My girlfriend is tired of riding in the Volvo, and wants me to get the Porsche running again, so I guess it's time to fix it.

It has been parked since early June because coming back from the track it started leaking coolant, motor oil and transaxle fluid. It has always had a power steering fluid leak. Rock was right, buying these cars is like setting money on fire. Everything was kind of mixed together, so it was hard to trace the leaks.


I initially thought the motor oil was leaking from the front seal. The area was a bit wet, but after removing everything around the belt area, there was no oil, only coolant. When I did my water pump a couple months ago, one of the 13 or so bolts stripped the threads. At that time, I needed to get the car together as it was my daily driver. I elected to run the car with the stripped threads, thinking that the other bolts would keep the water pump sealed. WRONG. Once again, another reason to take your time and do it right the first time. So now the plan of action is to pull the pump off, heli-coil the hole and stick in a new gasket. Water pump has ~3k miles on it.



I knew the tranny has leaking out the input shaft seal. I have an 86 951 transaxle w/ oil cooler in the car, and I don't really like the gearing. Plan of action right now is to put the stock tranny back in, and install a new seal in the 86 951 tranny.



The PS lines were getting old, and like most 944s, was leaking pretty bad. I purchased the rubber line from resevoir to pump, but the other line was leaking as well. The other line goes from the resevoir, and is crimped in the oil cooler (Of cource, nothing can be simple). Has anyone had just the rubber section replaced and re-crimped? Or do I have to buy a whole new oil cooler?

Now for the motor oil. The right side of the car was drenched in oil, but none of the front seals were leaking (10k mi ago). The lower balance shaft housing was seeping very slowly, but nothing bad enough to validate a re-seal. Found the leak in a very unusual area. I'm lucky I caught it now, 1 or 2 more oil changes and this line would have probably been completely toast.



Lastly, I've been trying to decide what wheels I want to run on the car. Here are a set of 928 GT D90s (7.5/9.0 vs the stock 7.0/8.0) that I'm test fitting on the car. I think they look pretty good, I might pick them up. The 968 wheels have way too much offset in my opinion.

 

i need to do some of that too, bottom seals are leaking on the balanceshaft as well as ??? keeps killing my swaybar bushings.

 

I have been using a steam cleaner on my engine as I put the head back on. I have done both balance shaft seals, the oil cooler and of course the head. So far three helicoils installed. I am actually thinking of getting a set of time serts. The aluminum alloy just doesn't mix with mechanics who overtorqued the fasteners in the past. I was able to pick away the threads with an awl on the cam chain tensioner bolts.

Looks like you have all the leaks identified. Good find on the hose to the oil cooler. I replaced 2 PS hoses but did not do the one to the cooler. At least your gf is encouraging you to work on it, mine is jealous of the time I spend on my car, oh well, good luck.

 

Where did you purchase the heli-coils?

 

I borrowed the repair kits from work. They get them from Olander in Sunnyvale or Western Tool in Santa Clara.

 

Those 2 oil lines coming from the cooler are conviently in one assembly, so if one hose goes bad, you have to buy both. So in 2 weeks when it arrives from Germany, my $300 should go to good use. Gotta love Porsche engineering/pricing.

 

Minor setback on my daily driver, the Volvo decided to crack the end tank. $140 and 25 minutes later, I have a new radiator in the beast. So, yet another financial setback on the S2. In the past 600 miles, the car has gotten over $2k in parts.


Carb cleaner was on sale, so everything is getting pretty clean now:


And lastly, the stipped bolt hole:


Going down to Olander's tomorrow.

 

The repair kits are $40-60. Sorry I can't help you out.

 

Yeah, I went to Olander's today and bought the regular heli-coil kit for $50.

I decided not to go the keen-sert/time-sert route because that requires enlarging the bolt hole to an M10, and i didn't know if there are water jackets back there, etc. The heli-coil outside diameter is M8.

 

All this work to please our significant other..... Dmitry looks like you have a lot of work to do. I'd like to help you but I've been tied up myself trying to please my significant other. In the last month I've spent over 10k remodeling my kitchen and other parts of the house. My favorite store have been Home Depot, Southern Lumber and Orchards. I think I touched my car only 3 times in the last month...

 

Those are cool rims. I personally am obsessed with Fuchs, but those are my next favorite on a 944. I know what it's like to be working on one car and have the other one go out. Actually, during finals last semester, 5 out of 7 cars in my family were having problems, and everyone had to wait until finals were over for me to start fixing stuff. 3 of them wouldn't even run! Madness...

 

I wish my ex wouldve made me get to work on the porsche, rather then keeping me from working on it.