As my son and daughter approach driving age, decided it would be a good time to teach them (and myself) a little about taking care of the car. We started the project on April 20th to give us enough time to have the car ready for my daughter to use it for her senior prom night on May 16th.

Picked up the car last year in San Diego from the second owner with about 85K miles on it, had new tires, fluids, brakes and struts put on out there by Wayne Bakers shop and then drove it back to CT with no problems other than the occasional smell of oil hitting the heat exchangers and a noisy odometer.

First order of business was to study the DIY write ups on Rennlist, PCar.com and PCarworkshop.com to determine what were reasonable tasks. The maintenance history was not detailed as much as I'd prefer so we decided to tackle the following maintenance items:

valve cover gasket/bolts replacement
oil change
transmission fluid
pollen and air filter
fuel filter
timing chain cover gaskets
spark plugs
new battery
DME Replacement
V belts
ISV Valve cleaning
Odometer removal (sent to North Hollywood for rebuild)
New interior carpets
Windshield Wiper blades

The valve cover oil problem wasn't major but after long drives the oil drip hitting the heat exchangers was stinking up the garage and occasionally leaving a drip on the recently polished concrete floor.

During removal of the muffler cans my son decided to clean up the heat exchangers which were very messy from what was probably years of oil drips. Getting them off was easy save for one bolt on the driver side; an articulating socket finally did the trick. After cleaning the parts we decided we just couldn’t put them back on without cleaning the Catalytic Converter so that came off for polishing too.

While waiting for new parts from Pelican, we managed to get the spark plugs out, easy for the most part but you have to be patient with the upper passenger side. We replaced all of the mounting hardware for the heat exchangers, valve covers, catalytic converter and engine shroud that has the clutch vent tube running through it (the latter because I stripped one of the bolts).

Everything went according to the DIY’s save for one ‘doh’ moment….we were missing a couple of bolts next to the intake side O2 sensors on the Catalytic converter, we had no parts left over and thought that was a good thing. After getting everything back together the car ran okay but occasionally stalled during deceleration. A couple of new bolts did the trick.

We did manage to have it ready for senior prom night…my daughter had bragging rights to being the only 17 year old girl there who changed the oil on the car she drove that night (probably the only boy or girl for that matter!) I just returned from a two week road trip in the car up to Quebec, throughout Ontario and then back to CT…it runs like a new car again!

Thanks to the Rennlisters who answered my sometimes dumb questions and to the good folks at Pelican, PCarworkshop.com, Pcar.com, Dan Jacobs for the V-belt assistance and my great kids for not telling their mother about the nasty things I called those Porsche engineers who designed things in such a tight configuration!

 

WOW! Those sure are some nice clean and shiny heat exchangers and mufflers!!!

 

Nice story of a family 993 DIY, Bart!!

 

Thanks. Easy for teenagers to become distant...working on the car and teaching them how to drive it have been great experiences.

 

Beautiful CT Sunday, wash, claybar, wax and 200 miles of countryside roads...life does not get much better for this enthusiast

 

Love this thread. I'll be there soon enough. My two daughters love to help in the garage, but are about 10 years short of driving. With luck, they will learn to drive on the 993.

I'm curious, what did you do for the following. Seems most don't do this as part of regular maintenance.
-> DME Replacement
-> New interior carpets

 

The removable interior carpets were the originals and since the kids no longer fit in the back seat, ordered the shelf carpet that goes in place with the rear seatbacks in the down position along with the four replaceable mats.

Replaced the DME Relay since the one there was probably the original. This is my 7th 993...my 2nd one left me stranded in the desert between LA and LV....the car just stalled after hitting a pothole....AAA tow and 8 hours later...a new DME did the trick....I make a point to replace them for peace of mind more than anything and always keep a spare in the glovebox.

 

The rear shelf

 

Nice to hear all is well Bart! Car looks great and drove well last summer when I was behind the wheel.