DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

911hillclimber wrote:Odd the output bearing has run on the shaft, but that imho might rumble than tick.
I guess the frequency of the tick increases with speed of turn?

I’ve had the same swarf on the mag plug in my Lola box, was synchro wear.

Fingers crossed for you, but I would expect a total strip soon.

I have a Quaif in the Lola, nice unit.

Agreed on the rumble, and to be fair there has been plenty of that and it’s been getting worse.

And yes the tighter you turn the faster the click.

What about the handbrake job done just before the trip?
I can see a tick tick from that before the diff.
Just a thought.

911hillclimber wrote:What about the handbrake job done just before the trip?
I can see a tick tick from that before the diff.
Just a thought.

Absolutely, it’s normally the last thing you fixed that goes wrong. I’ve pulled the RHS off before I started taking it all apart and all looks good. No contact marks anywhere.

Having found a few issues with the diff I don’t feel I’m wasting my time, but maybe I’m not fixing the problem!

Today being father’s day I locked myself in the garage with a goal to fit the new bearing, measure preload of the cover and work out what spacers I need.



In the end due to a variety of cock ups that damaged the new bearing I’ve just put it back together with the old bearing loctited onto the shaft…




So after the usual fun of fitting driveshafts and pumping 3 litres of oil into the box of we went for a little test drive. Enough to warm the car up, but not the level of heat soak we were getting on the mountain drive.

And… the noise has gone away and the box is less grumbly…
Fixed it? Unlikely.
Ok for now. Yup.

Was a little bored last night so at about 6 thought we would head off to Wales to make the most of a lovely evening.

Stopped in the usual places as they are still awesome

Sun had gone by the time we got to Bala, but a 5 second exposure makes it look like daylight!

6hrs later we got home

Diff holding up well, fingers crossed still!

always good spots those Gary!

We were in that area a week or so ago, but in the luxury of the Boxster!
A light lunch at Devil's Bridge.

Quick thread update!
No maintenance on the car recently, but a brain dump of jobs to do before two big Euro trips next year:

Oil/filters change
New plugs
Box oil level
Check wheel bearings
Tighten steering rack
Geometry and corner weight
Fix dash pad speaker grille!

Oh and sort the crankcase oil leak with a new stud into a blind hole. Not a job I’m looking forward to!

Other stuff that’s happened since the last update:
Drove some cool stuff around Wales:


Attended our works car meet




Drove more cool stuff round Wales/Anglesey



Local car meet:


Random village shot:


Painted the old bonnet:


And today we left sunny England for grey North Wales for a few hours. Loved it

Some great pics there Gary of what is an absolutely stunning car!

Envious you get so so many Pass-Outs.

911hillclimber wrote:Envious you get so so many Pass-Outs.

No pass outs required

Went together on the last one


Can’t wait for a proper road trip this year. Like a thousand miles in France or Spain type road trip. Wales is beautiful but the adventure of the Euro drives is very special.

Yes, me too.
Fly drive to the Italian
Lakes was good, but the Fiat Panda did not cut it.

Going to do a nice run through France in late summer, should be a Grandad in May, so grounded for a few months!

Doubt it will be in the 911, but certainly the Boxster.

Time for the winter maintenance. First up to stop it steering like a 70s Transit. I’d planned to swap out the pinion bearings and check free play, but found the fork where the column bolts on was loose.
That would explain the vague feel…
It’s pretty much the only nut on the car I’ve never touched! So new bearings, general clean and it’s back together, certainly feels smoother, and the play has gone, but not driven it yet.
Next up, oil leak from the case, oil change and bit of a general service

Will be very interested in the search for the case leak Gary.
Please detail your findings (for a fellow DDK'r).

Todays task (whilst nursing the end of a bout of man flu) was to sit the car on a set of borrowed corner weight scales and see what it was sitting like.

Always a balance between weight equality and ride height and so it turned out .



After much faffing making slip plates (two oily sheets of nylon) for each wheel and then levelling the four scales on my apparently level garage floor (which wasn’t!) I dropped the car down to see where it sat:


Not a disaster to be fair and this is with nearly full (85l) tank of fuel and all tools, jack etc on board.

I reset the front torsion bars as they were at the adjustment limit then set about playing with the front and to get the weights balanced, ignoring ride height for now. So with the car all square it was sitting 18mm high on one side! So that wasn’t going to work.



Final compromise (which I wrote down but forget to photograph) was 219-231 across the front with 10mm difference in ride height. 1deg down towards the front.

An interesting (for an engineer like me anyway!) way to spend a coupe of hours and pretty much end up back where I started

I’ll get the geometry redone soon as no doubt the toe will be off after doing the rack and this fiddling.