Slightly O/T - 996 rebuild / Boxster transplant

[Bootsy]

So sorry to hear the news about Angus - just awful

[sladey]

Sorry to hear about your mate Wayne - shitty news. I hadn't spotted it as I just saw the long update and thought I'd come back and look at the detail later

[rhd racer]

Thanks gents - appreciate the kind words

As Neil says, enjoy the little things - in fact anything and everything as you don’t know when your time is up.


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[neilbardsley]

Nice tribute here to Angus

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[rhd racer]

Thanks Neil

Yes - we did a similar thing today at Donington for the CALM Porsche Championship which he sponsored. They dedicated all the awards to him, his niece presented the awards and we brought his race car along for a track pass at lunchtime whilst his Uncle shared a few words.


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[rhd racer]

With the pressure of getting the car ready for the rolling road I left the thread somewhat hanging so I will briefly bring up to date.

It was a touch slog to be honest with lots of last minute dramas that I really didn’t deserve given, despite the circumstances, was a pretty well planned winter job with what seemed like time in the bag.

So it did not prove though…


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[rhd racer]

First off I thought I would cut some corners and not change the fuel pump. Online research suggested it was a pain in the arse and could lead to other problems (linked pipes leading to fuel starvation etc). So I removed my titchy battery and tiny heater matrix to get to the tank and blanked off the return. I had a weak to go before the rolling road and Wayne said it was a bad idea and wouldn’t work. So after a struggle I got the old sender out and peered inside the tank.




Basically, 25 years of accumulated gunk in the tank inc paint flecks and all sorts. After pumping as much fuel out as I could on the starter (more of this later) I got the last litre or so out with a sponge and then cleaned it so it was spotless.

I ordered a new fuel filter (which resides in the centre tunnel underneath, just in front of the engine mount) so as to not undo all my time work. Below is the regulator on the new sender / pump unit which goes in the tank. This is the reason Wayne S told me it had to be changed, as disabling the return would render the system without a regulator and it would just pump and pump until turned off.

The sender secures with a 90 degree twist into a locator in the bottom of the tank. Putting back in was easy, but getting out required feeding f an oil filter removed down inside the tank as I could not apply enough twisting force to remove it. Refitted, with the return in a clipped bag so I can swap engines back if I wish to in the future…



I then built up the fuel pressure and it fired for the first time. I was pretty delighted, but then spotted a big patch of coolant on the floor, and had a huge fuel leak from the injectors on one bank. I realised that I must have missed a hose on removal , and it snapped off the back of the reservoir, high up on the engine bay and hard to see. Basically this is the pressure return from the cooler on top of the block. I didn’t really have time to change the reservoir, so I drilled it all the way through from the boot side (essentially it is a bulkhead connector with a male push fit either side) and then fitted a straight connector to cover up cock up..



That cleared up the coolant, on the fuel side I had no option but to pull the fuel rail off. Luckily on the drivers side, there is no filter to contend with so there is some access, but small hands are needed and doing any job where you expose holes in the top of an engine requires care and nerve!




So with towels everywhere I set about removing the injector clips and removing the injectors. Not sure at this stage from the spray pattern whether I had one or two leaks



Problem found - appears on fitting one of them I had nicked the O ring, so I carefully removed one from my old injectors (the seals are serviceable items but I didn’t have any new ones), sprayed it in PTFE and refitted. A turn of the key and job done, as dry as a bone.

Finally whilst on fuel I reran the fuel line to an OE location with new quick release high pressure push fit connectors, wrapped in heat proof wrap and hob done





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[rhd racer]

I then got the car out in the sun for the first time in 6 months and washed the dust off. I had no reverse so pulled it out figuring that would not be an issue that would be hard to fix.





After a good run I noticed the alternator light came on, and my mind turned back to that lead I insulated in the engine bay. The only thing to do, with a week left was to pull the alternator. This is accessed from the access panel in the cockpit, so I had to take the seat out


This was super tight - it appears that the slight change in engine pitch angle and the different manifolds made a terrible job even worse. Anyhow, my man in Nottingham turned it around in a day, and said the regulator was fried. He re would it and made it basically better than new


Brilliantly I found that the connectors are used on all VAG alternators and freely available online for a few quid, so I could remove the dodgy stripped wire and solder this in, eliminating another failure point.



So, once back in it started and no alternator light - the relief! However, it was not starting properly.




I thought the battery would be marginal with the engine due to high capacity and compression, but having turned the car over so much to build fuel and oil pressure it was still turning it over, just not reliably. Essentially the starter solenoid was clicking rapidly, and only every third or fourth go on the key would actually engage the starter. One week to go, and it seemed the only option was to rebuild the starter.

My starter was a 6 year old cheap Chinese one, so I picked up an OR one from a local breaker I have come to know well (!) one lunchtime and then went straight to my rebuild guy in Nottingham. Strangely the OE one is physically larger.


If you remember the block build up, you will remember the starter is under the throttle body. To get to it requires removing the entire inlet manifold on one side, which exposes perilous holes in the head!




Getting in there just to undo it was a job and a half, and took some really unusual combinations of sockets in an impossibly small place, but I got there.

All back in, I was disappointed to see that the starter seemed to draw more of the battery than the original, and the battery struggled all the more. However, this was another failure point ruled out and 4 days to go to the rolling road. The battery replacement needed both time and money, both of which were running out.


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[rhd racer]

The next challenge was to get the gears working. I endlessly power bled the clutch, and tried to drive the car on the stands . I could not select any gear with the engine running, let alone reverse which would not select even at rest.

On the Friday, with the rolling road session booked for Monday, I had to pay over the odds for a clutch master cylinder. This is a tiny cylinder above the clutch pedal that upon inspection was damp, suggesting to me that it was letting fluid out and air in. I spent the Saturday under the pedals with my legs poking up over the seat which I had refitted in a brilliant act of masochism only days before.





I didn’t work - I had a pedal but no clutch.

With one day to go I resigned myself to taking the gearbox off and inspecting the clutch, so that’s what I did.



I didn’t actually find anything. I was going to refit my original box but I need to get the LSD looked at, and in any case, the box would not stop the clutch working unless the thrust bearing / arm were damaged or missing. They weren’t.

I decided to change the clutch / I had a good one on the shelf and it ruled out the paddle clutch which I have never got on with that well. For a competition clutch it was too slow to release, and made you sound like granny riding the clutch. Not a good fit.

I bled it again, the same way I had 59 times that week it seemed and blow me it worked. I had a clutch.

So I made it to Wayne’s with the body panels fitted up and no reverse gear. We used the winch to get it in his workshop after I rolled it down off the trailer. It started, ran but had not been run in. We did what we could to run in the rollers before giving it some abuse, but fortunately it had only had shells and no machining etc so was not the first engine to go pretty much straight into service this way.



Not used to the ‘four times is a charm’, Wayne flattened the battery and we lost some running time so reinvested that in making my spare ECU recognise the car (immobiliser chip) and copying the code from my old ECU onto it as a base map.

The day was a success overall, and as many of you know Wayne is a genius and a great guy. We got 285bhp and 250 ft lbs of torque which is a bit down on what I had hoped. Using the Championship method of calculating gearbox losses this is more like 295bhp, so just shy of what it would be as standard in a 996. The issue, Wayne believes, is getting v enough air in the tiny side intake in a 996 versus the much better over car airflow and short inlet tract on a 996.

So I then had 4 days to sort the gears. It took some working out too. Everything pointed to the cables, so I changed brackets, bent them etc to try and gain more ‘pull’ on the cables where needed. This didn’t work.

I then had the brainwave to remove the cables where needed consol completely, and move them manually. With the car in the air, and the battery charged, I would jump in the car, start it and lift the clutch on tickover. Reverse is easy to see, or would be if the wheels went backwards, but they didn’t. They went forwards.

1st gear = 7mph
2nd = 14mph
3rd =21mph
4th = 28mph
5th - missing in action

Even moving the linkage into the positions they should be in gave me no reverse or 5th. I took some measurements of the orientation of the linkage and it was clear that it could not physically get to that plane. The reason?

Somewhere along the line, this spare box I have never used has seen some action with a trolley jack which bent it. If I undid it completely, the linkage could move enough to get 5th / reverse. So, the simple solution was to make some spacers that allowed enough movement for the linkage to move enough. I have a 3rd spare box which I can swap this out completely on time, but this was one day before the first event!


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[rhd racer]

So numbers on, loaded onto the trailer and mission accomplished, literally with hours to spare. Hundreds and hundreds of hours, lots of problem solving, and I think I have achieve what I believe only one other mad individual has in the UK (well it was EMC, so a collective of mad individuate do it for a living)

Anyhow, how does it drive?

Well it’s ballistic. It is going to take one heck of a lot to get used to it. The diff is set with more lock than my last one, and planting the throttle mid corner sends the car slewing into an opposite lock inducing drift. Utterly hilarious, totally addictive, if not the fastest way to go about things. However, I was 3rd and 0.3s off my PB in cold and at times damp conditions. My last run of the day, whilst not my quickest, was the quickest Porsche on that run. So it shows promise.



At Curborough the battery let go and I lasted the day on borrowed jump start packs. Between events I decided to avoid motorsport batteries as they are heavy (relative to my 1kg item) and went for the highest power motorcycle L-ion one I could get, with a massive 660 CCA. It is only 2kgs, and starts the car almost immediately you hit the key.




At Mallory (a new venue) I was 4th but somewhat distracted by the smoke machine behind me which got worse as the day went on. Diagnosis was easy - it had to be the AOS (air oil separator) and so it was. Split open completely, it was both leaking and blowing smoke out like a power station. Made for bemused looks from everyone - I was pretty amazed I was allowed to continue to bd honest





This weekend it is Loton park, one of my favourite Hillclimb venues. After rebuilding g everything, then replacing most of it again the hard way with the engine fitted , I am hoping for a reliable, fun and fast weekend.

Thanks for reading all this nonsense- hope you enjoyed the trials and tribulations of less familiar Porsche mechanics.


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[911hillclimber]

Going to try to get a pass-out to Loton this weekend to see this projectile myself.

What a journey to this mod, I thought it would be far more 'plug n play, so very educational and entertaining1
Weather will be grippy so 45 deg drifts allowable at 5 corners I can think of...just enough space.

[rhd racer]

Cheers Graham, hope to see to see you there.

I could have made life easier by refurbing and replacing some items whilst it was disassembled, but it was not a money no object build, it was an opportunity that presented itself that had no off season budget!! Still at least it is all done now and touch would should be turn key reliable.

I am just going to enjoy the season and learning the car, and finish the journey Gus and I started last October.


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[neilbardsley]

What day are you racing? If I get the 914 working I fancy a drive

[rhd racer]

I’ll be there both days Neil - come and say hello if you do. Cheers


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[911hillclimber]

Neil:
I'm going to Loton on Sunday to photo Wayne nailing his class!

F1 on during Sunday, so wife will be watching that, hence easy pass-out.