Two for the price of one day today...
Two fixes, one part (albeit not cheap)
Two injuries from one event....awesome
964 steering columns of a certin age suffer a couple of issues;
1. Failure to cancel indicators after making a turn
2. Burning out, leading to failure of indicators, flashers, both or a combination of each
Well, as you might come to expect, my car was suffering from both! Initially, I thought that failure 1 might be the Momo wheel and boss (remember I have not driven with the standard wheel). A bit of research suggest this was duff info, and that the small plastic pin that gets collected by the wheel to cancel the indicators fails. So, ithout being able to check with the wheel on, I was hoping this to be true.
But the reason for my replacing the stalks was failure 2, because when putting the indicators on with the lights on made the lights got out 10% of the time, and with main beam on, 100% of the time! Basically, the stalk was frazzled. The reason for this is, like VW stalks for years and for reasons which defy common sense, the stalks take all the load for the current. Instead of being a low load trigger for a relay, they take the full headlight load (for example) and as a consequence have an adjusted life-span.
The task itself is very straight forward and probably took only 30 mins end to end. Obviously the steering wheel needed to be marked in place, but having a yellow marker at 12 o'clock makes that fairly easy! In fact, the 964 column shroud and levers fit in exaclty the same way as the Boxster.
Pop off the horn ring, steering wheel nut is 24mm on later cars
This is the new part, direct from Porsche, showing the indicator cancelation tab in black, at 9 o'clock
And then the existing one, showing a failure by the tab coing out at 9 o'clock when the indicator is used, and then settling at a more relaxed 8 o'clock for left, and 10 o'clock for right. Basically something broken in the mechanism meaning it just kind of went floppy and failed to work.......
6 screw secure the cowl in 2 parts - 2 at the side, 4 in front
The connections just pull off the rear
And the stalks are removed by an 8mm clamp around the column, and then this is what is left
Then you need to transfer the horn earth, which simply unclips and drops into the new column switch
Refitting, as they say, is the opposite of removal, so not really picture worthy. When reconnecting the battery, I was pleased to see that issue 2 was immediately fixed, and I could indicate with main beam on.
There is another phase to this fix, which is to fit some relays so the stalk wires become trigger wires only and don't take the load, but I need to order a couple of relays to do this.
I am also pleased to say that issue 1 was also fixed, and we now have cancelling indicators again!
The day then took a dark turn, when as I was clearing up a bit, I decided to put some old Boxster airbags in my garage loft. They were in an open box, and half way up the ladder I must have tipped the box and the first airbag fell out of the box and the metal mounting bracket got me square on the top of the head. I managed to catch it on my chest
and stop it falling directly on the Boxster below. As I bent over in some pain, I must have tipped the box again (dick-head!) and the second one fell out and hit me in the same place.
Blood was lost
Rude words were said
Boxster was saved....
The offending items weigh at least 5kgs each
