DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Thank you Gary, Imade the most of the time today!
Let me know when you are ready.
Graham.

Hours on the bike after a frustrating hour or so on the bloody Boxster!

Getting more bits into place and trying to find out what the previous owner removed from the loom and forgot to replace...bit of a summary of this bike.
Rear coil-overs are knackered so £100 for a fresh set, at least the chrome will shine.
Noticeable how many parts that were available 4 years ago are now unobtainable.

Rest day tomorrow and Wednesday.

After years of various Triumphs, Norton’s and BSA twins, not to mention the Brit OHC Racers, I think the first Japanese engine I stripped Completely was a Kawasaki 650 four. I couldn’t believe how quickly I’d done it and that it worked Straight away. All the spanners sizes were metric too, when the Brits used a variety of different threads, Whitworth, UNF, BA and sometimes cycle.

Great job, enjoying following your progress.

Cricky!
Better be careful now I know you are watching!

Progress seems quick, but I spend a lot of time so far, but the build quality and design are just superb esp compared to French bikes I can think of....
Lambrettas are good, but not this good!

Some hard bits coming up.

Looking good Graham

Sent from my Redmi 7 using Tapatalk

Have been reading your posts intently and you have been doing a sterling job as always.
I don't have anything to add on the Honda rebuild however but it all looks excellent and top notch.
Taking a different skew from the thread the highlights for me have been the fence, the creeking Citigo and the Boxster issue - we need more detail and photos.

..but seriously what was the issue with the Citigo ( vested interest and all that ).
..and what's broken on the 987 now.

Keep up the good work and slow down otherwise you will finish it far too soon and then be tempted to buy another Terrot!

Skoda Citigo issue:

Wife's shopper, lovely little thing, slow but very relaxing until it starts to creeeeek but only at walking speed or less.
Internet shows this is a common problem with the Skoda, VW, SEAT versions and can happen at any miles.

Ours started suddenly about 2 months back, OSR. Checked the top mount bushes, drowned everything in WD40, all to no avail.
Got worse, ie louder, so removed the OSR damper and had a slow drive, totally silent.
So, it must be the damper, also the response from most garages too apparently.
New pair offebay, BOGE and fitted both. Noise still there... £58.

They come without the dust tubes, you simply swop them from old to new. CLUE right there.

Decided to fix this, can't be that hard. Off with the new damper OSR and a closer look.
Inside the dust tube is the sponge plastic bump stop and the tip of this was black, the rest looked new, the top of the damper body (where the piston rod goes in) is black.

There was contact of the bump stop and the damper body at near rest!
Took the tube off (friction fit) and sliced 10mm off the bump stop off and re-assembled.
Silent as a dead mouse.

That is all it was, crap engineering from VAG, cost me £58 and a few hours of my life.
Anyway, wife happy so a good result.

Cut this off:

Excellent fix - thanks for sharing.

I quite enjoy driving my son's Citigo Monte Carlo, its a good challenge to keep the speed up with 60hp and only 3 cylinders.
My son says if I like it that much he'll happily swap it for my 981 GTS - he has a point.

We had the problem whereby it was eating batteries, as when switched off it still drew 300mA+ from the battery - that's why I first bought the bluetooth battery monitor to keep an eye on it. Forum wisdom was that if you can't hear the relays clicking to isolate circuits when you lock it up - the ECU is faulty and I think that's a £700 ECU replacement fix.

Not keen on the price of that fix and after several months of battery charging during the lockdown, I finally fixed it by unlocking the car, and power cycling every function on the car on and off. When locked up the ECU relays clicked and it dropped back to <20mA standby. Glad I didn't buy a new ECU - its just shoddy VAG ECU software.

Enough thread hijack - back to the bike ( unless you want to tell us all whats wrong with the Boxster - hint hint)

Boxster?
Could write a book on the thing.
Just found a puddle of coolant under the OSF off the undertray, so cross-over pipes or (better) the radiator.
Only Porsche would put aluminium parts next to salt water. They are so good.

That's tomorrows job, investigate and order parts.

Smoke on start-up: a very long running saga, going to do an AOS mod to see if I can stop oil getting to the inlet system.
This topic has it's own following on PCGB and Boxa.net, really ridiculous issue.

Boxster is a great design poorly engineered in my experience.

Again thanks for sharing.

Having had the 9x6,9x7 and 981 generations, I see penny pinching creeping in across the generations.
Really annoys me that there are a number of weak spots on these cars that corrode away after only a few years.
It's not an issue for Porsche customers who buy the cars new as they are onto their next week just at the point where the corrosion takes hold.

I had all the wheel arch liners off both our 981s, to apply as much ACF50 and wax to as many parts as possible - you can but try.

Hope your puddle isn't too expensive, I think I'd prefer to change the rad than the crossover pipes.


Now just need photos of the fence

Ha!
FIXED THE COOLANT LEAK, got lucky, seems it was just one rad to cross pipe hose, in stock at local OPC for £30, fresh OAT spec coolant for £30 and a few hours overall and all seems well.
Heated the 987.2 to all fans ON and topped up the coolant. 90% convinced it is all done, will be 100% end of next week if level holds.



As to the fence:

Took 1.5 solo days to do this, 150 feathers, 499 screws, but saved about £500 Mega mega Brownie Points.

Great result on the Boxster ( fingers crossed ) and a reasonably fair price - well done!

Now I have fence envy

Hot, and long slow progress on the electrics, not helped by the prev owner forgetting to put half of it back when he changed the loom...

Got the wiring diagram, a copy of a copy of a copy where Bk for black could be Gr or something else.
Had to make all the fastening brackets as NLA even on ebay but managed to connect quite a lot, the lights are easy, it is the voltage rectifier location and several important high current circuits that were tricky.

The new loom that had been installed has non-Honda modern connections so they will need sorting soon.

Steeling myself for some hard ebaying soon to grab one part I need that I cannot find anywhere, even in the USA. Hope to win and then sell off the bits I don't need.
Doubt this will work out, but can try.

Actually have a hillclimb to compete in next weekend, so have to spend this weekend waking up the mighty Lola-Porsche!

Looks like new!

A camera lies!
Maybe as new as can be.

The loom is now in place and everything bar the horn is accounted for. Very cramped in the backbone of the frame, I think every wire is strained to fit.

As a rest, decided to have a look at the passenger foot pegs which are original, but of course coated in the black paint from Wales.
For some reason, the man before me decided to cut the location tabs off the mounting brackets so the pegs can rotate all over the place. Again, why did he do that?

Welded the tabs on from some steel stock and they are now drying in the baking heat.

I missed the Sale of the Century on some rare parts for the Honda cb175, missed it by £2. The pile had a full set of side panels which are hyper rare, especially the right hand side. Lefts are easy, I have a real Honda NOS one, but finding any right hand side panels...no chance.

Should have hit the auction harder, but there we go.
Thinking of getting the left side scanned, converted on CAD and 3D printed in mirror view, but sounds expensive.

Wife tells me to be patient and one will turn up.

Hope to get a few more hours in tomorrow.