Rob Edwards

Maybe we can rent Ron Ruff's cellette jig for body drop.

Rob Edwards

Got some garage time over the weekend to play with Minerva a bit-

Ran some bits through the parts washer:






A bunch of the major pieces appear to be original to the car:

Steering rack:


PS pump:



Can’t find a date code on the A/C compressor but there’s this cool tech sticker on top:




Reinstalled the steering rack temporarily, rolled half way out and degreased and pressure washed the engine compartment today- very satisfying.

Driver’s and passenger sides, after:






Interesting firewall insulation- it’s mostly melted on the lower half of the firewall but ok on top- Does anyone know whether the firewall insulation used on 78-84 928s is similar to other Porsches of the era that might have used the same stuff? (and that are still available…) I am tempted to find some and splice it in below the level of the brake hardline that runs across the back.



I dug into the engine a bit too, documented the hell out of all the vacuum lines under the spider:



And the engine wiring harness (the only one!) wrapped around the water crossover:




The entire air guide/throttle body/ fuel distributor came out pretty easily, as all four rubber mounts were dead..

Lake Minerva:



Topless:




Knock on alusil, I haven’t had a stuck bolt yet after soaking everything in Kroil for 2 days- water crossover bolts came right out, the EGR metal pipes and EGR valve mounting bolts on the manifold came apart and can be reused after a little bead blast. Amazing.

the flyin' scotsman

those parts cleaned up very nice Rob............care to share your process?

Rob Edwards

It helps that theyre not all that terribly dirty to begin with. William took the car to the local undercarriage steam cleaning place, which made a HUGE difference on everything they could reach. For all the engine compartment bits, I found a Safety-Kleen commercial parts washer in a pawn shop about 2 years ago, and set up an account with them to service it. It's a heated 30 gallon unit that uses an aqueous alkaline cleaning solution pumped through an agitator brush.

The engine compartment is just a bunch of simple green sprayed on, letting it dwell for 10 minutes, and then pressure washing it off. Collected the big chunks in a shower curtain (trying to be better about that) and then rinsed a lot.

There's still a bunch of grimy stuff for which the before an after will be satisfying (note the air pump heat shield and A/C bracket- now I understand why bottoming an early car would break the engine block- that thing is a tank....) When stuff is truly caked on, I scrape with a plastic scraper to get most of it off first, otherwise the wash solution gets crappy too fast, and it's $200 for a service call.

linderpat

Rob - Jim D (928 Classics) carries the correct black braided vacuum lines and he can source the color lines too. I re-did all of mine last year, and with the correct colors and materials, it looks great. As to the firewall insulation material, I'm not sure what it is, but that is in mine too, and mine is melted and drooping along the top edge worse than yours. Jim says that this piece is still available, but hopefully he'll chime in on this. If so, I should grab one for future restoration purposes.

The Deputy

Is Rob...the invisible man?

bureau13

Tell me more about this "local undercarriage steam cleaning place." I tried to find something like that here, but was unable. Maybe I was not looking for the right thing?

Rob Edwards

Here's the link to the local place here:

http://www.doctordetail.com/Doctor-D...-Services.html


The before and after was pretty epic. A bargain at $250. I have more cleaning and detailing once the suspension comes out but it was a huge start.

Rob Edwards

LOL, good catch, didn't even notice the gloves. Yes, I'm invisible and have three hands.

bureau13

That place is exactly what I need...I should have paid Brian to take it there before he shipped me the car! Live and learn...

Rob Edwards

That would be outstanding if it's true- I have looked through all the usual suspects and come up empty. The 86.5 to 95 piece is still available but I don't have a good feel how different the two firewalls are, and whether the later piece could be adapted to the early car. And it would be 'wrong', to boot.

92855608902, Wherefore art thou, 92855608902?

granprixweiss928

Theres also a good chassis steam clean place in San Jose, CA. sanjosesteamcleaning.com

Rob Edwards

The Ugly and the Good:

Spent 2 hours working on Minerva with William tonight, continued the demolition.

Oil pan off- kinda wish we'd run some motor flush through it for a couple of minutes, pretty sludgy inside:







Got the front of the motor apart, all the gears are square tooth and in great shape, WP came off without a hitch, the coolant passages are pristine. Pulled the cam towers and heads without incident, and the bores and cylinder rims are perfect. Phew!






Not sure what flavor head gasket this is, I think it's a factory gasket as there's an embossed 928 part # on it, but it has fire rings in it. In any case, both head gaskets are in great shape- will have to look for a date code on them, I have to imagine they'd been replaced at some point.

William A

When the heads came off my '93 GTS, the head gasket secured at the factory was disintegrating resulting in pitting to the head. These '78 head gaskets came off as one piece and were in fine shape.

I will be very curious to discover if the heads had been off previously, but either way the surfaces look remarkable for a 166k mi. 928.

Perhaps it is better that I didn't photograph Rob pushing on one side and me pulling on the other of the breaker bar attempting to loosen the head nuts. Got the old heart rate up!

hacker-pschorr

Any you recommend?

I've been thinking of doing the same thing before I pull the motor in the 80.