Well, it ran and drove when I bought it. A Porsche 924s tale...

Hoping that the 4th time is a charm for a build thread. My previous attempts (BMW, Audi, Porsche 924) all ended more quickly than originally intended.

This will pick-up where my first Porsche 924 thread ended, with the purchase last year of a 1988 Porsche 924s.

While the car had been well-loved at one point in its life - regular maintenance, R134a conversion for the A/C - more recent ownership was a bit sketchier.

First order of business was an afternoon of catch-up maintenance:

• Front brake pads were wasted (the owner left me a set of new NAPA pads), but the rears looked new (this will be important later)
• Brake fluid was black and chunky when I flushed it
• Caliper hardware needed to be cut out to replace the pads, and was replaced (Porsche uses two pins to hold the pads in, and they were rusted solid)
• Oil filter removal required a hammer, a screwdriver, and a lot of clean-up afterward

I did manage to drive it around for about a month, even made it to one of the kid's baseball game.

Got it up to highway speed once - wicked vibration over 50 mph (no-name front tires and snows on the back), the odometer didn't work, and the brakes were still kind of mushy.

Although there were plenty of mechanical things to worry about, I decided to address tunes first. The non-original radio in the car sort of worked, but was really quiet.

Turns out that the front speaker cones had disintegrated. Found a pair of Pioneers on Crutchfield that fit the somewhat shallow confines of the front doors (most modern speakers were too thick, and I wanted to keep stock mounting hardware), and added a more modern (and reasonably inexpensive) head unit that gave me Bluetooth capability.

The wiring in the car was only a minor hack-job done by a previous owner, so installation was pretty straightforward.

With winter coming, I parked the car, but pulled the speedometer to see about fixing the odometer. 

Bought new gears from odomeetergears.com and replaced everything. Tested with a drill and saw numbers advance, so I'm calling that a win.

More to add once I get the pictures off of my phone...

Continuing with the story...

Weak-sounding door chime and no dome light? Look to a corroded door switch!

This is where having a parts car comes in handy (I kept the '79 for a while as a parts donor). Although there are really no similarities between the '79 924 and '88 924s in terms of engine and drivetrain, just about all of the body stuff swaps right over. The '79 was from a drier climate and so it gave up its door switch for the cause. Lo and behold, the dome light now worked and the door chime was as loud and annoying as designed.

One bummer from upgrading the audio system - I cannot use the library of tunes that I found in the car. Porsche was nice enough to include a cassette organizer in the center armrest, complete with "period correct" tunage:

But I digress, on to why the car became a non-runner...

Fast-forward to May 2022, when the salt has been washed off of New England roads and a man's fancy turns to sports cars.

Nice spring day, time to take the car out for a spin. Check fluids and find that the master cylinder is completely dry, and all of the paint has been stripped off of the brake booster. Here's what it looked like when I took the reservoir off:

Seal completely Berkeleyed

Booster not looking too happy, either

I figured if the brake master cylinder was this roached (and remembering the prior year's black and chunky brake fluid), I might as well replace everything hydraulic in the car.

Remember those brand-new looking rear brake pads? Yeah, it's because the rear calipers weren't doing anything (except leaking and stripping paint off of the back of the pads)

At this point, it was time to activate direct deposit of my paycheck to Porsche parts suppliers and start replacing stuff:

Original-looking rear shocks came out, replaced with Koni Sports:

Front struts basically fell apart when I disassembled them (replaced by Konis as well):

"Rebuilt" the strut housings and brake dust shields:

"Bag of Evaporust" for the tops of the struts before painting:

Part casualty when pulling the rear disks - one of the retainer springs broke that holds a parking-brake shoe in place. Tried my hand at welding it back together (and it still seems to be holding):

Front hubs looked nasty, but cleaned-up ok (and I put in new bearings and new rotors):

New braided stainless lines replaced the gross old rubber lines

I had a "spare" brake booster (purchased when I thought I was going to keep the '79, but convert it to disk brakes) that I cleaned up and painted, and installed brake and clutch master cylinders and a new clutch slave cylinder. I made sure to buy extra nuts and washers for mounting the brake booster, as it was easy to drop hardware behind the carpet while working on my back with my head under the dash trying to reach stuff high on the firewall, but I got it done!

Filled and bled the system, time for a test drive...

Except, not. Engine crank, no start. Smelled like fuel. Stay tuned...

Parts car went away. SWMBO was tired of looking at 2 non-running cars in the driveway (and I couldn't blame her), so I had the '79 shell hauled off after I stripped it out a bit. I sold the interior to somebody on a 924 Forum, pulled the dogleg 5-sped and torque tube (they're for sale if anybody knows anybody who wants them), pulled off marker lights and electrical connectors, and harvested some sheet metal to eventually fix a couple of rust spots on the '88, including both front fenders (and both doors, just because). Spent a little time with a cut-off wheel, too...

That will probably be a "next year" project.

Got fresh tires - Vredstein Quatrac in a 205/60-15 . One of the few V-rated tires in a 15" size and I went up in width from the stock 195/65-15 and cleaned-up the stock phone dials a bit. They could stand to be re-finished, but not on this go-around.

The PO had replaced the underlying shift lever:

but it was hitting the metal on the side of the tunnel (see all the missing paint), so I installed a short shift kit to take up the slop at the transmission end (which I thought I took pictures of, but I guess I didn't). Anyway, that seemed to have cured the shifter situation, so I rewarded the car with a new inner boot and a "custom" leather boot (the old ones fell apart when I went to take the shifter off)

I also replaced the plastic shift surround (the PO had the old one held in with self-tapping screws because a couple of the tabs had broken off) and a new piece of carpet for the console.

Put the car on all fours after a year in the air (needs a bath):

Drive belts squealed when I drove it last year, so I replaced belts (and needed to replace a tensioner rod in the process):

Also replaced the spark plugs, plug wires, cap, and rotor. Still not starting.

Everything I read on-line pointed to the ECM not getting signals from a couple of pulse senders located on the back of the head. The connectors crumbled when I went to check signals, so it seemed like a plausible failure mode.

"Easy to reach" location (the long "heater hose" pliers I just got from Harbor Freight were the ticket for pulling the old sensors out.

 Yeah, that doesn't look too happy:

That's better:

Once I got the new sensors in and connected correctly, IT STARTED AND RAN!!!

Took it up the street just to check how things worked (we're on a dead end, off of a dead end with a cul-de-sac). Clutch pick-up was good, but brake pedal travel was a bit longer than I like. Will plan to re-bleed the system and maybe adjust the push-rod going into the booster.

The oil pressure gauge was always a little flaky, so I bought a new sender. On my short test drive, the oil light started flashing, too, even though the gauge was reading good, so I shut it off and put it back in the air to do an oil change and replace the oil pressure sender - it's under that oily mess with the two wires connected to it.

You can sort of get to the sender from underneath - 24mm open-end wrench needed to loosen it, shortened 24m wrench needed to tighten it (thank goodness for $12 Husky wrenches from Home Depot that I don't mind cutting in half).

And then I made my $100 mistake...

After spending hours contorting myself to get the sender itself tightened, I over-torqued the little electrical connector and snapped it off.

So, now I wait for another new sender to arrive so I can replace it again, put oil in the car and see if the flashing light goes away. In the meantime, I was able to scrub the under-tray and also notice the myriad of oil leaks on the bottom of the engine, all of which I'm going to pretend I didn't see until I'm ready to do a complete engine re-seal (which won't be any time soon)..

With luck I'll actually be able to drive the car before the snow flies this year.

Thanks for reading this far. Thanks, too, to all of you whose build threads I've read over the years with far more ambitious projects than this one who make it seem easy and who provide motivation to keep plugging away at things (whether you know it or not) - like irish44j's old 924s thread which provided me the strut assembly picture I needed to get myself un-stuck during my reassembly process..

When folks ask how I "learned" to mess with cars, I tell them that the first step is to give up the fear of turning a wrench - there's always a car community that can help with questions and provide guidance. And yes, you may break things along the way, but it's all part of the process.

While I'm waiting for a new oil pressure sender to arrive, I took care of a coupe of other items:

Brakes - Did another round of bleeding and got a major air bubble out of one of the lines. NOW the pedal feels like I think it should. 

Interior - One of the dash vents was missing a few of its vanes. I had harvested the vents out of the '79 before it went away, and while they're a slightly different style, if you replace BOTH center vents as a pair, it doesn't look that off - here's the "new" vents installed and what they replaced:

The clock was also harvested from the parts car as the one that came with this car didn't work. The font is slightly different, but I don't really care. I like to have a working clock in the car. I have a VDO voltmeter that would fit the dash opening, but I find the audible "tick-tick" from this style clock to be vaguely reassuring.

The steering wheel is a "period" upgrade - I originally bought this wheel for my 1971 BMW 2002 back in the early 90s when I turned it into an ITB race car. I think this is the 4th car to have the wheel. The diameter is slightly smaller than the stock Porsche wheel, so it's easier to get in and out of the car with this wheel. I haven't pulled the driver's seat yet to see if there are spacers installed like there were in the '79. They should come out if they're there.

I also installed the phone cradle I bought for myself last Christmas. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a cradle for a Motorola MicroTac to keep things "in period", but the MicroTac can't run Waze (or connect to any modern digital cellular network).  

Having an issue with the horn - the steering wheel hub doesn't seem to be grounding solidly, so the horn's not sounding. I have power to the button, the horn sounds when I jump it to ground, so I know the horn relay and the horn itself work. I don't remember if it worked with the stock steering wheel, either, but there is a good likelihood that there's a missing ground somewhere for the steering column.

If it's like my 951's, you need to add the ground for a momo type wheel to work.  I can't quite remember what part I used but it was from another Porsche.  If you search the 944 turbo forum on rennlist for my momo steering wheel diy you'll find what you need.

In reply to docwyte :

I'll have a look for it. I was hoping that it was going to be plug and play with the hub adapter (like it was for the other cars this has been in with their hub adapters), but I guess Porsche has to be different..

Installed the new oil pressure sender and did NOT over-torque the electrical connections this time. Also re-made a nasty-looking ground wire that went from the steering rack to the subframe. Re-installed the under-tray, too, using closer to the correct number of bolts than were in it when I took it out.

The oil pressure gauge no longer pegs full-scale, which is the main reason I looked to replace the sender in the first place, but now I've got a new issue (and I saw this last week, actually, before I put the new sender in). On cold start, the gauge reads good oil pressure, with no light son the dash, but as soon as I start to move, the red oil light on the dash starts blinking. Gauge pressure still looks good, so I'm not sure what the issue is. I may have to pull the cluster for the 100th time to see if I missed a ground wire the last few times I pulled the cluster out.

Because the oil pressure gauge was still reading solid pressure, I did take the car around the block - brakes are still a bit squishy, but I haven't really pu them through any heat cycles, so I'm going to leave them be for a bit. I can confirm that the odometer works now, so I actually did fix at least one thing in the car. Alignment is messed-up - probably from having the struts in and out with new eccentric bolts.

The car is back on all fours, though, so that's something.

Every 924 I've had had those seat spacers, never thought of taking them out.

This was a great read. Following. 

I would love to see update from you.

Cured a couple of things:

1. Flashing oil light - Turns out the car has an oil level sensor which is causing the flashing oil light. Oil is clean and full, so it's either the sensor or the wiring. Grounded the lead from the sensor and the light stayed out, so it's likely the sensor. Since new sensors cost ~$300, the wire will stay grounded. I can check the dipstick periodically.
2. The horn - This is a non-airbag car, so the ground is supposed to go through the column itself. I replaced the ground from the rack to the subframe, but that didn't help. I believe there are supposed to be a couple of short straps across each of the universal joints in the column, and had I realized that when the brake booster was out, it would have been an easy fix. With the booster in the way, it's harder to get to the column (and I'm NOT taking the booster out again). Came up with a way to wrap a ground strap around a visible piece of the column that works for now, and should get me through inspection. It can't be too dumb of an idea if it works, right?   With a working horn and no blinking oil lights, I decided to take a little drive in the car and put a splash of fresh fuel in it. Ran beautifully, heat works, but the brakes are still a little squishy.

Put fuel in the car and then it wouldn't start (still cranked strong). Random guy at the gas station happened to be a mechanic and had a spark tester with him - no spark, and no tach bounce. We pushed the car into a parking spot and I started fiddling with the reference sensor connectors. Eventually the car started and I drove it home. Shut it off and tried to restart it and again got the crank/no start/no tach bounce. Current theory is that one of the brand new sensors I installed has a thermal issue. Waited about 20 minutes and it started right back up. Hoping to get the car through inspection tomorrow so it will be legal to drive, which will be fine if they never shut it off :-). Need to get a can of freeze spray to confirm the heating theory, or maybe just buy another sensor. The pair I put in were the cheapest aftermarket offerings, so I might just be getting what I paid for...

Who's legal to drive? You, yes you, are legal to drive..

Fortunately, the inspection station is close enough to home that the engine never really warmed-up, eliminating the threat of the hot-no-start issue :-)

I hadn't looked through this thread before.  Cool little rolling resto project. And it's got Phonedials!

Nice pick up. I love my 924s. And of course the 88 is the best year because of that extra 5 horsepower :) 

Those reference sensors suuuuuck. Also make sure you tighten them down well because mine got loose and was hitting against the flywheel teeth and causing an occasional no start condition.

Hope you have not read through it. I have a pretty extensive build thread on mine. It's mixed in with my BMW Rally car build, but there's a good 6 months worth of pretty much pure 924 content.

By the way, happen to have a driver's outside door handle you're interested in selling? :)

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

My favorite no start was a 944 (it is LIKE a 924s, yeah?) a friend bought as a non runner.  Crank it long enough and it would set a crank sensor fault or something.  PO threw a bunch of new crank sensors and ignition parts at it.  We were talking about it at a get together, so I asked to see him crank it over, and something looked wrong...

Bosch used generic housings for their starters and the automakers would build their engines or transmissions to suit.  So the wrong starter will bolt up.  Like, say, a starter that rotates the other direction.  I am thinking it was a 924 starter since they mounted the other way.

Swapped a 944 starter in so the engine turned the correct way and it fired right up.    The PO probably changed the starter and then the durn thing quit running.

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

Hope you have not read through it. I have a pretty extensive build thread on mine. It's mixed in with my BMW Rally car build, but there's a good 6 months worth of pretty much pure 924 content.

By the way, happen to have a driver's outside door handle you're interested in selling? :)

Actually, I did read through your 924s content and learned a few things :-)

I pulled both doors complete from the '79. I'm assuming it's the same door handle... I'll send you a PM. 

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Early 944 with the 2.5 is basically identical mechanically to the 924S in twrms of wngien, transmission, etc.

I did not realize that the early 924 starter spins a different direction??

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

It bolts to the engine like an Audi, not under the bellhousing facing the other way like a 944, by fuzzy memory.

Either way, his cheap 944 was cranking like it thought it was a Honda 

btw, I may have missed it, but if you haven't done it (yet), definitely look into doing the Only944.com shift linkages (front and rear). They made a HUGE difference in the shifter slop, especialy the rear linkages at the transaxle. 

Nice save!  This is awesome.

I've had a couple of CPS sensors fail like yours...work fine when cold, rail when hot, starts right up again when it cools enough.  Physically, they looked completely fine.  I did bench test one of them and that confirmed it had failed.

Please keep the updates coming!

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

btw, I may have missed it, but if you haven't done it (yet), definitely look into doing the Only944.com shift linkages (front and rear). They made a HUGE difference in the shifter slop, especialy the rear linkages at the transaxle. 

The PO had replaced the front already, but did something wrong and the shifter was hitting the side of the tunnel. I installed the short shifter at the rear and it really does shift nice now.

In reply to Shifted :

I've got another sensor on order (sprang for a Bosch this time), and will carry it, my long pliers, and a 10mm socket with all the extensions so I can swap sensors "in the field" if need be. Of course, the one that's failing is the one closest to the firewall, so I'll need to have my universal joint as well. Really should get a 10mm crowfoot wrench to make it easier on myself...

Achievement unlocked!

Drove the car to the office today. This marks the longest single drive I've taken the car on since I've owned it. I'm only in the office Tuesdays and Thursdays, and there's bad weather expected Thursday (and I'm off next week), so this was the last chance to achieve my goal this year! I took my mostly-back-road route, which also happens to go past Boston Sportscar, a vintage Ferrari repair shop, so the scenery is always interesting. In the fall, there's a great spot for foliage pics on this route, but I'm too late for it this year, so looking at old Ferraris will have to do. I did have the car up to highway speeds on part of the drive. No weird noises, temperatures and pressures were fine, and the roads felt fast at legal speeds, 

Some observations:

• While the kid liked being dropped off at school by a "cool" car, it is pretty low, so his exit from it in front of the high school wasn't exactly graceful :-)
• Alignment needs some attention
• Still has the hot/no-start issue, so the one new sensor didn't fix anything. Maybe it's the other sensor? Anyway, it should have cooled down enough by quitting time today to start up again to get me home (and I have AAA+ in case it doesn't)
• The trip odometer seems to be recording ok, but the main odometer looks like it's doing some mechanical randomization. I probably Berkeleyed-up something when I had it apart last year, but that's a "to do later" thing (title already has an odometer inoperative brand)
• Recent rains had washed away any salt that was put down late last week from out first snowfall, EXCEPT for the parking lot at work. Not happy with that.
• The car looks quite petite in the parking lot when surrounded by modern cars. It doesn't feel small when I drive it, but it's interesting to see how cars have "bulked-up" over the last 30+ years - even compact and sporty cars.

Looking forward to the drive home this evening. Pop-up headlights FTW!

When I had my LS 951 I was on grid at the track next to a new Boss 302 mustang and it just dwarfed my car....