New Discoveries

Well I didn't get a chance to drop the motor and transmission last weekend but am getting very close.  I find myself jumping from place to place around the car.  If I get frustrated or cramped under the dash removing parts, I move to the front or underneath the car and work on something else.  The parts are flying off at a rapid pace now as every bit that comes off makes another piece accessible.  I made some interesting discoveries in the process as well.  with the goal of being ready to drop the drivetrain this weekend I started in on removing parts to get closer to that goal.

If you recall from last week I needed some special tools to be able to remove the parts that were in the way of dropping the drivetrain.  One of them was a 12-point star bit to remove the CV (constant velocity) joint bolts, to separate CV joints from the transmission.  The CV joints allow the transmission/differential to turn the driveshafts even when the wheels are moving up and down causing the driveshaft to be at all different angles.  Porsche in their wisdom decided these needed special 12-pointed star bolt heads (torx bits for example are six-pointed star patterns).  My awesome brother-in-law happened to have something in his shop that fit, an M8 12-point bit!  This was a cinch to remove the bolts, with the exception of needing a large wrench to hold the wheel hub in place - trying to loosen the bolts caused the wheel to spin on that side since the transmission is in neutral ad I have no clutch cable anymore...
Bolts are out:

 Carefully pried away the CV joint with a screwdriver.  You can see in the left of this pic the next challenge - the transmission drain plug.  This needs a 17mm allen head.  It's hard to describe the size of a 17mm allen head until you see one - not commonly on the shelf at most HW stores.

 Using a bungee to hold the driveshaft out of the way for a while.  I used zip ties linked together on the other side.  Driveshaft removal is a whole other day's project.

 I got to thinking about what I might have that is even close to 17mm.  Then I remembered - I used to have a '95 BMW M3 that had 17mm lug bolts, and I had a couple of the old bolts lying around from wheels I had bought back in the day...I wonder if one of those would fit?
Sizing it up:

 Yep it fits perfectly!  Now how do I turn this lug bolt to loosen the drain plug?  Why the shadetree mechanic's best friend - Vice Grips!

 Success!

 Worked like a champ - luckily no one before me used excessive force on the transmission plug.  BTW if you've never smelled differential fluid or transmission fluid before - eww.

 Wow look at that drain plug.  There is a mound of old fluid and debris on it.  They have built-in magnets on them to attract metal shavings inside the transmission (!) and boy did it.

 It looks like a toy from the Discovery Chanel store with all of the metal filings.

 Job done on that part, I also removed the rear shift rod.  Funny thing about having the transmission shift point so far from the shift lever even on such a small car - the shifting rod pieces are comically long.  Alltogether there are three main rods that make up the shift rod system and two of them are several feet long!  Pics later...
Here are some misc bits removed from the front of the car.  Windshield wiper arms and motor:

 Top dashboard:

 After blower box and wiper removal the front is almost done:

 Dash is very sparse now.  The metal dash frame was removed in short order with only a few bolts thru the firewall holding it in place.  Easy to get to now that all of the stuff is out of the way.

 Dash removed!

 Now for something completely different.  I removed the gearshift lever and lifted it up and out comes a cubic foot of shredded paper bits and leaves!  The center of the car is a little tunnel that has the gearshift lever, wiring harness, speedo cable, fuel lines, rear brake lines, clutch and throttle cables all running thru it.  And apparently also had a rodent running through it at some point!

 The only place it could have gotten into the tunnel is the front by the pedal cluster. If all of the wires are unchewed it'll be a miracle.  Then again there did not seem to be any droppings either so it must have been a short stay.  These pics are only part of the rubbish, much more is stuffed in that tunnel!

 Finally removed the foot pedal cluster too.  It's a pain disconnecting all of those pieces down under the dash and in that tunnel.  I can tell you what greasy flashlight tastes like too, since I need both hands for this and something's got to hold the light.
Also pictured is the shift lever and the rear shift rod.  I can't remove the front shift rod yet because the motor is in the way, it's going to have to come straight out the back of the firewall.  Note for later - reinstall the front shifter rod before reinstalling a motor!

 Another angle of the pedals.  The clutch pedal is leaning way back because his cable tension buddy is gone.  The throttle pedal is still in the car, stuck to the floor with a rusty bolt whose head is partially rounded off and not fitting any wrenches very well.  It may be time to inflict some damage to get it out.

 Finally the ugly corroded brake master cylinder.  Brake fluid has a particularly sweetly nasty odor I do not care for.  Makes gasoline smell like roses and even makes you forget about how much differential fluid reeks...

More progress promised for next week.  I'm a furniture dolly and a beer-swilling helper away from dropping the motor and transmission in one oily lump!

Lots of Progress

It's been a while since my last post.  Even though it was Spring Break and I figured I'd be spending every day out in the shop working on the car, this could not be further from the truth.  Many days I never even made it out there.  In the end I got two solid days where I could work on the car for multiple daylight hours.

But no matter I still got a lot done. My initial thinking was that I needed to take my time on this as I can't afford to buy anything for the car right now so what's the hurry.  However,  I found out I may be able to get the car media blasted for little or no cost (!!), so that has really lit a fire under me to get the car completely stripped down.

How bout some pics?
Here is the fuel tank laying on its side.  The expansion tank is laying next to it on the right (filler cap is lower left).  Gotta get that cleaned out.

I removed the exhaust as one assembly as there was no need to take it apart.  I was expecting it to be rusted to the bolts in the head but they were not bad.  I hit them with some PB B'laster (penetrating/lubricating catalyst - great stuff) and they turned right off.

It was also not as heavy as I expected.  In fact when taking out the last two bolts hanging the mounts to the rear of the transmission, I laid on the ground with my knees supporting the exhaust headers and just let it land on me to lower it to the ground in one piece:

Those tubes surrounding the headers are part of the "heat exchanger" system.  Basically it's a hollow collar that fits around the exhaust pipes and connects to a blower on the motor and some ductwork so that you can get hot air into the passenger compartment heated by the exhaust pipes!  Pretty cool.  Of course on this car, much of the heat exchanger is rusty and full of holes, and the blower wasn't even hooked up.  I will be getting stainless heat exchangers on the new exhaust...

With the exhaust system out of the way, I can really reach everything on the transmission now.  I removed the clutch cable, cable pulley, and speedometer cable.  The speedometer didn't work because the end of the cable where it attaches to the transmission was broken (as I suspected - pretty common I think).

Here is a shot of the passenger side of the transmission from the rear 3/4 of the car.

 Directly underneath the car now, this is the passenger side heads and oil filter hanging down.

The driver's side of the motor heads/cylinders.  Of course being a flat-4 the cylinders are horizontally opposed.  The gray bar at the bottom is the shifter rod headed all the way to the back of the transmission housing (tail shift).

 While I was under the car I took this comical shot of the repairs done to the trunk by one of the previous owners.  The curved rusty piece is a heat shield for the exhaust muffler, the shiny silver piece in the back is the new trunk floor sheet metal, and the gray bracket on the left appears to be a standard issue shelving bracket from the hardware store.

 Rear shot of the transmission, shifter, mounts, etc (drivetrain).  You can see everything really well now and access it all after the exhaust was removed.

Slightly closer shot of the motor transmission and right hand drive shaft/axle.

 

 In order to drop the motor and transmission from the car I need a couple of special tools, so I will wait another week or so to do that after I've gotten the proper tools.

Now onto some of the more complicated stuff - cleaning out the dashboard bits and wiring to prepare to remove the dash.  Here is the meatiest part of the wiring harness, just under the dash by the driver's left knee.  The knob on the upper left is the front hood release.  It's really not much as far as harnesses go - modern cars are ridiculous compared to this.

 However they are significantly more advanced too.  This is the backside of the fuse and relay panel.  The big round cylinders are relays (electrically operated switches).  The wires all terminate into a fuse block with some funky old-style fuses.  They make an aftermarket fuse panel for these that uses modern blade style fuses and I may end up using one of those.  I don't even know where to buy the funky fuses for this thing but it would be nicer to have standard fuses that I could get anywhere.

 Underneath the steering column are a few connectors that terminate here for things like the turn signal switches, headlight flashers, ignition etc.  These just pull straight out.  See the black tubes in the upper left of the pic?  These are actually hollow rubber tubes that connect the headlight washer lever on the steering column with the wiper fluid system!  I could not believe this...the tubes go through the firewall to the washer system in the front trunk.

 In the center of the car floorboard there are a couple of openings and access panels where you can get access to the wiring harness, fuel lines, speedometer cable and other lines headed rearward.

I removed the steering column so I could remove the gauges.  A few screws on the gauge panel and it pops out.  Unfortunately on these older cars you don't have a sealed gauge pod with a couple of connectors to the wiring harness like on modern cars.  Instead cables are terminated with blade connectors directly to the gauges.  In the case of the lights for the instruments the cables plug directly into a connector with the bulb housing.  These are kind of a pain to get out.  I documented everything not only in these pictures but also on paper so I could recable later.

 

The fuel/oil/warning lights gauge.  If you open this up you can actually replace a couple of the interior modules with other gauge bits from other Porsches.  Or replace the whole gauge with a different one that also shows oil pressure I believe.  More research needed on that one.  Those vertical columns on the back of the gauge are actually the bulb connector housings.

 Rear of the tachometer.

 Rear of the speedometer.  The cable sticking out of the left is the speedometer cable, the black cable on the right is the trip odometer reset cable.  It actually secures to the lower dashboard and you turn it to reset the trip odometer, instead of modern speedos where you push in on a button on the front of the gauge.

After the cabling was documented I removed all of the cables and bulbs from the gauges.  If you look closely you can see the bulbs hanging off of the ends of some of the cables.  The knobs on the dash from left to right are the headlights, hazard lights, and foglights.  To the right of the steering column hole is the cigarette lighter hole.

 Closeup of some bulb connectors and light bulbs from the gauges.

 What a mess it would appear.  It's (hopefully) not as bad as it looks.  What's even worse than removing a bunch of gauge wires and bulbs?  Removing heater cables for the cabin air blower!

The blower, along with the defroster valves in the front trunk area behind the fuel tank, is connected directly to the control module in the dash.  The cables that open valves in the system go through the firewall behind the dashboard and connect the dashboard levers directly to the blower/defroster housings!  Learning how to remove the control cables from the lever assembly was tougher than the gauges!  Here is the blower fan control assembly:

As you move the upper lever to the right to increase the blower speed, the metal fingers on the back side of the lever make contact with a different combination of ground+blower motor speed circuit, changing the blower fan speed.  It's very old-school cool to me how this is done.  This assembly had some cables and light bulbs which were fairly easy to remove.  Removing the cables was a pain though - you could tear up the dash trying to get all the stuff off of this thing.

Well, that's all of the car I have documented for the last couple of weeks.  I also removed the brake fluid reservoir and some brake line, some miscellaneous trim pieces and more but not very noticeable from pics.  Hopefully next weekend I can get the tools I need and drop the motor and transmission!

And now some bonus pics:  I found this rather large brown recluse dead in the shop while moving things around.  That puts you at ease huh?  I found one about this size in my closet too, you can see how big he is compared with a Shiner Bock bottle top...

And my other new toy...a 25HP 52" cut zero turn radius mowin' machine!  Woohoo, bring on the Spring!