Geoffrey

Every once in awhile something reminds me why I like race cars so much. I started removing the engine out of my C2 street car and when I'd normally have it out after 2 hours, I'm still struggling with this one and have given up for the evening. While I have dealer receipts for regular service the entire life of the car including the removal of the engine and trans for a clutch 20k ago, everything is dirty and rusty. While I am a proponent of just driving these cars, I can certainly see where salt and winter conditions do damage to these cars. Mine is stock complete with undertray and every nut, oil line, and bolt is just impossible. The problem is that many of the parts are connected so you can't just cut one piece and replace it, you have to remove other rusty parts just to gain access. It is all I can do to resist ordering all new parts since I'm so particular about my stuff, but I really don't want to rebuild this one too...well, I want to, but am not going to.

The good news is that the engine has minor leaking on one lower valve cover, both timing covers, and of course the power steering seal. The major leaks are actually the hoses at the oil tank.

Sunday I replaced the front springs with the progressive lowering springs from my racecar and it lowered it 2" and looks proper. I took it for a drive and they work well with the factory M030 shocks. It doesn't feel stiffer than stock, but when you lean on it in a corner, you can feel it stiffen up quite a bit. I'll have a better feel for it once I do the rears which should be easy with the engine out of the car. Ooops, back to my original problem...everything is rusty...

ilko

Speaking of suspension... I just got done with mine yesterday, can you recommend a local shop to do the alignment, or should I just drive down to Advanced Auto? Thanks!

Chris M.

Where'd you get factory M030 shocks?

hawk911

Ah Geoffrey- such trials and tribulations. We should all be so lucky to face the skills, time, and $$ to rebuild their SECOND Porsche. You have my sympathies.

Gary R.

Geoffrey, i'm dissasembling a 1982 Euro that has NOT been taken care of so you can only imagine the fun.. Took two of us (along with a cutoff wheel and a pint of PB Blaster) about 5 hours just to remove the bumpers. At least the rear suspension has been covered in grease from the ignored oil leaks. I did clean the outside of the oil tank.. 1/2" thick of muck. The bright side is the other end when every bolt will be like new with never-seize (or locktite) and clean and all parts restored to new condition.. sans oil/grease.

Geoffrey

Ilko, Without a doubt, go see Tom at Advanced Auto and have him corner balance and align to Euro RS spec. I use his alignment rack when I align my race car and will align this car there too. I know he is particular and exacting, especially when it comes to alignment.

Chris M, My car has the M030 option, so I just replaced the springs with some that I had.

"Ah Geoffrey- such trials and tribulations. We should all be so lucky to face the skills, time, and $$ to rebuild their SECOND Porsche. You have my sympathies."

Don't forget, I'm doing this all for you guys, just to test your chips and to put MoTeC on.

Gary, yep, the oily bolts were easy to remove.

ilko

You're right, I had Tom align and corner balance my 951 last year, the car felt great aferwards. Thanks!

Geoffrey

The deal with alignments is that you want a shop that does regular maintance on their equipment. If you go to a shop that just does alignments, you can see in the concrete floor where the alignment rack legs have bored holes into the floor. This changes the height of the rack, and unless the rack is leveled, the corner balance and alignment will be off. It is probably fine for your Honda, but if you are going through the time and expense of corner balancing, then you want it correct. Also, the alignment heads need to be calibrated on a regular basis to ensure they are working properly. While Tom has an older Hunter machine, it is regularly maintained and it is better than one of the new racks that are used and not maintained. Further, Tom is precise, even on a street alignment. The alignment machine will give a range of acceptable alignment values, and most general alignment shops get the specs in that range. Tom, or any good race shop will get the values exact. With the stock suspension adjustments on the C2 it can take some fiddling around to get them to stay when you tighten the bolts due to the compliancy in the rubber. On my racecar, it is much easier since everything is a solid monoball.

Geoffrey

I win!

hawk911

Congratulations. I'd love to be right there and doing the same thing to my car. The tray needs some wirewheel and paint attention, plus a good general cleaning of the engine itself. Most of it's not too bad from what I can see.

Geoffrey

"Most of it's not too bad from what I can see."

Pictures can be deceptive. All of the tin needs to be removed, bead blasted, and whats left of it powercoated. It is extremely rusty and looks like swiss cheese in places. I have to check to see what extra tin I have laying around. Other than that, the engine is surprisingly dry with only a few seals and gaskets to replace. I did find the source of the weak clutch, and that is a leaky input shaft seal on the trans which looks like let gear oil onto the clutch assembly. I have to decide whether or not I'm going to open the trans and replace the body gaskets as they look to be weaping too. I think I will probably check the LSD while it is out, although it has been operating fine. Tomorrow I'll get it up on the stand and begin disassembly and repair. This is turning into a larger project than I really wanted at this point in time.

911addict

Geoffrey,
I recently had a fuel leak which was down to a corroded fuel line. When the guys removed the 2 long ones (dropped the engine) they found these pipes were corroded in many places, leaks waiting to happen. Have you come across this before? They reckoned they didn't see many 964 pipes rotting.

Geoffrey

I have not seen them, but then I usually work on race cars and not on street cars so I'm not a good resource for that type of thing. The underside of my car looks great, it is only the fasteners and the engine/trans that is corroded.

hawk911

I meant my engine, but we can probably swap "me" for you in this case.

NineMeister

Sorry to have to tell you this buddy, but the car is obviously a compete nail, I would not work on a car so dirty and rusty either. Of course, provided that you could persuade the wife that she needs the ultimate safety of a Clubsport to go to the mall and hence get her approval, you could always ship it to us for the full 9m64RS M003 treatment and it will come back to her absolutely like new. Does she like Recaro's?