Bill

My car has 72,000 miles on it and has a major oil leak at the rear main seal.

I have just finished removing the exhaust, cv joints, transmision, torque tube and clutch (not much left under there)in order to repair the seal.

It is my sincere hope that I do not have to do this again for a long time.

So in order to achieve that goal, I have decided to replace some items which are not yet at their limit. Heater valve (easy to reach now that the clutch housing is out of the way). Motor mounts (I should be able to raise the motor now that it is not coupled to the torque tube). And clutch (about 30% left but has spring center).

Does anyone have a recomendation as to what type of clutch/pressure plate I should purchase? Any thoughts on lightened flywheels?

I plan to eventually mod the engine to 350 rwhp.

Luke

Im under goin' a similar proccess and man......... I still can't get the input shaft side allen bolt off the tranny coupler!!!!!!!!

Im actually applying enough twisting force to turn the motor!!. ANd the bolt still will NOT budge?

951and944S

Luke,

Try locking the tranny in gear and set the parking brake ............

Luke

linkage: removed
parking brake: good idea.

still feels like its torqued down to 200ft/lbs though.

I believe it is supposed to be 50 ft/lbs!!

951Tom

Lukesilver,
You've probably done this, but it helps to hit stubborn bolts with a hammer to "wake them up." Liquid wrench too?? When I did my turbo r&r, I tried this on the 135K exhaust hotside bolts and it worked like a charm. I didn't do it to one bolt though, and that one broke off. Lefty loosy....righty tighty. Hope this helps.

Tom
'87 951
'86 Supra

Dan87951

I have heard by Danno that the Center Force Dual Friction Clutch to last a long time!! I believe Danno provides good advice and they way he talks must beat the crap out of his 951. He say's he done a lot of drag racing with it and hasn't even begun to slip yet. I believe he told me he had around 70k hard racing miles on it and its only half worn. He had a turbo cup replacement clutch and claimed it did not hold up to the abuse of this one. I thinking right now if I want to dig a bigger hole for my pocket and get one of these clutches as mine is really slipping bad under abuse. Oh yeah their clutches are kinda pricey.

Dan
visit www.centerforce.com

Wachuko

Bill, I can certainly feel your pain. I changed the clutch a couple of years back (I have a few scars from that experience, ouch) along with the rear main oil seal and other preventive items. I had not used the car that much due to other areas that needed attention. Well, in the last month or so I pretty much finished with the alternator and minor things that were keeping me from using the car. No leaks at the time. I take the car out to show a friend how good the car is now… and after getting back from some hard driving I park the car and noticed it had developed a nasty leak from the rear main oil seal, !@#$#@!%.

You should have seen the look in my wife's face when I told her. The clutch job took all the garage space we had at the time and almost three months (I was doing it whenever I had a few hours off).

I will continue to use the car and monitor the oil level, but I am NOT going to tear everything apart any time soon. I will enjoy the car for several months before getting to this repair. I will just place a nice cardboard box under the car when I get home. Man!! A new seal, not even three years old, why would it fail???!!!!! This sucks!!

Bill

Jamie,

Think of the money a chemical engineer could make from an additive that would make the rubber seals swell.......the eternal dreamer.

I had that same carboard box under mine for 5 months! The 5 month time frame was not because of lack of motivation (I HATE leaks) but the time needed to prep my wife for this project. I have been in the garage for the 7 days of the holidays and just got to the seal.

To be politicaly correct I took off x-mas and new years.

When you replaced your seal did you use a factory seal? I have found that factory seals are superior to the cheaper aftermarket ones. I spent two days trying to install an aftermarket oil cooler housing seal. This was with my 944NA motor out of the car on an engine stand! In frustration I tore up the seal, went to the dealership and PRESTO! seal installed in minutes, leak free (what a lesson that was).

Luke,

If you think the CV bolts are fun, wait til you get to the pressure plate and flywheel bolts. Once there, the parking brake wont help you! I had to drill off three of the nine pressure plate bolt heads (due to strip-out).

Thanks Dan,

$1585us....ouch!

I have recieved a lot of great advise from Danno, so I must agree that if he recomends the clutch it must be worthwhile (Danno any comment?).

As for ussage/abusage....I watched Danno, during the thanksgiving pizza run pull off some beautiful power drifts in the rain (Yes Danno I was behind you when you were entering 85). Danno can you say "On the Edge".

I rarely speed shift (not a drag racer) and my rubber center clutch on the 944NA actually lasted 90,000 miles! (I drove it with the blown out rubber for another 40k, whats a CLUNK between friends).

More clamping force with the same pedal......tempting. Or do I feel a case of the "Speed Virus" coming on?

Wachuko

Bill, when I changed the clutch it was the first major repair I had done to the car. The previous repairs consisted of replacing parts (CV joints, hoses, shocks, etc.) not something as challenging as getting to the clutch. I must confess I made some bad choices when getting replacement parts. At the time I thought original Porsche part meant "A LOT OF CASH!!" but that is not necessarily the case. It pays to call the Porsche parts counter and ask for the price, sometimes it is more inexpensive that an aftermarket one. Also, if you have the PCNA membership you can get an additional discount.

Also, this chats have help us share the providers that are out there, along with the advertisement in magazines like Excellence. I have found that between Paragon and Sunset Imports I can get the best prices on original parts.

Back to your question, the rear main oil seal I got it from Vertex Auto, so I am not sure if it was factory or not. Probably not.
(On a separate note: Vertex has very good advertised prices but (1) I had to remind them the price since they gave me a higher one when I called (2) they charge 15% in credit card purchases (3) and shipping charges where high. Do not get me wrong, they have a great team of people and I visited their store once, when I had a connection in Miami from a business trip, but I have found lower prices elsewhere.)

BTW, thanks to the work on the clutch I was able to justify a lot of nice tools (impact wrenches, air compressor, etc). I got a small impact wrench (almost fits in the palm of the hand) that helped me get to the nastiest places (the exhaust pipe from the turbo comes to mind) and many other places. You mentioned that you stripped a few of the bolts from the flywheel, I wonder if it was with an impact wrench, if not, I highly recommend you get one (if you have the air compressor) to help.

As soon as (as you did) my wife comes to terms with having the car back in our garage I will start working on replacing the seal. For now the good old cardboard will have to do.

Good luck with your endeavor.

K27w

I replaced with the Sachs cup clutch, this seems to have a good rep.
I have a detailed procedure at www.user.dccnet.com/lmason
this may help you with doing things in the right order as well as what other parts are recommended to replace.
I would not use aftermarket seals on this job, the porsche supplied seals were not unduly expensive and if correctly installed should last till the next clutch job
hope this helps, good luck
PS. I would also not use any other tools but hazet or snap-on for the cheeseheads or hex heads.

Danno

Hi Bill!

Still hung-over from partying, so stay with me as I slurr my s-typing...

Here's a recent thread where I talked about the Centerforce clutch:Gtech Performance meters how accurate?

Figured you don't want to have to do the clutch job more than once on these cars, so might as well get something that'll last. There's some links at the end where you can pick up the clutch for $1200 I think. While you're at it, replacing the torque-tube bearings would be a good idea too. Just $100 in bearings will save you the trouble of dropping that tranny later:Torque Tube Refreshing (get the highest grade you can).

And no, I do not abuse my car! I drive it the way it was meant to be driven! Makes me kinda wonder though why I go through clutchs, wheel-bearings, water-pumps, tires, wheels, ball-joints, CV-joints, shocks, brakes, etc. so quickly, eh? Then again my last car, a Supra, went 250k-miles on the original clutch, water-pump, wheel-bearings, brake-rotors, etc. The only thing I ever had to replace on that thing was an alternator voltage-regulator.. Hmmm... I guess you gotta pay to play!

As for seals & most parts, I agree with Bill, go for the genuine Porsche items. The headaches aren't worth the miniscule savings. And Vertex is at the bottom of the heap as far as I'm concerned; have heard WAYYyy too many horror stories about those guys.

Yeah! Chics should be good at partying, mixing drinks and working on cars!



Now I just gotta teach her to race a car and that'll be it!

Bill

Danno,

WOW!

Now thats what I call the perfect woman! (you would'nt catch my wife anywhere near a lug wrench).

Luke

WOW! Does she have any younger sisters? (like around 18)

keith

Danno, that's great! (I have the East Coast version)

Steve Lavigne

Danno, hope she hasn't found out about this one yet.