1987 3.2 Carrera Backdate project - Sladeys hotrod

[Gary71]

Boxster one looks a bit shorter? Might work?

[Jonny Hart]

Whoa everybody....

1) We are already using Boxster/996 condensers. They are the smallest OEM condensers available so forget finding a smaller one. Anything smaller won't provide enough performance anyhow.

2) Our condenser/fan/shround DOES NOT need ram air. It's fully shrouded - the fan does all the work.

3) The problem is the non 'S' valence because it isn't deep enough. There's a Pelican who thinks he can modify our shroud and get the non-S to work: http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche- ... ect-7.html

Since you are not afraid of tin work, another option might be to notch the headlight bucket so the unit can move up a bit. I would make up a plywood 'condenser' and screw the fan to it as a mock up. Notch the top of the plywood to see if this might work before notching the headlamp bucket!

4) If you want to move the unit to the rear, best place is IN FRONT of the rear wheel. There's pictures of a rear mount condenser on a black car in the back of our manual. The downside is that this area gets very hot when the car is not moving as the 'pizza flaps' are right there. Ideal orientation is fan outboard. If you put a p-clip on the engine lid release tube, connect that to the one of the condenser tabs (on the side that has two tabs) and push the whole thing forward he condenser will pretty much sit in the right place ( at a bit of an angle). Then all that is needed is a cotton reel to the inner wing on the nearest tab and a support bar from a torsion bar bolt to the bottom of the condenser.

[sladey]

Thanks everyone for your comments

Jonny what are the pizza flaps?

Also not sure what you mean by cotton reel

Other than that I’m favouring the rear arch mounting - other than the space issue, even with the arch liner in place it has a bigger opening to the air than the front horn grill

[Nine One One]

The downside is that this area gets very hot when the car is not moving as the 'pizza flaps' are right there.

https://ferdinandmagazine.com/classic-p ... oning-test
28 Jun 2017 — Interestingly, it later transpired that Jonny's SC had an issue where the pizza flap heater boxes were still leaking hot air into the cabin.

[Bruce M]

Thanks everyone for your comments

Jonny what are the pizza flaps?

Also not sure what you mean by cotton reel

Other than that I’m favouring the rear arch mounting - other than the space issue, even with the arch liner in place it has a bigger opening to the air than the front horn grill

Google “cotton reel rubber mounts”

[sladey]

Thanks guys

[Jonny Hart]

The only thing to watch is that you still have adequate space on the inlet and outlet side of the condenser to pull in and expel the air.

As I said, look at the black car on page 68 (but you don't have to put the drier in that position):

https://uceb70ae58509622920460cd439c.dl ... xtxF0/file

With any condenser install, the inlet line (discharge from compressor) should be connected to the higher of the 2 ports on the condenser.

[sladey]

Thanks Jonny. I found the pic of the black car.

I’ve ordered some cotton reel thingies, and I’m still waiting for the stainless I ordered last weekend so this weekend I’ll probably start on other parts of the installation

[sladey]

OK so probably time for an update. I’ve been working on it most weekends and after some struggles it seems to be moving forward.

So moving on with the condensor install. I decided that under the rear wing was definitely the place so once my sheet of stainless arrived I started making brackets



Then I marked where this needed to go and drilled a suitable hole



With that one in place I was able to mark the position for the second bracket and fit it using another cotton reel



And finally I made the bottom bracket which is screwed into the spring plate bolts



Before I started on this I was struggling to get my head round how I fit something basically into mid-air and get it in the right spot. It was playing with my head. In the end though, doing it as I did it it was fairly simple - get the first one in roughly the right place and attach it to that bracket when doing the second one. With one bracket holding it it’s much easier to get it in exactly the right place to mark for the second bracket. With the third bracket there was no forgiveness - I tried to bend something that fit but it was quite a bit out. In the end I cut my new piece in 2, and bolted one end onto the condenser and the other end onto the suspension mounting point. So I ended up with this



I was then able to put another piece of stainless across the gap and tack it into place (I’ve got some stainless mig wire). Then take it off and weld it up properly and hey presto the third bracket fits properly as well


With it in place I can re-fit the arch liner again and it fits OK. I’ve still got to mount the drier in there and also need to do a new front bracket for the arch liner.

I am considering putting some louvres in the arch liner to help air flow but I’ll wait and see how things go first - they can be added later if needed


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[sladey]

So for some light relief I thought I’d move on to the compressor. The goes in the frunk between the battery and the spare wheel.

It comes in bits but assembly is pretty straightforward

There was an issue where one of the side plates was fouling the body of the compressor, causing the plate to bend


However cutting a small fillet out of the plate sorted that out



Then I found that the screw holes for the bottom plate were no longer in the right place so I needed to tap a fresh hole



Eventually it all went together OK



When trial fitting it in place I took the chance to tidy things up in the frunk and give it a fresh coat of epoxy mastic. The overflow from the brake master cylinder had been draining into this area during previously brake bleeds so that had buggered up the paint




Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[sladey]

OK so now we came to the third of the big things to install - the blower and associated pipe work.

OK so this is what I started with



I was most nervous about this part of the install as the route of all the pipes has always been a mystery to me and it is extremely cramped under there.

I started off by taking the bonnet off - I can’t believe you would be able to do this with the bonnet on.

So first step was to remove the old blower and the pipes that were connected to it



I went through a phase of looking at all the gubbins I’d taken out and thinking how the hell am I going to get this working.

One of the first things to do is to add in a T piece to the pipe coming from footwell heaters - this is used as part of the re circulation circuit to make the cooling more efficient.

There is a good diagram in the instructions showing the route of all the pipes and this shows the T piece. However it shows it in the wrong orientation for my car. I think the orientation shown may work for an SC but not for my 3.2.

This caused me a fair amount of grief - I couldn’t work out how the hell it would fit and was getting frustrated. When I got it connected as per the diagram I could see that the branch coming off was blocked off by other pipe work so was never going to work.

I briefly considered doing without any recirculation, but then thought it would be better if I had a Y shaped piece instead of a T. Some brief searching online and I found some. I ordered one pair. Then searched a bit more and found another that look even better so ordered that one too.

I took a few deep breaths then, knowing a possible solution was on the way. I picked up the T piece and moved it around in my hand. It suddenly occurred to me that if I just moved it through 90 degrees it might just fit.

I did that and it went in pretty easily (by comparison to the previous struggles). I immediately went back onto eBay to try and cancel my orders. I managed to stop one but the other has since arrived.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[sladey]

Here’s one side with the T piece in place



There are a lot of issues with this part of the install - mainly because you are trying to fit a load of pipes into an area that struggles to hold them. However, a lot of the problems came from the poor fitting of the original system.

For example there is a mixer unit on each side and the top of it goes out towards the screen vents. There is about a 30mm gap between the two pipes and a flexible pipe should run between them. The original ones were completely knackered and barely there so I cut some new pipe to go in there. Both sides were 10-15mm out of alignment, meaning you had to get the pipe to go at about 45 degrees briefly.

Frustrating, but I got them to connect up OK.

Another thing that needs to be done before the blower can be installed is to cut/trim the steering rack cover. The instructions weren’t great here as it said you might have to cut a slot in the top or cut it in half. I ended up taking a guess as to where to cut it and part way through the install I realised what additional cuts I needed to make. Some pictures of suggested cuts might have been helpful.

This is what I started with


This is after the initial cut



I ended up cutting the whole of that centre ridge out and it worked OK


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[sladey]

Next came the bit I was dreading - fitting the new blower in place. In the instructions it says there is a definite knack to it and it gives an example of the best angle of attack.

There was no putting it off any more, it was time to get on with it….

Here’s the blower unit - nicely made.

I had another moment of doubt as the connection to the high pressure lines was shown on the left hand side in the manual but it was on the right hand side on my unit - which meant it could potentially clash with the master cylinder. I emailed Jonny and he confirmed I’d got the latest blower unit and that he’d got this fitted in his own SC with the master cylinder in the same place as mine.

So I fitted the high pressure hoses first before trying to get the unit in as there would be no access after




So it was time to start trying to get it in….


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[sladey]

Now I’ve done a lot of work on my car over the years and my language has been more than a little fruity on many occasions. However during this install I actually ran out of swearwords. This was a first for me.

This is part way in.


At this stage in desperation I’d remove a cover from the top of the unit to try and gain more space. After a while I decided that was unwise and put it back again

All throughout this I really couldn’t see how it was actually going to go in there but my other concern was that once I got it in I wouldn’t be able to get it out again. Meaning that if everything attached to the unit wasn’t perfect then I would be stuck with it.

It was getting more and more stressful and I was utterly convinced there was no way on earth this thing was going to fit in there.

This particular morning I had Spotify playing me hits from 1973 - when I was 10. It was a (mostly) nice trip down memory lane. However at the height of the stress of trying to push it in the speaker was blaring ‘Mama weer all Krazy now’ by Slade. I love the song but it wasn’t helping. I put on some classical morning music and took a few deep breaths.

Part way through I remembered an article I’d read by AA Gill (sadly no longer with us) many years ago. I always enjoyed his writing and bought a book by him which was basically a collection for stories about his various trips.

The book (and trips) were massively varied - including railing against the lack of western funding for cheap malaria pills for Africa all the way to a trip that involved him going to America and getting the chance to write and direct a porn film. The consistent thing was that the writing was brilliant,

This is the passage that I could not get out of my head while I was trying to cram the blower into such a small space



It struck me clearly during this process that if I got this blower in then it would truly be more impressive than anything Paul Daniels made disappear…..

Eventually though, and to my surprise, it went in. Even more surprising I was able to pull it out fairly easily. And more surprising still was the fact that once I knew it would fit in there, I was able to re-insert it again. And again. And again. I’ll say no more on that except that like many things in life there is a knack to it and once you have the knack it makes things a lot easier.

There is also a tab hanging down from the top of the scuttle and I did have to bend that out of the way

I did have to keep taking it out to deal with the drain holes. There are two holes in the bottom and before installing the unit I’d joined them together and used a T piece to produce a drain pipe that would go into the original drain tube. -you can see it in this pic sticking out of the bottom of the unit



Somewhat predictably as I pushed it in both drain plugs were ripped out. Re-reading the instructions it said you can drain from both holes (like I’d tried to do) or from either individual drain holes. Also you could drain it into the steering cavity.

When I had it in I could see that the right hand drain plug sat in just the right position to drain into the steering cavity, so I just had to block up the other one

First thoughts were a bolt of about the same diameter and some glue to hold it in.




Tried that - looked good but on the next trial fit it was ripped out.

Then I remembered a YouTube video I’d seen involving cotton wool and superglue. You stuff the hole with cotton wool and drip superglue into it - keep doing it until it is saturated. it very quickly set like rock




Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[sladey]

With the blower mounted it was time to start adding in the connecting pipes.

The manually talks about 40mm pipes going to the two side face vents. However on my car these were 60mm, and one of the Tee’d off to the central face vent. I checked with Jonny and he confirmed I needed to replace my side vents with 40mm versions and do away with the T piece otherwise I’d have excessive air coming out of one or both of the side vents

Putting the smaller hoses through was surprisingly easy - I just fed it inside the bigger hose (that was already there) as far as I could from one side, then pulled it through from the other side and finally pulled out the larger hose.

Here is part way through adding pipes in. The thicker hose you can see going from right to left has to be really squashed down to fit above those two holes you see under the scuttle - two more pipes need to go onto them.


Again it’s all a bit of a squeeze but they did go in OK.

After going to all this effort I wanted to make sure every part of the system was working properly.

An example was the flap at the rear of the side face vents. There is an oval disk that has a foam pad on the outside. The foam pad is what makes an airtight seal when you close the flap. mine had disintegrated some years ago and with the flap closed there was a big air gap around the edge

I experimented with some neoprene tape



However this was too thick.

Eventually I found an old inner tube was just the job



Providing a decent seal



On the drivers side the lever that opens and closes the flap itself had broken so I’ve ordered a new unit from Design 911 - it’s actually listed as one for a 964/993 but it is identical to mine. I’ll have to sand away the top and bottom of the housing so it fits within my singer-style dash


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro