Me = mechanical engineers. You can usually find them in an SAE team or the like. They are usually very cool to help out. We have an SAE guy here on the board for instance, FSAeracer I think.

 

I guess you're right about having to put it on 4 jackstand. The angle would be too steep.

I have never placed the car on jackstands so I'm nervous about screwing it up and damaging the car or worse having the car fall on me.

so I assume you just jack up one side fo the car from belwo the door then place the two jack stands on one side then move to the other side of the car and jack up the other side and then place your other two jackstands on the other side. Once you have one side jacked up, when you go to jack the other side up, what would stop the car from sliding off the other jack stands?


also I"ve seen people place bricks or blocks of wood under the tires of the car when the car is on jack stands so if the jack stands fail for some reason the tires fall on the blocks of wood.

on my old 924 I jacked up the car from these "frame rails " a couple of times until I found out that they were not the correct jack points and I put some big dents into them so I assume someone jacked my car up from thsi point.

 

not sure if there are mechanical engineering students at my school. I did join a car club however at my school, I doubt anyone there can help me though, it's an import car club and they are all mostly ricers. I just joined for the discounts for auto parts.

 

I am just saying if you can do the belts you can do this. Don't throw that money away when you are in school. Do it over break. I am putting my track car back together on weekends and over break. I guess you guys have a spring break of sorts like we do here.

 

my school ends in april so I have 4 months off after that.

It will cost me more to have a mechanic to do it but I would feel safer. I really don't like using jackstands that's why I don't like to do anything that can't be done on ramps. Actually I would prefer a lift but that's way too expensive.

I think I'm going to get a quote first from my porsche shop and then after my classes are over I'll decide what to do. I'm still thinking the smart choice is to get the shop to do it

doing the belts myself actually did not save me much money, I had to buy the special tools, some torque wrenches and I screwed up a few of my oil seals and had to reorder parts so I didn't really save much but next time I have to do the belts it will be much cheaper.

I think the belts and water pump are pretty simple but it still took me a very long time because I was learning how to do everything.

I think I would rather replace the headgasket or do the oil cooler than replace the oil pan gasket. the oil pan gasket and the clutch are probably 2 things I really don't feel like attempting.

thanks for the help.

 

I was reading your earlier thread about the cam belt problems you had. Would you mind posting an update on there for me?

Thanks

Rob

 

huh? the only problem I really ran into was breaking water pump bolts, they are pretty easy to break if they are old and corroded. If you break them in the block then you have to drill them out and most likely put helicoils in. It made me pretty nervous drilling into the alluminum and it was pretty time consuming because I helicoiled all the holes so it won't happen again.

my other problem was with adjusting the balance shaft belt and tensioning the belts properly.

no major problems really.

 

It was the tensioning I was interested in. You were unsure about the reading using the krikrit and had some black marks appearing on the roller?

I will be using a krikrit to do mine soon. Did you get it checked against a 9201 tool?

 

the kricket was too confusing for me, I had nothing to test it against so I had no idea if it worked okay or not.

I just ended up setting it by "feel" which I doubt is very accurate and I took it to a shop (towed it) and they adjusted the belts.

I think the 90 degree method should be okay and then you can take to a shop and have them tension it. If you have a lot of experience changing belts then the kricket may work for you.

the black marks on the rollers ended up being wax coming off the new belt, so it wasn't anything serious.