924Board.org

[Beartooth]

Well, I'm still plodding away, hopefully getting close to being roadworthy. I've got a set of tires to mount when I get around to it, got one caliper rebuilt and painted, got a bunch of parts to refresh and reseal the transaxle and wheel hubs. I cleaned out the front hubs and repacked the wheel bearings. I wrecked one of the outer wheel bearings trying to use it to pull the seal out (I've found that's the only way to get the inner bearing out on my Mercedes, sometimes you can reuse the seal if you get a straight pull). The cage pulled off and just the inner race popped out. And then I find that the seals pop out easily by prying on the lip... So I put one new bearing and race in, but not a case of "probably needed it anyway;" the other bearings all looked great.

The disks are in rough shape - a little shy of minimum thickness - but they should work until I decide what's next. I got the ignition switch and turn signal switch replaced. The turn signal switch is an aftermarket replacement from RockAuto - one of the off-brands, but the part itself was made in Germany and had "Meyle" etched on it - it doesn't fit perfectly, the plastic through-holes are a little off, but I got it in and it seems to work. The genuine replacement is NLA, and I'm not sure if the KMM brand that's listed but out of stock is any different. Hopefully it holds up; it doesn't look like there's a better option out there.

Most of the work I've been doing recently has been on the turbo, and the gory details of that are covered in my thread in the 931 Tech section. That's all mounted up and should just need some finishing touches to be road worthy. Most recently, I decided to take the vacuum hoses and components apart and replace all the hoses. I'm still getting a big bog just past idle, and it takes some playing on the throttle to get it to rev past it. I haven't found anything that looks like a definite leak point, but I did find that the vacuum lines at the distributor were reversed. The port on the throttle body (pretty sure that's a "timed" port, closed until the throttle is opened part way) ran to the underside of the vacuum pot and T'd off to the vapor canister servo valve, while the line going to the constant vacuum side was connected to the top side. If I'm reading the sticker under the hood right, the timed port goes to the top of the vacuum servo on the distributor, and the underside port should be connected to manifold vacuum.

One other thing that I don't think would have anything to do with the bogging is that I have the port to the charcoal canister (or maybe it's that servo) on the air flow sensing assembly, just under the air flow plate, plugged off. I think that allows the slight negative pressure in the air flow sensing assembly to pull fuel vapors from the charcoal canister and draw fresh air into the canister from the air filter, and I'm not sure how blocking that would cause the bogging issue, but thought I'd mention it. I just started it up and adjusted the timing (took a little fiddling with my ancient timing light, but it still works!), then started running out of gas. I drained the first batch of gas I put in it (was just a gallon or so left) and put 3-4 gallons of fresh in recently, so I'm not sure how it ran through that so quickly. Could be it's struggling when it's low because of the filter I put between the tank and pump; I'll put more in to alleviate that before I start it again. I figure once I get it going, I'll run it mostly full while I have that filter in, then switch to the 944 strainer once I've run it around enough to clear the gunk out of the gas tank. If it were a straight drop-out, I'd have just pulled and cleaned the tank, but it looks like a big hassle to drop, and I don't think it actually got that bad, judging by what I'm seeing in the (clear) filter I put between the pump and tank.

Anyway, I've finally got the garage cleared out, so I figure I'll have it in and out to tackle the brakes, finish the clean-up items on the turbo reinstall, go through the halfshafts and repack and reseal the rear hubs, and replace the transaxle seals. I might add some transmission fluid to the transaxle once I get it driving to clean and flush that out a little. Not sure on that one; could do more harm than good if it's hard to get all the oil out. But if that's the case, it might almost make sense to drain and refill with the cheapest GL-5 I can get my hands, then drive it a bit and drain and refill with the Red Line oil I've got. Before that, of course, I've got to figure out why it's so boggy. Well, one thing at a time, I suppose.
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1980 931 diamond in the rough

[Beartooth]

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention: I got plates for it a week or two ago. I also inquired about personalized plates, but got some bad news on that. Montana won't allow just a number, and while nothing explicitly says they won't accept it, the person I talked to said they didn't think they'd accept an alpha-numeric with on letter and three numbers. What I was planning on doing was simply "931." That's definitely out. My next thought was "P931," but that's out too. I guess I could do something like PRSH931, but that's not nearly as "worth it" as simply 931. Incidentally, my Mercedes, before I bought it, had CA personalized plates with "W126" on it, so apparently I couldn't do that either. I was pretty gung-ho on "931" - it's simple, and only Porchofiles would get it - but I probably won't bother unless I come up with another idea I like just as much.
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1980 931 diamond in the rough

[Beartooth]

I've got her back inside (really good thing since it's below 0, and getting colder this week). I can start her up without much trouble, but it's hard to get it to do much more than idle. So, once I got it back in, I checked the control pressure, and it's way too high again. Kind of frustrating; it was spot on after I cleaned out the screen in the warm-up regulator. I took that out and cleaned it again, but it didn't seem to make a difference. Must be somewhere else this time. I think that explains the way it's running: if you adjust the set screw so it idles best, you can hardly get it to do anything more; adjust it rich, and it'll barely idle, but you can get some revs out of it. So I've got more work to do there. I'm still hoping to have her on the road before long; I'd better not hit the year mark without putting in a few miles! At the moment though, with these frigid temperatures, a bunch of seals in need of replacing (hatch seal is pretty much gone; sunroof seal isn't much better), and an iffy heater, it's probably a good time to have her inside and keep ticking off fix-it items.
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1980 931 diamond in the rough

[Mclaren924]

Let me know how you tackle the sunroof seal, been looking for a good one but no luck so far. Found a perfect donor hatch tho
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1980 931 "Salt" Full Restoration (not started)
1979 924 "Pepper" Mechanical restoration (almost done)
1980 924 "Donnie" Automatic (Parts car)
1977 924 "Pennie" My poorest purchase to date(Bucket)

[Beartooth]

Well, it'll probably be a while before I get to that, but I'll keep it in mind. I'm going to put a few miles on it before I commit to buying anything that's not needed to make it go and do so safely. That said, I've seen a few different options available. One is almost certainly garbage (URO brand), another is unbranded but from an "OE supplier" (supposedly made by the same supplier Porsche uses), and the OE replacement also seems to be available. I've seen reviews of the unbranded OEM seal that report a poor fit - have you tried that one? Given what I've read, I'd probably spend a little more for the Porsche part, but I have to wonder if that might have the same issue.
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1980 931 diamond in the rough

[Mclaren924]