What Gear am I In?!?

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While doing a test run in our beloved 928 we notice a strange anomaly while shift gears.  If you are wondering what shifting gears is, well, it is something real men and the most desirable women in the world do.  So now that this is cleared up...  Like I said a strange anomaly.  The shifter decided it no longer wanted to adhere to the ridged constructs of society and decided to stick it to the man.  This man!  So the shifter was basically free go anywhere and yet refused to be a productive member of society, I mean, the transmission.  After a little investigation it became apparent that the issue was with the angular joint on top of the torque tube forward of the shifter assembly.  Image 1 shows the cup portion of the offending joint.  Once we got the car on the ramps and took a look it was very clear what the problem was.  The angular joint is made up of three component. A ball, an metallic cup and a bushing that inserts into the cup.  After thirty years the bushing has broken down and instead of looking like Image 2 it looks like Image 3.  

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You can see in Image 3 that the bushing has basically broken into two pieces and is half missing.  The half that is missing is the half that locked the cup on the ball.   So there is two paths to to do a OEM repair here.  The first is to purchase a new angular joint assembly (Part# 928-424-005-01) for about $100 or if the cup is still in good shape just replace the bushing (Part#  928-116-145-03) for about $20.  The easier method is to simply spend the extra money and replace the assembly. (See Image 4)  

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The problem is that it is damn near impossible to push that bushing into the cup without removing the cup from the tube guide (See part 3 in Image 1) and since you need to remove it you may as well immediately replace it with the new assembly.  To give you an idea of just how futile it is  have a good look at Image 5.  There you can clearly see how little space you have to work with while the cup is still attached.  You actually cannot even get a straight shot at pushing the bushing in. Every time you attempt to push it into the cup it will skew on you forcing you to realign and start again.  So after taking the cup off you still need to then manipulate the bushing into the cup while your blood pressure sky rockets and you begin uttering a line of expletives that will get your kid through college on the swear jar proceeds alone.  This in itself makes the complete replacement more cost effective.  So save yourself the headache and financial duress and replace the entire assembly.  

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There is an alternative that makes future replacements unnecessary.  A replace once and be done with it version.  It is an alternative part offered by 928 Motorsports called a Precision Shifter Ball Cup which can be seen in Image 6.  This option will run you approximately $100 as well with shipping factored in but this option is designed for the endurance and reliability required by motor sports so for the typical driver this will be the last time you need to look at this issue.  This is definitely more complicated than the complete OEM assembly replacement given the tight space you will be working in but long term it is a solid option.  In fact this was the option we chose to move forward with.  Given the nature of the things we will be doing with the car we wanted to make sure reliability was maximized. Once we completed the install and before putting back in place all the heat shields, support members and reconnecting the oxygen sensor we checked to make sure that the shifter was doing it's job properly and voila! The shifter was now a productive member of society...I mean the transmission once again.

Restart After Clean up and New Rubber

The engine bay was finally all back together.  The parts for the work were not all that expensive however the amount of labour involved was quite extensive.  If we had taken this to even the most inexpensive mechanic it would have cost more than what was paid for the car just for this clean up.

Here is a total list of what was done during this work:

1. All fuel line rubber was replaced
2. Almost all of the vacuum hoses were replace
3. The spark plugs were replaced
4. New fuel filter
5. Thermo valve replaced
6. New gaskets for each intake manifold
7. New rubber couplers between plenum and intake manifolds
8. New hose clamps for rubber couplers
9. Rubber coupler and hose clamps between throttle body and plenum replaced
10. Small coolant return hose replaced
11. Oil separator gasket replaced
12. Oil change and new oil filter
13. Battery changed out
14. Battery disconnect installed
15. Battery charger/maintainer hard wired to car with quick disconnect
16. Sunroof was cleaned, serviced and lubricated
17. New air tubes were installed
18. Plenum and intake manifolds were extensively cleaned
19. Air guide housing mounts were replaced
20. injector outer and inner bushings replaced
21. Chin protector plates installed
22. Strut cross brace had paint removed and was cleaned up

After all of that work the engine bay looks absolutely beautiful now.  The contrast was quite striking as can be seen in the side-by-side comparison below.  There are still a few things such as the rad hoses and all the belts that still need to be replaced but that will be done with the timing belt in an up coming working session.   Now that all this work had been done and everything was now re-assembled it was time to try to restart the car.

                                    BEFORE                                                                 AFTER

First thing we needed to do was to check that there were no fuel leaks what-so-ever anywhere on the car.  This requires the three senses of sight, touch and smell. You look and see if any leaks can be seen, you touch each joint to see if you can feel any leaks and you also smell.  You smell the area in general and also your fingers after the touch test.  Any of these fail and you need to fix the issue before even thinking of moving on.  Before you both with that, of course, you need to pressurize the fuel system.  Basically the whole system has no fuel in since it was completely drained and taken apart.  The best way to do this is to jumper the fuel pump relay with a wire so the pump runs without the key in the on position. (See picture to the right) This will fill and pressurize the fuel lines and enable you to check to see if you have any fuel leaks.  We cleared the drive way in front of the garage, rolled the car out a safe distance and had two voluntary fire fighters standing by with the appropriate fire extinguishers ready to go as we validated.  We actually had a connection that failed the test and need to be adjusted.  It was simple matter of not being properly tightened but had we not done these extensive checks it would have cause a serious issue at some point.

Now that all the joints and hoses passed all checks we were in the position of trying to re-start the car. We removed the jumper and replaced the fuel pump relay.  After a few final checks, like did we have any gas in the tank, we gave it a go hoping it would come back to life.  The video below shows the first attempt at restart.

As you can see the first attempt at restart was completely successful. She started up on the first try and with little effort.  We were even able to drive it over to a local car wash to give her outside a much needed cleaning.

The next thing on our list is to repair the angular joint at the front end of the shifting mechanism.  Stay tuned!

Clean Up Your Engine Bay Young Man!

As you may have already seen this is what the engine bay of our 1983 Porsche 928 looked like upon purchase.  Complete but in obvious need of some serious clean up and general TLC.  The dirt and carbon deposits are pretty obvious.  This all needs to be cleaned up in a big way.  Being a bit of a barn find it is important to give the entire engine bay a good once over, to ensure that no foreign debris is lodged anywhere that could cause damage to the engine or potentially cause a fire.

We pulled the air filter out of the air box and found that a furry creature of some kind, most likely of the chipmunk variety, had been making a home in the air box.  It was also clear that Chippy had a thing for acorns.  I guess in the mind of a chipmunk the trip through the air tubes up each side of the engine to the air box made a perfect place to hide/store nuts.  Basically a den with two exits. Fortunately there was no real damage done and also no bodies to remove.  After a good vacuum of the air box it was now 100% nut free and safe to be within 100m of an elementary school. The first move in the clean up job was to remove the air tubes running on either side of the engine bay and the air box they connect to which is at the very back.   Once off you can get a good look at the inside of the mass air flow sensor unit (picture below on the left) and the back side of the air guide housing itself (picture below on the right).   You can see there is a lot of dirt and oil inside. 

The oil was coming from the oil separator.  This is the black can with the yellow knob you can see in the engine bay picture above. Interesting thing is, the black can is actually silver!  See dirty picture to left and clean to the right.  The black is years of oil leaking down the side of the can.  This is a symptom of a missing gasket.  These two pictures give you a decent contrast of the before and after.  Without that gasket oil leaks down the cup and ends up all over the rubber coupler that holds the throttle body to the air plenum leading to oil in your air.  Not really ideal.  To really get to everything the "spider" needs to come off the top of the engine.  This is pretty straight forward as long as the <CENSORED> bolts are not seized.  In my case only one single bolt was seized and it took three times as much time to free as all the others combined!  Heat, penetrating oil, TNT nothing worked. OK maybe not TNT. In the end the bolt was not seized to the engine head, thank God, it was seized to the leg of the intake manifold and after much inch-by-inch work it came free still stuck in the leg.  The picture below shows the top of the engine without the spider except the offending leg.  See it sticking out there.  Just laughing at me.  Telling its friends what a loser I am. Yes I heard you!  Who's laughing how eh?  But I am not bitter.

Once you get everything off you can easily do a good clean up of the throttle body. It is always a good idea to replace the rubber Plenum-to-throttle-body coupler as well as its two hose clamps. While you have the air guide housing and throttle body exposed check the little bonded rubber buffer mounts.  They will most likely have separated  giving the air guide housing the ability to move about. Not really what you want.  The picture to the right shows a new mount at the top and half of a separated one on the bottom.  Once these separate they can be an absolute <CENSORED> to get out.   The two pictures below show one of the air intake legs and the plenum on the bench. The tape measure gives you some perspective on the size of the two pieces.  These pieces need to be scrubbed down to remove all the dirty and carbon deposits.

This was a very messy, manual and tedious process.  A Varsol tank would be a plus here but if, like us, you do not have one in your garage, you can get by with a smaller rubber maid bin, a collection of wire brushes (not too course) and medium steel wool.  Keep the brush and the steel wool wet with the solvent of choice to ensure you are not too rough on the surface of the parts.  You will find this takes time and patience but the end result is worth it.  

I considered powder coating the parts after seeing some of the pictures in the forums.  It looks very nice and super clean.  You can even choose the colour you wish to use to match any colour scheme you have going on under the hood. Once we got them cleaned up it was decided to stick to original as much as possible To do the  actually cleaning chemicals were required. I used copious amounts of the liquids depicted in the picture to the left.  Really you should feel free to substitute your favourite or preferred. Rest assured you will require far more of the one in the bottle than the others combined.  Far more!

After all the cleaning is done the reassembly begins.  This was far easier than the tear down.  New gaskets will be required for the air intake legs. The old gaskets must be completely cleaned away from the top of the engine and the bottom of the air intake leg.  After the spider was completely back in place I re-installed the injectors on the fuel rail (see previous post).  Before I did this I replaced all of the rubber inner and outer bushings on each. (See picture to right) This helps ensure a clean seal and tight fit.  We do not want any air leaks.  After that the reconstructed rubber fuel lines were also put back into place and new air tubes were installed.  The final result is shown in the picture below.  Quite a contrast to the original state of the engine bay as seen in the picture at the beginning of this post.

All that is left now is to reconnect the fuel lines at the back of car and to see if it will start again after all this work.  Cross you fingers!

As always we encourage people to donate to our Fight Cancer Campaign. After that if you have any spare change and you enjoyed this post we encourage you to donate to help us keep the content coming.  Links for both donation can be found on the menu on the right.  We greatly appreciate all your support.

Only You Can Prevent Engine Fires!

The 1983 Porsche 928s is a beautiful and cool car no question but after 32 years she will be showing her age and that is OK.  A few things that extend beyond just routine maintenance will need to be done. After combing through 928 community forms and various other group support systems it became obvious that one action was required first and foremost.  The rubber in the engine bay would need to be replaced. I spent the better part of  two days of looking for a condom in the engine bay to no avail before I re-read the posts and I learned the errors of my ways!  Fuel hoses, rubber fuel hoses that is what they were referring to. I always thought of the car as a female anyway finding a condom in the engine bay would have just been, well, wrong.  

It is just a fact of science that all compounds breakdown and ultimately fail over time. Compounds such as rubber.  When that rubber is a component in the fuel lines it becomes a larger concern. 30 year of passing fuel under pressure through the rubber components will take a toll.  Especially in North America where our petrol is contaminated with ethanol. This ultimately makes a bad situation worse. If this is not concern enough the majority of these rubber hoses live in the engine bay.  If any of these hoses rupture it mean an engine fire.  In technical terms this is what mechanics refer to as "bad!". To avoid this all of that rubber needs to be replaced with proper rated hose and the appropriate type of clamps.  The 1983 Porsche 928 fuel system runs a pressure of approximately 2.5 bar or 55 psi. It is critical to use an appropriate hose with a specification can support this application.  The same goes for the clamps.  It would be a damn shame if you spend all this time replacing the rubber only to cause exactly what you are trying to avoid by using the wrong hose or clamps.  So how do you sort this?!?

When you find yourself obsessing over a Porsche 928, the first thing you need to realise is that no matter what you are seeing or needing, someone else has already been there and done that. So when you require information you will find that there are some great 928 resources on the web, teaming with fellow believers just dying to initiate people into the our "not-so-secret-society" and teach them the secret hand shake. As tongue-in-cheek as that was meant to sound, it is not actually far from the truth and as a recent convert to the Church of 928 I can whole heartedly testify that you are not alone!  Ask and ye shall receive!  To do that there are two forums that are a must to be a member of. Rennlist and Pelican Parts.  These forums both have specific areas for 928 enthusiasts where knowledge is past, documented and problems solved.

There are also two friends you need Carl Fausett from 928 Motorsports and Roger Tyson from 928sRus.  These two men are the Grand Poobahs of the 928 community and a touchstone for parts, technical information and advice.  Carl's site focuses on performance and racing aspects of the 928 platform as well as speciality items. If you plan to take your Porsche 928 on a track he is the man to talk to.  He sells a variety of parts that make your 928 even better and more fun on a track. Even if you are not taking your 928 on a track I highly recommend the chin plates to protect you from damage due to bottoming out.  Roger is a source for basically everything you need to keep your 928 running and healthy.  If you tell Roger what you are doing and what you think you need, he will hook you up and make sure you are not missing anything. The customer service I have experienced with both gentlemen has be absolutely stellar and I could not have gotten as far as I have without their help.

In the specific case of the rubber replacement I ended up getting the High Pressure Fuel Line and the Fuel Line Clamp Kit from 928 Motorsports.  This way I knew I had the right line and the right clamps for the application.  Also knowing Carl has used this combination in several cases in the past made me comfortable that this was a tried and true method.  Carl even has a PDF document outlining how to work with the clamps and line. The images below indicate with red arrows the hoses that need to be replaced for the 1983 928s.

The image to the left shows a selection of the key hoses that need to be address as a bare minimum. The lower two hoses connect the fuel distribution system in the engine bay to hard fuel lines that come form the rear of the vehicle.  In the middle you see the injectors (total of 8) still connected by the little 2 inch rubber hose to the fuel rail. The hose at the top is from the rear of the car, used to interconnect the hard fuel lines to the fuel filter.  This was the only hose that we actually could find an OEM replacement for.  We kept the original for the sake of the fittings.

The image to the right gives a clearer look at the hoses from the injector to the fuel rail.  The OEM clamps on these things were quite a pain to cut off. It was all about the sharp tin snips and a whole lot of patience and liberal application of single malt.

The image to the right is what things look like once your have changed all the rubber.  I did a little clean up on the fuel rails, that the injectors connect to as well, before replacing them in the engine bay.  The re-installation is pretty straight forward for the injector rails but the interconnection hoses between the fuel distribution system in the engine bay and the hard fuel lines to the rear of the vehicle were annoying to get to and frustrating to disconnect and reconnect on the hard fuel line side.  A combination of tight access and the tight lock of the nuts managed to coax more than a few curse words and an equal number of beer breaks before we were able to get them release and then back into place.  Thank god I have a strong liver and sound proof  (mostly) Garage. Some clean up was done prior to replacing the injectors but I will save that for another post.

With these hoses now replaced the fear of engine fires has been mitigated as much as possible. With any vehicle it is always a risk but now the probability has been drop substantially and the possibility of a hose rupturing is as close to zero as possible.  We can now drive the 928 with no fear, although we still keep a fire extinguisher in the car at all times.

As always we encourage people to donate to our Fight Cancer Campaign. After that if you have any spare change and you enjoyed this post we encourage you to donate to help us keep the content coming.  Links for both donation can be found on the menu on the right.  We greatly appreciate all your support.