garrett376

Arjan and others did such a good job covering service instructions, so I will try not to repeat, but I'll cover some out of the ordinary findings..

I started up on my service and was surprised to find that my distributor retaining nut was barely on - I could remove it with my fingers about 2 turns till it fell off! I discovered this after trying to remove my spark plug wires - which by the way, are such "knucke-busters" to get off! I had to tug and tug, and that's when I noticed that the entire distributor was moving up and down!! Yikes!! Glad I am replacing my distributor belt, cap and rotors; this would have gone un-noticed otherwise!

Now for my favorite picture, an example where using the correct tool is so important! Trying to get off the drain and fill plugs of the front differential and tranny, I bent the heck out of this 10mm allen wrench before going and purchasing the tool I should have had in the first place!!!

Youcef

Garrett, Good news on finding the dizzy loose before anything more sinister happened. Keep the allen key, you will probably find a use for it in one of those dark hard to get at corners that seem to appear quite often on our porkers.

Good Luck.

Youcef

HSB

Hi Garrett,
I hope you have as much fun as I did in servicing mine. I haven't started mine yet. I read the recent thread on valve adjustment and it has me hoping I don't have any ticking on startup. My son and I went through the valves a couple of times and I was suprised at how many required further adjustment. Good Luck Harpreet

garrett376

Finished a lot today!

I have just one recommendation for all 964 owners - change your distributor belt at 50,000 miles even if you're not sure if it's been changed, even if you have the vent kit installed!!! I was amazed how bad it looked; any day now I could image it breaking. Considering the potential damage that could occur with a broken belt, and the ease and low cost of changing it yourself, CHANGE IT!!!

Changing the distributor belt seems to be an over-rated procedure with regards to difficulty. I read the description on the p-car.com website, and it seemed like a really tough thing to do. It went very well - just be sure you've got a "snap ring remover". I had to buy one today - for 20 years I've used needle nose and other fancy ways to remove these things, but I HAD TO HAVE the right tool this time. It didn't take much time once I had the right tool! Drilling out the drive gear retaining pin was a good move - was pretty easy with the right sized cobalt drill bit. Drilling with a smaller size first is helpful, then use the bigger drill bit to remove the pin entirely.

I also got all the valves adjusted, changed all the spark plugs, too. I must say that I am glad this procedure doesn't have to be done often. On my 65 911 it's required maintenance every 3000 miles!!! But it's so much easier! There is just so much stuff to remove to get to the valve covers. It was interesting to find that all my valve clearances were super tight on all rockers.

I changed the front diff oil, and tranny with some 75w-90 valvoline oil.

Oh yeah, one more recommendation - let your oil drip from the tank and crankcase for a while. I am surprised that after 2 days of having the drain plugs out, so much oil has come out! I can't imagine how much old oil stays in if you got a "15 minute oil change"!!

Here's my distributor belt (and the car has had a vent kit for a long time, but undocumented):

Arjan B.

Garret,

Nice and helpfull pics!!

Pleas post as many if you want, pics of servic never will be bored for anyone. Also for me it's still nice to see how other people do their job.

A little note to the distributor belt. My car got a Porsche rebuilt distributor back in 2001, and a plan to change that one after 50.000/60.000 miles for sure. Mine is stamped with a 'Z' on the aluminium houseing. What I ment to say is that a timing belt that small always will have a hard life. For example, a 2000 VW Golf has a timing belt form cranck shaft to 1 cam, and a small one from cam 1 to cam 2. The small ona always is in more bad shape then the longer and wider one. This is because of the heat and the frequency te thooth will hit the chain wheel. A shorter belt is sensitive, a more longer is not.

O, Check for sure your belt which drives your power steering pump. It's also a small but wide belt..........
I changed mine too back in 2002. A lot of cracks back then.