1990 Porsche 911 C2, A Story

Just gonna leave this here... not affiliated, not mine, yada, yada... http://www.ebay.com/itm/Porsche-911-964-944-968-Turn-Signal-Wiper-switch-/221208049543?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&hash=item338106f787&vxp=mtr

I've looked at those on eBay. My concern is that I'm getting a switch that only has another 10k miles of switching left and then I'm right back in the same place. I really want to drill out the rivets and come up with a fix. I have a friend of a friend with a 3d scanner and printer and I'm wondering if that might be a solution. It's a little plastic piece that should cost $5. Even making one at a time should cost less than $30. It's on my project list.

mazdeuce wrote: I've looked at those on eBay. My concern is that I'm getting a switch that only has another 10k miles of switching left and then I'm right back in the same place. I really want to drill out the rivets and come up with a fix. I have a friend of a friend with a 3d scanner and printer and I'm wondering if that might be a solution. It's a little plastic piece that should cost $5. Even making one at a time should cost less than $30. It's on my project list.

The concern you have is valid - but if you put a relay on the headlamp circuit so you are not switching the full current across those contacts all the time I imagine you get a much longer life span.

I figured if you got one off ebay for $25-100, and it worked for a while... you could drill out the rivets on that one with only a little risk. If it didn't quite fit your application due to connectors or something - you could make one good one from the two and still only be out the cost of the ebay part. That one was an exact fit but the rest of the 924/944 family looks very similar and much cheaper.

I'm sure that's where I'll end up because I don't want the down time. Right now the only thing in the whole module that doesn't work is the left cancel. Brights are back working and the cruise is even operational. The biggest thing on my list is the stupid $800 blower motor. It's pretty frustrating to read threads on Pelican and Rennlist from 2006 complaining about how they were up to $130 and how that was expensive. Some places are listing them at almost $1000 a side. Somebody must be working on a better solution.

Can you install new brushes in it? I got some vacuum cleaner brushes from a hardware store with a huge selection of those little bins full of parts and used them to fix a similarly expensive Mercedes blower motor.

Lookie here, I found the old DIY guide I made for the procedure: http://forums4.pelicanparts.com/Wikka/W123BlowerBrush

In reply to mazdeuce:

I'm bleary and don't really know what I'm looking at, but I went to try to find pictures to see whether there was anything special looking since $800 motors sound an awful lot like an opportunity to provide a $400 substitute with lots of room for profit, and I immediately found this for much less: partsgeek Porsche blower motor.

NINJEDIT: that does appear to just be the engine compartment unit, and though I haven't been following closely, it's not the engine compartment where the not-under-the-dash one resides, is it?

Is that coil/tube shape a resistor for alternate speeds integral to the motor? That's not where these things fail, is it? Seems like in vehicles where that's a separate item not mounted on the motor, twelve of them fail for every motor, and that's without being mounted directly to a source of vibration...

Anyhow, at $800 it sure looks like you could be building a TIGed aluminum carrier with a big brushless motor powered by the electronics to drive it and still have budget left over. I recognize (and fully understand) the desire to use Proper Porsche Bits, but that's looking pretty nutty, especially in the face of them being apparently a fairly common failure?

The failure is in the bearings of the motor apparently. And yes, it's the forward under the front hood motor for the heat/AC and there are two of them. If you pay someone to replace both the job is in excess of $2k. It's nutty. I'd love to work with someone to find a solution, there is money to be made here. Oh, and to complicate things, left and right blower motors are different. Sweet German engineering right there.

mazdeuce wrote: The failure is in the bearings of the motor apparently. And yes, it's the forward under the front hood motor for the heat/AC and there are two of them. If you pay someone to replace both the job is in excess of $2k. It's nutty. I'd love to work with someone to find a solution, there is money to be made here. Oh, and to complicate things, left and right blower motors are different. Sweet German engineering right there.

IIRC the only difference is in the direction of the fins on the squirrel cage.

The motors are Bosch and I am sure that there is a VW, BMW, Merc or Saab with a part that would work, maybe with some massaging. A DC motor shop could probably refresh the one that is in there too. Even getting one from a salvage yard and having it refurb'd is going to be a quarter of the cost of a new one.

$800 is re-goddamn-diculous. Any motor/squirrel combo of the approximate size to fit in the case could be made to work with a bracket to center it in there. That would be an excellent use of the 3d printer!

If it is just the bushings, there's an interesting comment on the Pelican rear blower motor replacement article where a fellow bored out the housing and pressed in needle bearings. I'm not sure A) whether the grit I expect to be here makes this a bad idea, or B) whether the shaft is smooth/hard enough for this to work properly, but it's intriguing.

Anyhow, it's an interesting problem; there's gotta be a better/cheaper solution, but I'll stop bombing your thread with my pondering unless I come up with something really useful...

In ref to the turn signal not canceling...

In my car, there is a litle plastic piece, with a little metal tab on it located on the steering column behind the wheel. Then there is a tab on the steering wheel. Once you signal and the turn the wheel to straighten out, the metal tab on the wheel hits the metal tab on the column and cancels the signal.

Might be a long shot but have you checked the connections and wiring on the column and back of the wheel.

Also, I do not know if the 964 is the same as my car because you have airbags and such.

octavious wrote: In ref to the turn signal not canceling...

On the 964 the turn signal unit has a little tab that sticks out and contacts a corresponding tab thingy on the steering wheel. When you put the signal on it sticks out farther and becomes floppy in one direction and firm in the other. (there's a joke here somewhere) Turn the wheel one way and it just flips by, turn it the other and it cancels. If you take the wheel and the switch assembly off you can play with it and get a feel for it. Right now, the right turn takes just a little pressure to cancel. Good. The left turn pushes and pushes and deflects out of the way before it cancels. You can cancel it with your finger when it's all apart, but the tab on the wheel doesn't have the same reach. I'm pretty sure that even making the tab thicker wouldn't help. Once I get brave enough to drill out the rivets and get inside the switch I'll take some pictures and try to come up with a solution.

ransom wrote: If it is just the bushings, there's an interesting comment on the Pelican *rear* blower motor replacement article where a fellow bored out the housing and pressed in needle bearings. I'm not sure A) whether the grit I expect to be here makes this a bad idea, or B) whether the shaft is smooth/hard enough for this to work properly, but it's intriguing. Anyhow, it's an interesting problem; there's gotta be a better/cheaper solution, but I'll stop bombing your thread with my pondering unless I come up with something really useful...

I appreciate your ponderings. I'm thinking I should put feelers out on Pelican for an old dead blower motor to experiment with while mine is on it's last legs. Hopefully I can come up with something before it dies. As GPS says, pretty much anything should work, the speed is regulated through voltage in the control unit. It gets between 2v and 14v. Pretty much any blower with a squirrel cage should work as long as it can be made to physically fit.

If/when you go looking for a parts bin replacement, you should check out www.surpluscenter.com

Here's one that might work: http://www.surpluscenter.com/item.asp?item=16-1406&catname=

That looks an aweful lot like the blower from a 2nd gen RX7.

wvumtnbkr wrote: That looks an aweful lot like the blower from almost any car in the junkyard.

FTFY.

The other thing I did last weekend was continue to fix the AC that works. Along with the blower motors that are dying, I was having some erratic behavior from the fan under the left front fender that keeps the condenser happy. What's supposed to happen is the fan is supposed to come on at low speed when you turn on the AC, and switch to high speed if it detects that things are a bit too warm. It does this detecting by means of a resistor that is quite failure prone. When it fails it freaks out the computer and the computer responds by switching the fan between high and off every couple of seconds, which is exactly what mine was doing.
The resistor was something like $87 from Pelican. In order to get to the old one you have to jack up the car, pull off the wheel and pull out the front part of the wheel liner. The condenser is right there, but the resistor is on the wrong side to make it easy to get to.

It's right up there on the top and it's even harder to get to than it looks. It's held on with a 4mm allen head bolt. The problem is that it's so close to the rest of the car that none of the tools I had with a 4mm allen on them fit. I resorted to cobbling this little guy together.

Which worked as perfectly as it could given the confines. I could move the bolt exactly one flat before I had to reset the tool. It was not a particularly fun time. Eventually the old resistor came out. Looks a bit broken next to the new one.

I gave the bolt a quick wire brushing and used some anti seize while putting it back together in hopes that the next time I have to do this I can just loosen it a bit and spin it out with my fingers. While I was in there I decided to pull the rear fender liner part out and have a look see at the AC drier. Fun fact time: crude oil straight from the ground fluoresces under a UV light. If you find yourself a geologist that has to look at core or cuttings from oil wells very often you might find that they have access to a UV light. This is useful because the dye they put in AC systems to diagnose leaks is a UV dye. I just happen to be married to a geologist that has a UV light on her key chain. Pretty handy. A quick check revealed that my suspected AC leak is not the condenser or the dryer or any of their associated hoses or O rings. While this is nice, it means that if the system leaks down then it's probably the evaporator which is buried deep withing the bowels of the car. Fantastic.
Before reassembling everything was thoroughly washed and treated with the appropriate protectant.

The left front liners are missing a few screws and clips and such. The good news is that Porsche doesn't make their own screws, so you don't really have to buy replacements from them. A little sleuthing has let me to figure out what I need and I'll talk more about that when I go to put them on. The only other thing I did last weekend was fix the cruise control. Everything I read said to check the clutch switch. It was basically the first thing I did when I got home with the car and limped out to work on it. I pulled the floorboard and checked and the clutch was actuating the switch. Since then I've spent a bunch of time trying to figure out what was causing the cruise not to work. Finally in desperation I pulled the floor board back off to check and see if I could do a continuity check of the switch or something. It turns out that while the clutch was actuating the switch, it wasn't actuating it enough. A little bend and we're back in business. Having cruise makes me happy. I really would have made me happy before driving 1600 miles across the country, but now I really appreciate the fact that it's back.

A suggestion you can try if you ever come across the 4mm allen bolt situation again...

I use a 1/4" ratcheting box wrench with a drop of superglue to hold in 1/4" drive adapters (like phillips head bits, flat heads, torx bits, etc...). It keeps the adapter from falling out AND it will ratchet. It might have been helpful in this case.

The superglue will chip right off when you are done. Just make sure you don't get it IN the ratchet mechanism.

Rob R.

Two weeks ago I sent Keys 4 Classics in Australia a note inquiring about getting a spare key or two cut. Another member on this thread suggested that I contact them (I forget who, but thank you) and I'm glad I did. They got right back to me with a quote, I sent them some money and a picture and I waited. Today I got this in the mail.

The envelope contained two keys, guaranteed to work, and the Porsche code that my keys were cut to. Before I even made it into the house I checked both keys in the ignition and both of them worked as advertised. For less than the cost of two genuine Porsche blanks, without shipping, I have two new keys that I don't have to get cut and wonder if the cutter can do the job without ruining them.
If you need keys for one of the cars that they cover, mostly older and European, then I can heartily endorse them.

The last thing that I was looking at under the car last weekend was the front struts. There's no indication that they're anything but the originals though I don't have any complaints with how the car drives. They are wearing different springs. Eibach EW7201001VA. A quick google search doesn't turn up much, only that they are lowering springs for a 964. I already knew that much. GPS said they are the same rate at stock, just lower and that's a pretty good guess. The dust boots have seen much better days and there are no bump stops. Pelican says that the car came with bump stops, but it looks like they were tossed somewhere along the way. I'm not super ready to tear the struts apart just to fix the boots and add bump stops, but somewhere in the future this will be addressed.

Good to know on the key thing I might use them on the GT6.

I'm pretty sure that the top of that dust shield IS the bumpstop, isn't it?

Nope, though it may have once sat on top of it. My assumption is that the bump stops went away when the springs went on in an attempt to preserve some sort of up travel. The car rides nice so it's probably not a huge problem, but I dislike the complete absence of any bump stop in an application designed for one.

On earlier torsion bar sprung 911s you typically trim the bump stop so that it is there but still allows travel on a lowered car. Koni's are the easiest as they look like a stack of 4 donuts. I usually remove the bottom two when going to Euro or lower height.

glad you are still happy with the 964.

I know a lot of times GRM doesn’t do TV, but the story of your wife loving this thing reminded me of the episode of Modern Family where Phil buys a 911. His wife mocks him for having a midlife crisis until she gets in it and drives it for a day, at which point she falls in love with it too.

Really cool car. Glad to see somebody with a bunch of little kids driving one of these, too- gives me hope for myself. :)