DHI

Steve,

Thank you for photo documenting this. Good job!

savyboy

PS- for folks looking to do this consider using Loctite 2620. It is what I used when we did our fitting jobs last year. Look at the MSDS sheet (attached)- gets stronger in the presence of ethylene glycol and has an extreme temperature range. 271 Red is only good to 300f, 2620 goes to +650f It is bad-*** stuff.

You definitely will not find this in your local Pepboys or AutoZone, trust me Fastenal has it: http://www.fastenal.com/web/products...ex?sku=0608689

Steve W

Thanks for the pics, I forgot where they came from!

Pinning the fittings just may well also prevent what you call a "soft fail". With the mechanical bond of the steel screw, as long as the existing bond is still intact, you would have increased the overall strength by at least the shear strength of the screw, which for a steel 8-32 screw is about 350 lbs, exceeding the 15 or 20 lbs load that the hose exerts on the fitting. That's not including the shear strength that is achieved on the surfaces from screwing the two pieces together. If a portion of the existing glue bond were to fail, the bond of the screw should prevent further propagation of the failure by preventing movement, which much like a cracking weld, continual movement and load stress on the remaining portion overstress the remaining material.

If though on the worst case situation of full decoupling of the bond material, I would expect any minerals in the coolant that entrap themselves in the delaminated bond to dry off and create a permanent seal preventing any further leaks including coolant and steam.

savyboy

It is a joy for me to see some rational, deep thought going into a fix like this. One of the best technical posts I have seen in a very long time. Hat off and a bow to you Steve

AudiOn19s

I thought this exact thing, matter of fact I swore I remembered an instance of somone pinning their fittings and then having a leak afterwords but a leak only and not catostrophic failure. However I looked around for hours last night and could not find any actual evidence of that, only theory that the "soft fail" could still happen.

In the sharkwerks thread on the '6 GT3 board I brought that up and Sharkwerks chimed in and stated that they've done 30-50 of these with the pinned solution now and have not seen a single one leak. As long as the fitting stayts put in the housing the adhesive and the tight space is enough to keep anything from leaking.

https://rennlist.com/forums/996-gt2-...ark-werks.html

I'm very strongly considering this route now, I'm just concerned that the two extra fittings on the '6 GT3 behind the power steering pump might be more difficult to get to.

rosenbergendo

Any .2 GT3's had this issue?

Nizer

So Andreas what do you think of this fix?

You can respond with a simple smiley face or frowny face if you don't want a written trail...

malmasri

Are we being spied on by the Dr

Nizer

Always.

NJ-GT

Steve,

Thanks for the great and detailed write-up, and the pictures as well.

The worse thing is not to do anything. These fittings fail. I had 2 failures with my 996 GT3, and both of them happened at a racetrack.

I wonder if Porsche has done anything in this regard with the GT3 Cup/Cup R/RSR? This type of failure can ruin a race in ALMS/Grand-Am/SuperCup.

I hope all is well, I miss running at El Toro.

Porsche917K

Exactly what I was wondering! I don't recall seeing a lot of this type of failure at pro races. What are cup car guys doing?

mjb

This is a good question. I know this happens with street GTx cars (witnessed it a couple of times) but does anyone know of a case where a coolant pipe failure has occurred in Cup car, for example? With as many Cup cars as there are racing out there you'd think this would be a known and discussed failure point.

Rob S

I can't speak for Cup Cars, but the GT3R/RS/RSR series cars, or some of them at least, used threaded fittings like this:

The Greek

I find it frustrating that PCA puts out newletters and mandates in the coolant line issue, but Porsche continues to play stupid and act like it doesn't exist.

From a warranty and DE perspective, us drivers really have no options. If we use wetter, or even better weld lines, Porsche voids warranty. If we do nothing, then we risk our safety, and also the safety of others on the track. Its garbage....

FLA997

+999...and if they are using preventative engineering methods in the RSR, etc those measures had to come from some sort of data or conclusions...