sometimes Things Aren’t So Simple

Had this nice little 968 come into the shop this week for a couple of minor issues like realigning the hood, figuring out a bogging idle and performance issue, and a nagging tiptronic error light. A fairly new car for the owner, but sometimes it takes a little sorting to go through a new to you car.

The hood aligned pretty easy, and I noticed the hall sensor had completely fallen apart. Pretty common issue for a bogging car, so I replaced that to see how it would run. I also pulled the spark plugs to look for any hints there as well. Though recently replaced, they were completely fuel soaked.

Cam cover off for extra access to the hall sensor which is hidden on the backside of the timing cover.

Connector totally destroyed. Pretty typical as it sits so close to the headers, and the heat just destroys everything.

Since the hall sensor and spark plugs didn’t improve our issue, I checked the cap and rotor. When I pulled the cap, I noticed we had a problem. A lot of debris as the rotor was cutting into the distributor cap points.

Then I noticed the timing cover was sitting cockeyed. With a little work, I found the lower mounting points on the cover to be completely shattered by someone crossthreading the bolts in. These covers are made of magnesium and are pretty fragile.

The cover was sitting crooked enough that it was causing issues with the alignment of the rotor, even cutting into the front cover. So, time to replace the entire cover assembly with a good used one.

Since the timing belt needs to come off to replace the rear cover (remove the cam gear, yada yada), I aligned the crank to TDC and found the timing belt had been installed incorrectly and was a tooth off. That would definitely cause some running issues!

With the cover off, a better shot of the broken mounting points.

And since the belt needs to come off to get the cover replaced, and with no records, I was able to convince the owner to at minimum do the belts and waterpump (slight leak from the waterpump). New pump in place.

And everything back together with a good used cover which solved our running issues. It also solved our tiptronic issue. Due to the erratic idle and the car bogging, the voltage also drops when that happens. The tiptronics are extremely sensitive to voltage issues, so if you are having a transmission issue, also look to your voltage levels first.