Well Saturday my friend and I spent 12 hours working on my car. A full day.... We managed to down to the water pump, pull the old one off since it was bad, put the new one on, and then get all of the balance shaft sprockets, idlers, and tensioners back on. All that's left is to tighten them, tension the belts, put the belt cover back on, and put the thermostat in the water pump because I forgot to while the pump was off:P I cranked the car over before we tore it down as my friend had his volt meter on the leads to the fuel pump and he said there was voltage going to the pump, but it was a low reading and that might have been because the battery was going dead. At any rate he said he never heard the pump come on. So I am going to be buying a used one from Parts Heaven for $75... Man, we started replacing seals on the front of the engine and that damn crank seal was tough to get back in!! It was a tight fit, but the seal went in perfectly, no damage. That was one problem I was having with the car. Oil was dripping out the bottom of the cover and it was that main seal that was bad. The seals we pulled off the balance shafts and the crankshaft were nasty. They had sludge on them so I am not sure yet what to do about that. The seals were replaced with new ones, but not sure about all that sludge and getting it out. My friend said I was probably running cheap oil. I said Castrol GTX and he laughed at me, so... When we pulled the cap off the rotor, he pointed out that someone painted the cap on the inside and then we saw carbon marks and inside one of the patches of carbon was a hairline crack that I think someone had tried to paint. The balance shafts were like 2 teeth off balance and the overall timing was about a tooth an a half off. Pretty bad... We have everything lined up to the factory marks except the crankshaft. We can't find the TDC mark in that little pilot hole!! There was no rubber cover there for the hole and I am thinking it faded off?? I don't know but we have to find that damn TDC mark... Is there anything on the flywheel that I can see from pulling the starter?? Anyways, I will finish this update tonight because I gotta get going for work. Any input would be appreciated. We're close, but we have a couple of problems we need sorted out. Do these cars have crankshaft position sensors by the way? My friend and I noticed the distributor setup was a little weird. Not much to it...

Tim

 

For the record, my car's had Castrol GTX in it since day one, and it hasn't used a drop of oil. Ever. 134k miles and going strong...

 

I too couldn't find the mark on the flywheel. I spent something like two hours looking but found nothing, so I just kept the cam, crank, and balance shafts in sequence when I did my belts. I hope that everything was timed correctly before I did the belts. I also hope that someone knows of an accurate way to check the timing of the crank for those of us who can't find the OT mark.

 

Well, my friend told me that what he would like to do is make a tool to measure TDC by taking a spark plug, knocking the ceramic out of it and using just the threaded part to make in adapter for a dial indicator and that was you could know when the piston was at the top of it's travel. Sounded good to me. And why the hell did Porsche not make a factory mark on the block, and one on the crank pulley?? Why the hell not? I mean the cam is setup like that, along with the balancers... *Sigh*....