Carl Fausett

You're lucky if only the alternator and alternator mount are involved. I have seen this impact crack the engine block (although usually when the air conditioner smacks the pavement on the other side.)

+1 on checking ride height, and make sure your shocks are good. And install Protection Plates.

Carl Fausett

My bad - I see you've already done that.

Good for you. That will go a long way to preventing this from happening again.

928wolf

Waiting on Alternator parts to arrive. Looking at the oil pressure sender it looks a little oily and dirty, is this normal for a 30 year old car or a sign of an issue? I can't find an actual drop of oil anywhere, just looks like a little bit over the years mixed road grime.

I think it was working fine before the alternator was damaged: pegged at start-up and when driving, but it would drop back down at warm idle. From reading another thread this appears to be normal operation.

What should this area look like? While I'm in there should I change it or just leave it alone?

Thanks,

dr bob

Clean thouroughly and observe carefully. That area is prone to seepage (that's a vintage Jaguar word for 'leak'...) from the cam cover gasket, the seals for the vents in the cam cover gaskets, the spark plug well seals in the cam covers, the plugs and fittings for the oil cooler and thermostat fittings immediately above, and the power steering pump and hoses immediately above and forward. And of course the transmitter and its adapter.

Cleaning and inspection of that whole area is a mandatory step in your alternator recovery process anyway. You'll be looking for cracks around the threaded boss that receives the fat bolt immediately above the alternator pivot bolt. The alternator/PS console is held on primarily by that bolt, and it's there to transfer load from the alternator to the block. With the pivot bolt so close, I'm concerned that the transferred impact load was enough to damage the block even though the console itself also failed. Only a careful inspection of that area, after a thorough cleaning, will tell you the whole story.

928wolf

Hopefully I'll be able to get under it, inspect and replace parts this weekend.

One more question on ride height: When I jacked up the car and put it back down it is sitting dramatically higher now, maybe even 2 inches higher. Will it just has to settle back into it's previous ride height once I drive it, or is there something wrong, maybe with the shocks? Is this normal?

Thanks,

FredR

Sounds about normal to me albeit I doubt it is 2 inches higher even though it may look like that - a 10 minute drive will settle it for the most part. If you need to take it for alignment go over some speed bumps and dump on the brakes a few times.

huskeric

This is normal - it will take a few miles to have the suspension settle back to its normal ride height.

dr bob

Mine takes more than a few miles of driving to settle the suspension completely. I've identified a 2 mile loop of local streets littered with speed bumps and rain gutters. Posted 25, with 15 MPH warnings at every speed bump. I loop it a few times between 25 and 30, and it does a lot of settling. But it seems to take another 50 miles or so of normal use to get the last few MM's of settling. So the original recommendation of 75-100 miles of normal driving before alignment isn't far from the truth.

928wolf

Next obstacle: on my way to putting my alternator back in, one of the nightmares was getting the oil return secured back onto the car. One of the screws that connects the return to oil pan is very difficult to get to, finally bought a ratcheting wrench with a flexing head to do the trick. So after I finally get that screw snugged down, I go to snug down the other side (the one that easy to install), gave it one last tug to make sure it was tight and all resistance gave. I have stripped the threads on this little M6 bolt.

Now thread repair is in my way before I can get my car running again (and find out if my alternator loss caused any electrical problems downstream).

Off to get a thread repair kit, but I am worried about getting aluminum shavings in my oil pan now. I'm not sure how the sump works, if large shavings would simply sit in the bottom or could they get sucked up by the pump and sent through the system? Is this a job that needs to take the oil pan out entirely?

Lesson learned: Aluminum tight isn't the same thing as steel or iron tight. Ugghh.

dr bob

It's a wrench dance. The console bolts MUST go on first. If the phrase "assembly is the reverse of disassembly" needed another example, this would be a great one. Also, make sure the adjusting bracket isn't bent; It looks like it's tweaked in your picture.

928wolf

The alternator is still loose, and is being held up by a zip tie to get some extra clearance to get that screw in, so that's probably why it looks out of alignment. Every thing lined up in my dry run out of the car, but I'll check it again.

thanks,

928wolf

I went and looked it up, the Porsche recommended torque for an M6 bolt is 6+1 ft.lbs. I'm pretty sure I can generate that with a wrench and 1 finger. No way to get a torque wrench in this area, but that is barely a tug. Lesson learned, this aint no iron block Ford you are wrenching around on. I will now be uber-careful torqueing bolts into aluminum from now on. Already bought a torque wrench.....(but it doesn't go down to 6 ft.lb)

I'm assuming this is some sort of hazing exercise for new Porsche owners. I bet most people on the forum can name the date when the stipped their first thread

There are several great threads (no pun intended) on thread repair. As with everything around here there is heated debate on what to use, but I decided on the Time-sert because it looked a little easier to get right, even if it was 3x as expensive as the Helicoil.

A familiar refrain: I'll get this thing running next weekend....

dr bob

Tool budget-cramped? (and aren't we all...) Even the under-$20-on-sale 1/4"-drive torque wrench is fine for this duty. Caveat-- 7 lbs/ft is a lot less than most folks think, and at low settings like this (72 lbs/in for 6mm bolts) it's pretty easy to roll right over the click-stop on the wrench cam without noticing. This setting is more than the weight of the handle, but not by a whole lot.