pawsh

Just bought an 84 944 (first one) with a few problems. The biggest one is the left rear wheel is noticeably angled outwards at the bottom approx 15mm, oddly, the ride height of the car is 10mm higher on that side. I've changed those rear wheel brngs with no difference. All other bushes look ok. Is it possible to adjust camber? does anybody have any measurements? is the control arm bent? new tyre so can't say what tyre wear is like. Any advice? Car drives ok apart from big clunking in transmission, big oil leaks, 70k on the belts, a sunroof that lifts up when you slam the door, oil press. gauge that goes full scale when you turn on the ignition and stays there until you turn it off................Thanks, John.... Still love it.

M758

Take the car to a Porsche shop and have it aligned. ride height and camber as well as toe are all adjustable in the rear. Sounds like they need to checked and corrected.

Macfreak007

Rear Camber should be about -1.0, but please take it to some place that has the proper alignment rack to set the camber. It is also extremly hard to tell camber from looking at a car's wheels. Welcome to Rennlist!

Stan944

I don't know... it's actually very easy to measure it: just get a vertical level, measure the difference of distance between the bottom and the top side of the rim, and calculate the angle using simply trigonometry. It's a 5 minutes task...
Just use common sense precaution, e.g. the car needs to be on leveled ground.

Macfreak007

Sorry, what i mean to say is, without doing anything, just glancing at the front or rear of the car. The eye is not always right. While aligning race cars where I used to work you could look at one and swear it had too much camber, but actually, it was hardly any! The eyes can play tricks on you, being my point.

Granite 944

Hmmm........"70K on the belts"...........Hmmmmm. If this is true, you won't have to worry about the alignment, or any of the other stuff for much longer. No, your biggest problem, from what you just said are those belts.

Welcome to Rennlist!
For your sake, and that of your pocket book.......you better quit driving/running this car, and start doing a whole lot of research into what your about to get into. I think it would help a lot to give us a good background of known maintenance/things done with this car, your ability/desire to work on it (you've done rear bearings, so you must be mech. inclined at least), a fairly complete list of "issues" with the car. Is it your only car? How much money are ya thinking your willing to put into this car. Not meaning to sound pushy or anything, just really concerned about those belts, and knowing how expensive these cars can get real quick like.

Again.......Welcome! This is a great place to learn a lot about these cars!

Edit: Just noticed.......70K miles must be in Kilometers....more like 43.4K miles to me..........Whooo, I kinda paniced there. Still up there to be of concern however.

Stan944

70k miles or km, this is mostly useless for cars in teenage or older age. I don't know about newer cars, but on mine the odometer goes to 100 000 miles. It would be quite easy to claim 70 k on the actual 170k mileage, wouldn't it?

Porsche-O-Phile

Either way it wouldn't make much difference. 70,000 kilometers / 1.6 km / mile = 43,750 miles. Either way, park that thing and replace those belts PRONTO!

The "sunroof lifting" thing sounds like the rear gear is not engaging. When you slam the door (which you shouldn't do - just close it nicely like it was designed to be) you briefly "pressurize" the car. Since the back sunroof gear isn't engaged, the air just "poofs" out. Try this - put the key in and turn it to the "on" (but not "start" - until you DO THOSE BELTS) position. Depress the sunroof button and listen for a whirring noise from the sunroof area. Take the key out and close the door, see if it still does it. My suspicion is someone (P.O.) had the roof off and forgot to re-engage the rear gear and only attached the two front sunroof clips. The procedure I described above is also explained in the owner's manual, FYI.

REPLACE THOSE BELTS!!!

And welcome to the board.

Dave in Chicago

A good alignment by someone that A) knows 944's really well, and B) has a Hunter machine = Best handling investment you will EVER make in a 944. It's worth every penny. A shop that set's up 944's for the track is usually optimal. Specify desired result (street, street/track blend, track only).

M758

with respect to a good alignment. I will be attepting the backyard "string" method on my 944-spec car. It should work quite well if I am carefull. I will post the experinece with pictures in the future.

Techno Duck

As Jeff said, make sure you fix that problem with the sunroof first. The locking arms are in the retracted position. If you go agianst the advice of the people on this board and drive the car anyway, just makesure the sunroof is secured correctly by the arms. When traveling at highway speeds, the sunroof will lift up...and can become a potential 2 foot by 3 foot frisbee traveling at 60mph as it flies off the car.

What was mentioned about the belts being changed is extremley important, but the sunroof flying off is a serious hazard...so i figure thats the most important thing on your list too fix.