Mrmerlin

Herman and Barbara from Dallas stopped by on their whirlwind tour of America,
It was very nice to meet them and share some quality time chatting,

We then went to dinner at the Bent Fork , delicious food and company.

Barbara is a wonderful companion for Herman, its so nice to see how two people get along supporting each other.
Happy trails have a safe trip home, Stan

Jerry Feather

I hope my previous post is not too discouragbing for anyone. I sort of operate my developments on a "three strikes and you are out" kind of approach. With the wheel arch components, I had first discovered that the wheel arch was too tight in the foreward upper corner on the ones for the S4. I fixed that with cutting some material away in that area on both and rfefinished them. Then I discovered that the angle of the part of the form for above the arch was not steep enough; so I fixed that with some material added and refinished them both.

In the process I was developing the GTS forms to kind of coincide. Then with Herman's GTS here and with his help I discovered that the arch pattern is actually about a half inch too wide and about a half inch too far to the rear. In fact I now realize that that is the reason the S4 pattern was too tright in the upper front area of the arch. Since that applies to all four forms at this point, that makes up strike three, so they are out.

Last nite I laminated the material for one of the new forms and will do the same with the second tonight. It takes a little work to set that lamination up for each one and a lot of clamps, so it is difficult to try to do them all at once. The material I am using is left over from an abandoned project, so it also takes some work to fill in the voids left in the material by forming for the original project.

When I set one up tonight I will then also start the shaping of the first one done last night. I think by this weekend I will be back to blowing at least the GTS outer halves and maybe both those and the S4. In the meantime I have spend a lot of thought deciding how best to make the form changes since the new design also incorporates some other improvements which are not necessarily correcting mistakes.

Anyway, don't be discouraged. I am about where I might have expected to be and actually way ahead because of the efforts Herman and Barbara made to bring me his GTS to work with. I can only imagine where I might have ended up without the GTS at this point. I am sure I would have then been making a really big step backward and might even have had a whole lot of plastic to scrap.

Pressing on.

Jerry Feather

rayqblue94

Hi Jerry,
I'm sure there are alot of anxious owners looking over your shoulder, looking in awe at what you have achieved and in anticipation of solving another flaw in Porsche design. When you hit the odd dead end, don't underestimate how much support you have from your 928 fraternity and thanks for all of your great work.
Ray

ReDesign by FEATHER

Hi Ray. Thanks for the encouragement. One of the things I learned a long time ago was that if you are going to do something correctly it is likely going to take doing it over at least once and usually three or four times.

Yesterday I did over the "lump" I had made for the inner form to form a similar bulge in that part of the right inner liner to clear the fuel and vent lines that are otherwise in the way. Herman K and I had found that the first attempt at that bulge was not quite the correct shape.

Then I have nearly completed the wheel arch part of the outer form so it will fit the arch more closely. I am finishing it is epoxy and have the second coat now cured and ready to be hand rasped to the smooth shape we need to have. Likewise, I will be doing the same thing to the different wheel arch forms for the S4 and others in due course. I have the material laminated for those and will cut them out and start shaping them shortly.

I found some locking tabs/connectors on eBay that I think will work for holding the outer halves to the inner halves. I bought a sample to try and will be mocking that up also pretty soon.

I still have quite a bit of tooling to work up for the program of making all of the mounting brackets. There will need to be about 6 major brackets and about 4 minor ones. A major one will mount to two points on the car and two points on the inner half flange. The minor ones will mount to only one point on the car and one or two on the flange. I hope to have some of that worked up in the next week and a half because I would like to take what I have so far to SF 11 for show and tell, if that wont interferre with anyone else's plans and desires.

In the meantime I spent some of my time saturday changing out the pump on my air compressor. Sometime last sunday night I think it threw both rods in the pump and I found the motor happily running by itself sometime monday, but not making any air. Fortunately I have some spare compressors and two of them have the same moter and pump, so I just swapped it out with one of them. I will now be able to use the tank from the one I used for a vacuum sump when I get my vacuum table up and going. It did take some time out of my project though.

And, thanks again, Ray. You are just too kind with your positive thoughts.

Jerry Feather

rayqblue94

The most frustrating thing, to have a task in progress and a tool lets you down, end up spending more time fixing the tool than doing the job. Somehow though I think you have it under control. I have tried to read each post in your thread and recall someone saying you could access the PSD for maintenance from the 'outer' half of the liner. I really think it is necessary to remove the whole liner(ie. inner as well) to access the bleed nipple and electrical connection to flush the PSD - a job that is mandated at 2-3 year intervals. Just another 'issue' to add to the burden.
Hope you have some time to relax at SF11

Cheers

Ray

Jerry Feather

I think I am the one who suggested that the PSD might be serviced with only the outer half of the new liner removed. I was thinking that with the little access port in the original liner apparently intended to facilitate the PSD service, and with it maybe a little offcenter to the outboard side, and with my new liner a little farther foreward than the original, in that area, that sufficient access might be gained with only the outer half removed.

Herman and I were too busy when he was here with his GTS with the fitting and fabricating that I didn't think to investigate just how the PSD might be serviced with only the outer half of the liner taken out. I suppose if one can do any of the PSD service by feel, it still might be done with only the outer half out.

On the other hand, at this point I don't think it is going to make any difference in the design or development.

Thanks, Ray, for staying up on this project. Last night I got the GTS forms carved down again and cut the ends off to final finish. I also laminated on to one end a piece of aluminum plate since I now have that end cut pretty thin. I glued that on and put another coat of epoxy on the whole form pieces, so tonight I will probably get them finished and ready to put into the basic form. I will still have the minor form components to redo, but that wont take too long, then I can blow another piece of plastic. Unfortunately I wont be able to tell too much about it until I get my hands on another GTS. Maybe at SF11.

Jerry Feather

Herman K

Perhaps these pictures will help;

I didn't take a picture of the inside liner half in front of the PSD just the PSD and it location.

The PS picture with the inner half in place shows plenty access space for service work I expect the same will be the cas for the PSD with the inner half installed

Jerry Feather

Thanks, Herman. Those pictures show quite a bit. What I guess I don't actually know is just what is involved in servicing the PSD. Access to the little reservoir seems to be adequate, but I don't know just how the system is otherwise drained to change the fluid, if that is what the service entails.

Jerry Feather

Herman K

The primary thing is to check the fluid level and color in the reservoir in the factory liner you only have the little inspection plate as can be seen in the right top of the picture.

With your outer half removed there is more access and fluid add capability.

For replacing the reservoir with the build-in filter and bleeding service requirement the factory liner has to be taken out and the liners per your design have to be removed as well.

The design of your liner (two separate halves) will make the removing and installing of the liner a lot easier than the factory unit as this need to be pushed and shoved to get it in place this is often the reason why the liners get damaged

Arnoud

+928 on what Herman wrote: I consider myself to be rather patient and carefull when doing any work, however every time (3 times thus far this year, checking + removing + reinstalling a replacement PSD-unit) I have removed and reinstalled the driver side rear liner it has crumbled & flaked off more and more pieces.

Combination of it being 17 years old (on my car) and of not good material to start with as well as the needed pushing and shoving.

Jerry: thanks for your continious effort on producing a very high standard of replacement.

Jerry Feather

Thanks, Arnoud. Your appreciation is well noted and also appreciated.

I know that sometimes perfection just cannot be achieved, or that a certain level of perfection is just too costly to accomplish given the use for the end result. However, I am trying to balance all of that and accomplish an end result that an owner will be proud to have in his 928 and one that he can utilize with a reasonable amount of effort. All of that, even though it is going to be relatively hidden from view and could therefore be left with a number of minor flaws that perhaps no one but I would notice.

So far, I think I have gotten these liners to the point of making the final refinements, although there are several of those minor points to be developed. In fact, I think I could very easily put much of what I have so far into one or more of my cars and even call it good enough, but then I would be the one putting them in, and it is not likely that anyone else (except now, Herman) who might be able to do the same with the same prototype stuff I have blown so far.

Nevertheless, I wouldn't think of trying to market these yet, not until I have them correct to the point that just about anyone will be able to put them in his or her car, and be completely pleased with the result.

I'm home again a little early so I can get some more progress on the project. Wish me luck.

Jerry Feather

Rob Edwards

Good luck!

As far as PSD servicing, I would venture that any time an owner is going to look at his PSD unit, he's planning to flush the fluid, and the whole liner will be coming out anyway. So I wouldn't lose too much sleep over worrying about access panels for the PSD.

DJF1

I'm looking forward to the final product. Please count me in for a set of GTS rear liners. Mine as usual are crumbling... Good luck and keep us posted!

pcar928fan

I'll need a set for my '94 when you have them done too Jerry! Great work so far!

Jerry Feather

I took my final assembly stand and come prototype cover material to SF 11 last weekend and had a great time. I showed a few guys the progress I have to this point and spent too much time sitting around with my little show-and-tell so that I missed out on meeting too many of the big 928 players. Some of them stopped around and introduced themselves, and I got to check around some and meet a few others, but I think I missed about half of them. I guess there is a lesson there about how to properly do the SF meeting.

Meeting those that I did was a real honor and was really nice to put faces to rennlist names and handles.

I also took my family and that sort of put a damper on my ability to float around and see everything that was going on. I guess next time I will know better how to do the fest, hopefully SF12.

This weekend I'll be putting everything I have learned to this point to work and see what kind of progress I can make with these liners. I'll let you kjnow what progress I come up with.

Jerry Feather