Warning: story. For summary, see pics.

Friday morning, wake up at 7am to go to work. Get off at 1, jump in the car and drive to LA to buy a set of wheels I found on RL. I wanted to get moving quick to avoid friday rush hour traffic... pretty futile considering my time table but I rushed anyway. I tossed my usual toolbag in the car but not my bag of goodies like hose bits, tape, jb weld, etc.

I get to LA and the traffic was bad. It's like 95 deg F, and I'm still dirty from work (I'm a mechanic) so I'm all sticky. I hit the AC and left it on! I had it running for about 3 hours in all.

Get the wheels, seller is a very kind lister with a nice car. I head out and decide to stop at a nearby restaurant I love for dinner. On my way there I get a voltage warning light. I pull over and look to see my ac/alt belt sitting there, like it hopped off the pulleys. OK I can fix that. I go for my jack, and this is when I realize I had failed to buy the nice jack I was meaning to go buy. I had to rely on the widowmaker which luckily worked. I took off the belly pan and was greeted by a clean-snapped AC tensioner rod / turnbuckle.

OH FantastiK.

I try moving the AC compressor to see what happens. A friend of mine had a failure where the compressor bolts snapped and could not be extracted. Well I grabbed the compressor, got my hands burned like that bad guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and saw MAJOR jiggle. The rear was hanging loose, and the front was attached but the bolt head was gone. Hmm. Well I'm absofrigginlutely stranded 200 miles from my apartment and 440 miles from my family. And my only friend in LA doesn't drive. Oh yeah and it's 7:30pm so Porsche dealership I see just 4 blocks down the street is already closed. And so are muffler shops that could weld my tensioner.

I thought I could use the recently posted trick of just putting a 6PK860 belt on the crank straight to the alternator with no tensioning. I called and tried to find a NAPA nearby, and Nada. I found a Kragen though. So I waded through friday night downtown LA traffic with just a battery to run the car. I ran just marker lights and even turned those off at traffic lights. 1 mile and 10 minutes later I'm at kragen and they don't have a 860, just 840 and 880 belt. At this point I asked the helpful Kragen representative if I could use their restroom to relieve myself of a big red brick. With 10 minutes until closing time, I rummaged through the store looking for an answer. I found something.

I ran with no rear AC bolt, only half of a front AC bolt, and the Powerbuilt tensioner for just shy of 200 miles. The belt was kinda loose but tight enough to not squeal!





10pm when I finished "wrenching" on my car, I had a 3 hour drive ahead of me - got some chai and hit the road.

Always be prepared. The toolbag was essential, but I should have also had a short belt in the trunk just in case. And spare bolts.

 

And the moral of the story is, always loosen the turnbuckle mounting bolts before making adjustments to the turnbuckle itself. Very common mistake!

 

I have always loosened the turnbuckle mount bolts. However I never loosen the AC mount bolts which may have contributed to their failure. The rear one backed out and I later found it on the steering rack. The front one likely snapped afterwards from bearing too much load, and then the turnbuckle finally gave. I am so lucky that front bolt had enough left to it, that it could still pivot.

I guess the moral of the story is to delete the AC before you have a reason to!

 

The wrench has a lifetime warranty, while the Porsche part does not. Maybe I should just leave that on there?

 

haha, ghetto fabulous but nice save!
I bet you'd really be regretting it if you deleted the AC next time the weather is like this.

I have had AC problems in both of my 944s. The compressor clutch on my old 83 went crazy making a obnoxious noise and had to be replaced. Currently on the 951 my belt squeaks for one week and doesn't for three. I swear these AC systems are cursed. I bet it didn't help that my PO installed a universal 134 compressor and forgot to remove the lower mount which ended up mating with my sway bar.

 

So your system is converted to 134? Or did he just get the wrong compressor?

What I'm going to do is make and buy all the necessary parts for that 944spec AC delete, then keep that stuff in my trunk for the future, in case this ever happens to me again. But since nothing actually broke on the compressor or the mounting bracket, I can put everything back together with new bolts and a turnbuckle and it should be back to normal.

I thought of just buying a spare turnbuckle for the trunk, but who knows, next time if/when this happens, there could be more severe damage like bolt holes and ears breaking, so the cheap ac delete bracket makes sense. Everyone with AC should keep one in their trunk!