tspangle

It's been almost 10 years since I sold my 96 951:



It was a lot of fun, but I was still pretty heavy into autocross at the time, and the turbo lag made it less than ideal for that purpose. I also lived in constant fear of something expensive breaking, add in the fact that I've never been a fan of red cars, and I ended up parting ways with it after a year or so. Still, I pined for another 944. Almost 10 years have passed, several BMWs including my never-finished E30, a couple of Mustangs, a Miata, a GTO, and probably some others I'm forgetting. But 944s were always there, lurking in my mind.

Well, last night I brought this home:



105k-plus miles, the odometer broke at some point in the past (big shock). No records, the PO told me that the timing belt was replaced about 3 years ago, so it's due. It was cheap, but there are a number of issues. The brakes are very soft. The tires are badly dry-rotted. The rear shocks (at least) are shot, it crashes and bangs over the smallest bumps. The paint, as you can see, is pretty far gone.

The dash is pretty well cracked, even by 944 standards:


The drivers-side mirror is loose on it's mount, I'll have to dig into that and see if I can fix it or I have to replace:


BUT, it runs great and appears to have good oil pressure:

Bit concerned about that voltage reading, though....

And most importantly, it's rust-free! Even though rust isn't typically an issue with these cars, you'd be surprised what 30+ years in the rust belt can do, even with a galvanized body.

It also has a somewhat rough but mostly complete interior, complete with part of a craptastic aftermarket stereo system that someone (poorly) installed. It's going to need a windshield, too.

For tires, there seems to be exactly one in the factory size (215/60R15). They are Kuhmo all-seasons and are cheap, so I'll probably just get a set for now with an eye toward different wheels and tires down the road. I'm not a huge fan of the phone dials.

Short term, my plans are to get it safe and driveable. That means tires and shocks, and bleeding the brakes to see what's what with them, possibly replace components as needed. Longer-term, I'll work on the cosmetic issues, catch up on all the deferred maintenance, and just make it a nice-day driver with an occasional autocross and once-in-a-blue-moon track day.

Braymond

Congrats on the new car tspangle!

So, what's your plan - dedicated track/auto cross or streetable or somewhere in between?

tspangle

Mostly street. I'll autocross it a little, but that's not going to be priority #1. There will be suspension mods at some point, but I won't be building it to any class or anything. I've done enough autocrossing to know I'm not that good at it.

tspangle

I can officially say that this is the first time I've been able to wash a car outside in February:


Even after a wash, the paint is... not good:


These were brand-new towels before I used them to dry the car:


I have a pretty good arsenal of detailing equipment and experience, and I may try to restore the existing paint to the extent I can. But it'll just be for the fun of it, this paint is hosed, the car is going to need a respray. Looking at the header panel, it looks like someone has tried to attack it with a buffer and went a bit too far with it:


It's hard to see in that picture, but the paint is worn through on the edge, and there's a big spot on the bumper where you can see primer shadowing through.

tspangle

Nothing like buying a project car and then not touching it for a month! In my defense, I've been remodeling a bathroom, and that had to take top priority. It's almost done, so I decided to go tinker with the 944 a bit yesterday.

I figured I'd start by changing the oil and running some Seafoam through the intake. So I backed it up from where it's been sitting since I parked it back in February and saw this on the floor:


I knew it had a leak, but that's quite a lot of oil. And... something else. Uh-oh. Blown head gasket? But I checked the oil:


So, the oil looks clean, but what's making it to the ground is certainly a mix. Might be coolant, might be power steering fluid? It was hard to tell. Taking a look underneath:


The oil pan is a freaking mess. Not sure where that leak is coming from, there's so much oil everywhere it's hard to tell. The PO told me that the valve cover gasket was leaking, so maybe that's it, and it's dripping down to the pan?

Also, the front cover looks to be seeping some, too:


Possible source of PS fluid leak?


So, I need to get under there with some rags and brake cleaner, and just clean everything as well as I can. Then maybe I can locate the source of the leaks. I'm hoping it's not the pan gasket, as removing the pan is not a fun job.

Anyhow, I decided to Seafoam it. I have no idea if this stuff actually does anything, but it makes a bunch of smoke:



Some of which was coming from under the hood (sorry for the blurry pic):



So, yeah. Got an exhaust leak under there.

Much to do, and I haven't even looked at the suspension yet. I better get moving!

snb13

Check the rear seal of the lower balance shaft for an oil leak. They're a pain. A temp fix is to put gasket sealant on the outside of the seal.

tspangle

Been doing some work on the old girl, I need to do a better job of updating this thread.

First off, some good news (I think) regarding the oil leak. After cleaning off the pan and giving it a couple of days, this is what I see:


Looks to me like the leak is coming from the drain plug. I got a new aluminum washer, I'll deal with it when it comes time to change the oil. I still think there's a leak up higher, though, there's a good bit of oily sludge on the back part of the head, so my operating theory is that it's the valve cover gasket. I'll get to that in a minute.

Got going on the front suspension, here are the strut assemblies out:


Things are looking pretty crusty, as you can see. Removed the strut inserts and they basically fell apart:


So I decided to clean up the strut housings a bit and hit them with some rust-o-leum:


The new Koni insert in place:



I'm waiting for some VW Fox upper strut mounts, then I can re-assemble the struts and put them back in the car.

tspangle

Brake calipers were mostly fine, but again, rusty and crappy looking:



The seals have seen better days, though:


I've always just bought replacement calipers in this kind of case, but this time I decided to try my hand at rebuilding them. How hard can it be, and the kits were only $7 from Rockauto. Upon removing the pistons, things weren't pretty:


Looking a little better after some cleanup with 2000-grit sandpaper and Brakeleen:


Here's one caliper reassembled and painted with high-temp paint:


Just waiting on Amazon to send me the right pads, the first ones they sent were wrong. Then I can re-install the brakes, along with the stainless lines I got from Paragon.

tspangle

General catch-up, no pics, I'm also working on the driver's side door mirror. And since I need to replace the valve cover gasket and the timing and balance shaft belts, I'm going to do both at once since the distributor needs to come off for both. Flywheel lock and balance shaft pulley tool are on their way from Paragon, I'm hoping to start that job later this week.

tspangle

Wow, it's been a while. Fear not, for while I have been neglecting this thread, I have not been neglecting the car! In fact, it's getting close to being road-ready.

After rebuilding the brake calipers, I finished up the front suspension. Old, dead, leaking struts came out, new Konis went in:



My upper strut mounts were looking a bit tired, and the factory Porsche ones are around $100. A bit of searching revealed that late 80s VW Fox parts will also work. $4 each from Rockauto. Here is the worn-out factory mount on the left with the new Fox part on the right:


It took me a few fits and starts to get everything assembled right, but it's finally done and they are on the car.

As you probably know, it's getting tougher to find 15" tires for these cars. To that end, I had a standard search set up on Craigslist for Porsche wheels. I was able to score a set of 16" 928S4 "Gullydeckel" wheels for $200. Which is great, but my car, being an 85.5, has the early offset, so the fronts didn't fit so well:



The inner lip of the wheel is literally touching the coil spring. After doing a bit of research and asking around on here, I ended up getting some 1" spacers and 72mm studs:


And since I had to remove the hub faces to install the new studs, I took the opportunity to repack the front wheel bearings, as well.

The wheels were a little beat-up looking (probably why they were so cheap), so I painted them with some Duplicolor wheel paint:


For tires, I ended up going with Firestone Firehawk Indy 500s. I'm doing 205 front and 225 rear. The tires are pretty cheap and did well in testing on Tire Rack. I know they aren't the hot ticket for autocross, but they should be better than the all-season stuff that I could find in the stock size, and they were under $100 each. Need to get them mounted this week.

tspangle

The interior in this car was kind of a mess. It's a cheap 30+ year old car, and has probably been through a bunch of owners in it's time before it got to me. This is what was waiting for me after I removed the drivers seat:



Gross. So I vacuumed, shampooed, vacuumed again, shampooed again, and.... forgot to take an "after" picture. But trust me, it looks (and smells) a whole lot better now.

The seats are OK, not great, but the leather was very dried out and stretched. After cleaning them up with some Murphy's Oil Soap and water, I rubbed in several coats of Leather Honey to try and restore some suppleness. They are looking and feeling quite a bit better now:


The other issue in the interior was the stereo installation that happened some time in the 90s I'm guessing, based on the components that were in the car.

Generic, no-brand amplifier in the spare tire well:



Actually, the amp looks to have been professionally installed, the wiring is pretty tidy. At least, it is in this part of the car. This is the mess that was behind the no-brand head unit:


And of course, no crappy 90s stereo setup is complete without a graphic equalizer! This thing was crammed so far under the passengers side of the dash I didn't even know it was there until I crawled under to chase the wiring:


Then there was all the wiring. Pre-amp lines going down the drivers side rocker panel, speaker wires going down both sides, wiring held together with household wire nuts, wiretaps going into random wires under the dash to power all this stuff, what looked like a CD changer cable, etc. etc. Here is but a small sample of all the crap I pulled out of the car:


And there was way more. I'm certain I've removed at least 20 lb of junk and greatly cleaned up under the dash. I'm replacing it all with a simple Blaupunkt digital-only receiver and some cheap-but-decent Pioneer speakers. I certainly don't need anything fancy.

tspangle

Oh, and also, my alternator wasn't working. So I pulled it and took it to an auto parts store to get it tested, and they verified it's dead-ness. Just for grins, I decided to try replacing the voltage regulator to see if that would fix it, and it did:



So, I need to finish putting the interior back together, install the rear struts and brake pads, bleed the brakes, get the tires mounted and balanced, then I can drive it up to the tire shop for an alignment, and maybe I can actually start driving this thing! For now I've decided to take my chances with the timing belt. It's supposedly 3 years old and the car hasn't been driven much, and I won't be driving it all that much this summer. I'm thinking that over the winter I'll drop the motor, fix all the oil leaks, do the timing belt, clean it up, etc.

Jason @ Paragon Products

Some of this stuff looks VERY familiar

tspangle

Yep! The Konis and the wheel studs for sure.

tspangle

A few more things on the interior to clean up. My center console lid obviously broke at some time in the past, and someone put double-sided tape on it to hold it in place. Clearly that wouldn't do, so I ordered a new tray on eBay. I have to say, it's a pleasant surprise how easy it is to find relatively cheap repro parts for this car online:


Stereo is done, too. It works great, though sometimes after I shut the car off, the display on the head unit flashes. Not sure what's up with that, but here it is installed:


Got my tires mounted on my repainted Gullydeckels, and, as a bonus, the tire shop managed to not scratch the wheels:


Rear shocks are DEAD easy on this car. Here's the RR Koni in place:


The LR wheel did NOT want to come off. Usually in this kind of situation I remove the lugs and then give the sidewall a few good kicks and it breaks it loose, but where the car is parked, there's not enough room for me to get in there and do my best Jean-Claude Van Dam. So I soaked it overnight in PB Blaster, then the next morning I used a bit of mechanical advantage:


That's a cast iron pole and an axle strap. Pulled it right off.

Rear brake calipers look OK, and the pads have plenty of material left, but as soon as I removed them, one of them fell apart. Oh, well, best to have the same pads front and rear anyhow. And I'm going to rebuild the calipers like I did the fronts. Might as well. But I don't think I'll paint them. With these wheels, there's not much point:


I'm getting close. Could have an operational, road-going car by this weekend.