DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

sladey wrote:

You sure that's not OK for a bit longer? Might be a few thousand miles more in that....

Oh and, your T-shirt could do with a wash.

Good work Mark.
Maybe you can raise the car a little too. My driveway hasn't recovered yet from your last visit.

too high for the jock to touch the engine.

-Was that Mike (210bhp) ? - I wouldn't have said he's particularly short ...

Good to know your diagnosis was correct - had the previous starter motor come loose at some stage to cause that damage ?

Not sure on that but I suspect so - previous mechanic(!?) has replaced the standard allen nuts with normal nuts - which mean you couldn't get a socket onto the thing and I suspect you couldn't get the necessary torque on it as a result.

That's the only way I can think that this would happen - unless one tooth went ages ago and it's slowly spread from there - accelerating the process as more and more teeth are mashed

As for your drive Paul - you'll be hearing from my lawyers - I also believe you may have misappropriated some of my engine oil (by the process of sucking it onto the drive) during my brief stay with you - I feel I shall have to report this theft to the appropriate authorities.

great work Mark, good to see you doing it yourself. Now just got to put it back in!

Follow-up on this:-

I went with a new updated clutch fork and throw-out bearing - the needle bearings in mine were shot - the new version (weltmeister one?) puts brass bushes there instead.

I also bit the bullet and went for a lightweight flywheel from Patrick Motorsport

On the back of the crank was a hole with a small rolled steel pin inside it which appeared to have sheared off.


We had a bit of discussion on impact bumpers about this with some saying it was structural and should be replaced. I've eventually plumped for it being there to make sure you put the flywheel in the right way round - i.e. a guide pin. I've left it as it is - if the bolts give way then I don't see that any pin in there is going to stop the flywheel from living up to it's name...... And the part is NLA from the OPC.

One theory put forward was that this could have been what lead to the ring gear being chewedup. I thought about this a bit more. I re-examined the knackered ring gear. If the chewing had been caused by the flywheel assembly loosening off then the chewing would have been at the back (on the engine side); if it was caused by the starter motor coming loose then it would be at the front (gearbox side). After checking it, the damage was all on the front side so I'm still looking at the poorly fitted starter motor as the culprit. Another one to chalk up to your friendly neighbourhood porsche specialist.....

I ordered and fitted a new rear main seal. This was a bit of a pain to fit - a combination of oil, gentle taps, swearing, and eventually harder taps saw it go in.

The lightweight flywheel arrived from Patrick motorsport whilst I was on holiday and I collected it on Saturday morning. When I ordered it they added in a new 'special' pilot bearing. I didn't question this as I assumed it was needed. However when I went to fit it, there was no way it would fit - here it is sat on the top of the new flywheel


I wondered if it would go on the back but that was a non-starter. Eventually I realised that it just wasn't made for my car. I checked the pilot bearing on the original flywheel and it seemed in good nick so I put a suitable socket next to it and drove it out, and then pressed it into the new flywheel. I'll follow this through with Patrick - I don't know if they sent the wrong part by mistake or assumed my car was slightly different.

Anyhow, with that pressed in, on went the flywheel. Little hole aligned with the broken dowel hole (see earlier) and all 9 (brand new) bolts torqued up and loctited (incidentally when you type loctite into an iphone it changes it to lactate. Which was nice.)


To hold the flywheel in position while doing all this I got a piece of square tubing and drilled a hole in it and bend the end over so it made a tab that fits into the teeth on the flywheel. This isn't a great picture but you get the idea hopefully


Next stage was to assemble the clutch stuff. For this you have to use a clutch alignment tool. After consulting with Ian round the corner I used a ratchet spanner and duct tape. In progress:-


Finished


And in use


Then you bolt on the ring gear - the thing that caused me to take it all out in the first place. The newre version from the OPC are slightly thicker than the original, giving more area for the starter motor to connect with. Here you can see the new and old one. Not a massive difference but worthwhile


Before putting the gearbox back on you balance the clutch fork in place and hold it there with duct tape (useful stuff)


Then you can manhandle the gearbox on - I did this myself. It's quite heavy but do-able. Keep checking that clutch fork - mine had moved so I had to rach inside and jiggle it and eventually it all slipped on. A few knocks from my favourite hammer (shot-filled rubber jobbie) helped it on its' way. I'd also fitted the starter motor on byt eh time I took this one (excuse crap picture)


That was it for Saturday

Sunday I spent the morning refitting the newly painted tinwear and taking my time about it to make sure all the bolts went in cleanly, and the cables werent kinked etc.

Ian came round later on and brought a small wooden trolley on castors. This was useful as we rested the gearbox end on that.

It sounds like a big job putting the engine back in but when it comes down to it it's not hard at all. We rolled the engine into place and lowered the car over it. and then gradually jacked the car up until the bolt holes were close enough to get some threads catching. There was a fair amount of fannying around using the second jack under the gearbox end and pushing and pulling it all this way and that, but just making sure we looked at stuff carefully to check nothing was catching seemed to stop most problems before they occurred.

Eventually we got the 4 bolts in that hold the engine and gearbox, and Ian went home. I then took my time about connecting everything else up. I had two gotchas:-
- I managed to lose the reversing light cable! I was sure I hadn't unplugged it completely but it was nowhere to be seen to I hunted high and low throughout the garage but no joy. Eventually I decided to carry on connecting up the stuff I hadn't lost. A bit later while looking at the Bentley manual I saw where the cable should be coming from. Sure enough it had got caught in the engine compartment - it pulled through and I plugged it in

- When I went to re-fit the clutch slave cylinder the pointy bit was sticking out too far to let me connect it in (the pointy bit slots into the end of the clutch fork). I didn't know if I was going to have to bleed stuff again or what so I called round to Ian again as I'm crap on hydraulics. He reasoned that there shouldn't be anything forcing it out and it was probably built up pressure in the fluid that pushed it out - so it should push back in. He came around and tried it and managed to push it back in. Once I knew it would go I managed to compress it enough to re-fit it.

I carried on re-connecting stuff slowly and then putting new oil in. Eventually finished up aroun 10pm Sunday night.

Very nervous starting it but it fired up beautifully first time. The starter motor sounds great and engages smoothly each time now. Having driven it a couple of days I think the flywheel does affect how it drives - I can feel more urgency in the mid-range. Not massive but noticeable enough to be nice.

Lovely to be driving it again

Cheers

Mark

Good stuff Mark, and very satisfying .

Great write-up .

Fantastic job Mark, enjoy the driving!

Good work Mark - all the more satisfying knowing you've done it yourself.

Hi Mark,

Does it idle OK with the lightweight flywheel?

We've just done our first car with a Patrick Motorsport item and it stalls from time to time if you dip the clutch from high revs. The fuelling doesn't seem to keep up with the more rapid way the revs fall off.

I'd be interested to know if you've experienced this.

Sam

Hi Sam - no - no problems at all with stalling. Don't forget mine is a G50 3.2 with motronic - it's perhaps better at handling the change than earlier cars. Although the flywheel is usefully lighter the overall weight of the whole clutch assembly hasn't changed by that much in precentage terms - the clutch plate is still stock and weighs a ton.

I'd say the driving differences have been subtle, but noticeable and nice. the engine 'picks up' more cleanly now; blipping the throttle on downshifts feels different but I'm getting used to it; but it's never come close to stalling.

Hope that helps

Cheers

Mark

p.s. thanks for the other comments guys - doing it yourself is really really satisfying - on Sunday night I was knackered but grinning from ear to ear.

Nice work Mark ..so satisfying what can be acheived without massive labour bills if you approach things in a measured way.

andy

Thanks.

Ours is a G50 with stock clutch too, but it does have carefully balanced internals and 3.4 B&Ps.

I'm supposing we'll have to look at a remap or send a dyno plot to Steve Wong for a chip.

Thanks Andy

Sam, mine's just come back from Wayne Schofield - he mapped it about 2 months ago - this was before the change though. I know with my 2 rear pipes capped he had to advance the timing so whether that's helping the situation I don't know. I've got a different map I can activate if I uncap the exhausts so I'll give that a try when I get a chance and see if it's any different

I've got more than one map but they are independant of the exhausts ...