Super90

+1 for the air con rework.

I'm starting a parts list to replace almost every component. All OE parts or better to be used. It gets hot in Texas, and my system is not cooling as well as it should!

964tit

I live in Australia... gets to 100f during the day in Jan and Feb here.

I hear you on OE but sometimes when the Porsche part price is three times the OEM suppliers (such as Behr and Bosch), it's hard to justify!

These are still just cars. There's nothing magical about the AC. A good quality evaporator is still a good quality evaporator!

Gotta visit Texas one day!

Peteinjp

Is very timely post as I'm getting ready to pull out the suitcase myself. I need blower motors and plan to replace all the air conditioning stuff as well. Post up any tips and tricks as you progress as well as any recommended "while you're in there" small little plastic bits etc. that should be ordered. I particularly interested as to whether or not the gaskets need to work be replaced because one of them is 70+ US dollars. I'll be shipping my order over from the US to Japan so I'm gonna try to get all done in one shot.


Pete

John McM

Fixed rear lid ready for adjustment.

964tit

Nice. All my parts orders have arrived. Just need to get down to the car to sort it all out.

What are you going to do once the two cars are done? It will be very disorienting for you! :P

John McM

I have a potential opportunity to rebuild another engine next Winter. I’ll never be done

John McM

964tit

Hey! Sorry I took a while! Yep, it's all finished. It was with my guy for five weeks. He was working on it after-hours, prob 2-8 hours per week. Very time consuming with the fuel-tank and pulling apart the whole 'suitcase'. But the time delay was really waiting for parts because we didn't know what we were going to find in there. That evaporator was manky though! I can see now why people retro-fit the 993 gear just to get the cabin filter!

This last weekend I did a return trip from Canberra to Geelong (see instagram: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/hangarbanger/ ) in the 38 degree heat. It worked well enough - though it wasn't up to modern a/c standards. But I knew it worked, because my highway buddy poured like quicksilver out of his non-ac 3.2 when we stopped for breaks, while I was comfortable.

I think you also asked for a parts list? So here goes:

• A/C hose refrigerant 96457309705
• A/C hose return 964-573-099-0x
• All rubber gaskets - various
• Evaporator 96457390100
• L ‘squirrel cage’ blower 964-572-015-01-M253
• R ‘squirrel cage’ blower 964-572-016-01-M253
• Receiver Dryer 964 573 943 00
• TX Valve 928-573-123-05

Un-related, but at the same time I also repaired the Spoiler;

• Replaced missing ECU 964 618 212
• Spoiler Wall 99351212100
• And Installed all of the gearbox, cable etc…

I hear there’s some Kiwis planning on a multi-track week-long porsche tour on both Islands this year? Is that true? Sounds epic.

964tit

Hi Pete,

I'm about to post up my blowers and old hoses. The left-hand side blower is fine, the right squeaked a bit - might be able to be repaired. I also ordered the wrong refrigerant hose that goes to the compressor, so now I'll try sell the old one as well.

"While you're in there" - well, if all the gear is out, I'd do every seal I could, even on the TX valve. We also did the seals on the hoses running down the side of the car. Your receiver dryer is probably knackered as well, if the system has been de-gassed for long enough for condensation to ruin it. Not sure what the $70 gasket is?

Be careful with some of the (paper?) ducts under the dash. They get quite brittle with age and cost a decent amount to replace. I think my 'suitcase' had been out before for a previous owner, and they pinched one of the hoses in the frunk putting it back in - so re-installation can be quite tricky with the hoses and wiring.

My guy is an A/C expert - I'm not sure that I would have been able to do this correctly without him. He knew all of the 'tricks', such as burning off the moisture before charging and just basic experience with problem solving.

Finally, you'll need to put aside a bunch of time (several weeks) - you won't know what you'll find until you're in there. So it's inevitable that you'll have to order more stuff once you assess the dis-assembled system. Plus, you'll see that it's probably as much of a pain as dropping the engine, so you might as well refresh everything you can while you're in there.

John McM

Peteinjp

John McM

John McM

964tit

Ha. Better late than never, eh!

Answer to your question...We cleaned that out and tested it and it was fine...

964tit

Hi All,

Another project completed - a Stereo ‘upgrade’. I put that in inverted commas, because really, it was more of a cleanup than an upgrade. Previously, the car had a two channel Alpine amp and a fairly old Pioneer CD stereo, which suited the interior well. In itself, that amp was nice, but it was horrifically mounted in the frunk. It just looked ghetto and had to go.





So I pulled that amp out a few months ago, and the old Pioneer head unit was just not up to the task by itself. When the volume was up, the backlight in the head unit would go dim with each beat of low frequency. haha…

Anyway, I’ve had my eye on a Kienzle head unit for some time now, as they look relatively sedate and can handle bluetooth audio and phone connection. They also come with 2 USB inputs. The unit I bought is the mechless one, that is, it has no CD player and is only half the size by depth.

Link to Head Unit: http://www.soundlabsgroup.com.au/p/K...ooth+Car+Radio



In addition, I grabbed a retro sound amp. It’s a 4 x 45WRMS unit that is quite small. I didn’t have high expectations for this one, other than it can give me a tad better sound quality and power.

Link to the Amp: http://www.soundlabsgroup.com.au/p/R...onic+Amplifier



The previous owner had put focal splits in the front door, and there’s some ancient pioneer coaxial speakers in the parcel shelf.

I’m taking this ‘upgrade’ process in three steps:

1. Sort out the wiring mess
2. Install this new head unit, amp and wiring
3. Clean and sound treat the doors, around the speakers, and the rear parcel shelf.

This post is about points one and two, as I’ve not started the third just yet…

Sorting out the Wiring & Harnesses

It was a bit of a mess under there. One of the previous owners had done a bit of splicing, basically to set up an ISO harness for the Pioneer head unit. Also, for some reason, they’d ditched the wiring in the left door speaker for their own (so my wiring diagram didn’t match up with the car).



So I basically soldered up the wiring into the ISO connectors, heat-shink and fabric wrapped to look OEM-ish. I also obtained an illumination feed from one of the un-used plugs in the row of switches that includes the cigarette lighter.



The intent here, is that I can plug in any head unit, with or without the amp, using ISO connectors.

I then wired up an extended harness so that I could place the amp under the drivers (RHD) seat. That harness was approx 1.3m long.







Because the amp has the wiring integral (ie. no spade connectors etc), I didn’t have to mess around with that. The Amp basically has ISO plugs at either end for input and outputs. I didn’t bother with RCA (line-out) plugs, and just used the ISO connection to the amp.



It’s also not a huge power amp, as the power and ground wires are 14 gauge - quite small. I ran the amp power wire through the firewall, coming out below the fuel tank, running along with the other earth and power wires to the battery. It’s relatively well hidden.


​
Bonus Harness

In Australia, the 964 wasn’t delivered with the same Head Units as the US and ROW. Dealers in Australia installed a Eurovox unit. My original head unit was long gone, but I managed to obtain one about two years ago, and it has been studiously sitting in a cupboard here. The harness is intact. So what I did was wire up an ISO to this Eurovox plug harness. So if I ever want to plug the Eurovox head unit in, it should plug straight in.





I have an original manual for this stereo as well if anyone is looking for info from one...



Unfortunately, this unit needs a code to unlock, which I will sort out at a later date.

Installation

Oh man, rolling around on my back and knees, fiddling with the gross under-lay / sound deadening on the drivers side was no fun. But this was the obvious location for the amp because there was room for it, there was an earth source nearby, and there was already a cable run for the factory amp that once resided there. So my cabling went along there, below the drivers feet, up the heater pipes and along under the dash.



I tested everything worked (which it did!).



I then went off and downloaded some line signals for setting the gain on the amp from here:

https://jlaudio.zendesk.com/hc/en-us...27-Audio-Files

I used the multi-meter method to determine the voltage using this technique:


Anyway, I never got up to my calculated voltage of 13 point something something volts, the voltage always seemed to peak around 12 volts (interesting...). So I set the gain at 1/3rd around the dial for front and back and am happy that I’m not going to blow anything up (well, maybe the rear speakers because they are crappy).

I buttoned it all up and decided I’d have more of a play on the weekend…

(It’s winter down here. It goes to around -5 degrees celsius over night, so this was a slow process going out to the garage in the evenings and rolling around on the cold concrete)

So far I’m happy. The display is a bit limited, so it struggles to show intuitive file and folder names off the USB. But that’s no big deal, as the bluetooth audio works a treat, and that will be my primary source of tunes.

Also, it’s a 964, so the sound environment is seriously compromised.

The backlighting on this head unit is brighter than I expected, so I'm going to fiddle and see if I can dim it down. Also, I need to go back and look at the power switching, as it is turned on independently of ignition position, ie. I have to manually turn it on and off.





For now I’m happy, but next up will be sorting out the sound deadening in the doors and rear parcel shelf. I’m not a weight weenie, but I won’t go too silly either. I think I’d like to just give the speakers a fighting chance.