Cleared the MAF and Airbag codes and they have not returned...yet.
Add to the s-list:
Passenger seat power tilt goes up, but not down. Naturally it is now tilted all the way up. Also, both seats emit...unattractive noises while power sliding. There is a Porsche TSB for this, naturally.
At this point, the seats could probably come out for some PM.
The power seat switch assembly is an eye-watering $400, so it will definitely be a repair vs replace scenario.
Before you replace the switch, check the drive cables under the seat. They will sometimes become unseated from the gear mechanism, and only move the seat one way. The motors are quiet, and can lead you to believe there's no power going to them, when in fact there is.
My 996 C2 had the same issue occasionally. I'd just have to reach under the seat and snap it back into place. I never came up with a permanent solution, mostly because the seat was never moved by anyone riding shotgun.
Don't skip brake day, bros. Good day to do some work in the tiny rental garage, so I don't have to move all these parts.
Alignment feels off...but it was pretty easily to visually confirm.
Right side strut mount:
Left side strut mount:
Hovercraft mode:
Calipers are ready for fresh paint. I recreated the decal with Oracal 751 vinyl on my cutter. It's supposed to be good for several hundred degrees F. The material was hard to work with, consistency of semi-wet paint. I cut about 50 of these and these are the best 4. 75mm wide by 6.5mm high. Porsche SK .ttf. a 14" wide x 10' long roll of Oracal cost me the same as what these commonly available decals would have: ~$20. I have plenty left and will give them away for the cost of shipping.
Used VHT caliper paint with VHT clearcoat over the vinyl. I'm not happy with the finish. Next time I do brake service I'll blast it. It came out orange peeled. Probably nobody but you and I will ever notice, but I'm a perfectionist.
Not much posting because I've been busy working on the car and house renovation planning. A few quick updates, to be replaced with actual pictures later:
If you're at the Mitty or the One Porsche Drive event on Friday, say hi. I'll be camping in the infield in the vicinty of T9.
edit...a few objective Porsche revelations.
example....crimp bent coolant hardline on the left side of the here engine to clear a fuel line or something, reducing radius to less than 50%.
lots of plastic...everyone knows Germans are great at plastic, right?
As I approached driving age in the Clinton era, rumors of WW2 jeeps still packed in Cosmoline still circulated. Clearly false, because we left all remaining stockpiles of the stuff in West Germany via the Berlin airlift.
996s are coated in Cosmoline, and that stuff looks like fried hell from new. The Bentley manual looks like the M96 in the photographs was retrieved from a dredging operation in the Baltic. It hits me right in the OCDs.
In the genius column:
A couple of updates.
Got my first case of bad M96 'noids. I was just going to do wheels/tires/brakes, drive it to the Mitty, and save the IMS job for the new garage in a couple of months.
Go to start the car after sitting two weeks and it sounds like this:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/6uPewHTOhRI7sUt03
NOT good...panic mode set in. I decided that emergency surgery was warranted.
I pulled the accessory belt first and found the waterpump to be 'graunchy.' I even got 8-10 drips of black water when I wiggled the pulley around.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/4SXTv9Xb02YjKQd53
Luckily, that turned out to be the source of the noise and was an easy fix. I went ahead and did a low temp thermostat while I was at it. These cars operate somewhere near the ragged edge of hot by nature.
So after that little incident, I also pulled the plugs and borescoped the cylinders. All looked good there. No issues, no scoring.
Dropped the sump -- nothing alarming there. A little bit of black gunk after 120k miles, but no chunks or sparkles. The three little flecks in the middle were thankfully RTV.
After that was cleaned up and reglued, I filled it back up with oil and water and it sounded fine. Disaster narrowly averted. Glad I didn't set off on a long road trip with that water pump and super glad the engine is fine.
I decided that if the water pump could fail between drive cycles with no other indicators, I wasn't going to gable on the IMS and started taking things apart.
So the back half the engine looked good -- fairly and clean and dry. Spoiler alert -- the original IMS looked perfect and was tight as ever. Debated whether to just put it back together, but figure that at this point the car will be worth more when I sell it due to the documented replacement. Unfortunately, my borrowed LN IMS Pro tool kit was missing a necessary part for the extraction, so I'm waiting on that and I will not be driving this car to the Mitty until next year.
While I wait on the tool, I decided to tackle another project: Lack of heat.
If you're wearing a white shirt in a 996 and turn the fan on full blast, you'll be peppered with foam bits. Coincidentally, I noticed that the heat is really inadequate even though the car runs pretty hot.
Presumably because it's a Porsche and lightness matters, they decided to put "speed holes" in the blend door and then coat that whole business in foam. Once the foam is gone, the blend door might as well not be there.
In the Genius column, Porsche made the heater core modular and accessible from the cowl. In the Ridiculous column, the blend door isn't serviceable....technically.
That's where the dremel comes in handy. After disconnecting the servo form the door inside the car, you can extract the bushing and see how it fits and how big it is. Then you can grind off the top of the pivot from the outside of the air handler and pull the top bushing out and extract the door through the heater core access.
From there, a really methodical job of covering the blend door in Gorilla tape is all the remains to be done to restore the blend door to its former glory.
This is the blend door pivot at the top left of the heater core slot:
A little dremel action, just until you start to see the bore open up, then clean it up with a knife:
View of the naked blend door -- should be completely covered in foam.
lots of blend, not much door.
Hey man I'm in Knox if you ever need a hand just holler. Knox area code 227 9243. I'd also LOVE some of those Porsche decals if you have any left.
Coming along nicely!
I think the Cosmoline coatings stem from the German obsession with undercoating everything since at least the 70s due to the amount of road salt that was used at the time. I remember my stepdad changing front fenders on out Volvo 144 about every two years because the turn signals had rusted out of the fender again.
Most of the cars built into the late 70s rusted like nobody's business until the big manufacturers started undercoating and cosmolining everything and used tons of cavity wax, too. Heck, Mk2 Golf/Rabbits would leak cavity wax on hot days for years.
Extracted the old IMS today. Just like the 996: Looks a lot bigger on the internet than it does IRL.
(new LN Single Row Pro bearing shown for scale.) Old bearing was JUST FINE and probably good for the life of the car. After the old bearing popped out, there was a relief of JANKY oil that was stuck in the IMS shaft, which is supposed to be dry. It was about a pint of oil, and smelled like the whiffs you get when you take apart the mains on on an engine. Old.
Strangely, once the bearing was out, there was a significant release of oil from the left side hydraulic tensioner bore as well. That thing has been draining for days and is higher than the IMS in the case....I don't know how that works.
octavious said:Hey man I'm in Knox if you ever need a hand just holler. Knox area code 227 9243. I'd also LOVE some of those Porsche decals if you have any left.
Thanks for the offer. Careful, I might take you up on it! I cut a whole sheet of decals, but had a lot of waste to get 4 perfect cuts. The material is hard to work with. I'm sure I have some left or I can cut some more. I'll text you after I get my tools put away and this thing is driving again. :)
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