1982 Porsche 911 SC Pics:

The snow is starting to fall, so some nice parting shots before winter sets in.  I have some cool projects planned, so it's good catching it in it's current state...

3.2 Engine Tear Down

Cool Stop-Animation of a 3.2 Carrera Engine being stripped down to the case.

Cool Oil Autumn

I love the fall - and this year has proven to be a great season for a number of reasons.  New house in the Halloween-loving Hudson Valley (Sleepy Hollow just erupts Halloween - it's like ground zero for the holiday!) coupled with beautiful autumn weather and it's hard not to get swept up in the whole vibe.  Living in NYC you tend to lose the seasons, of which there are two: it's either hot and completely miserable, or snowing with 50mph winds - the transitions are immediate and come without warning.  We are all really happy to be somewhere where you can notice earthly things like leaves falling, winds becoming gradually cooler, and the nights a little blacker.

It's also amazing driving weather.  Living in Croton has introduced me to roads I have only dreamed about.  Endless serpentine ribbons cutting through the woods with quaint bridges over protected watershed lakes, all perfectly manicured and completely empty... going to the Verizon store has never been this much fun.  Every turn reveals a new perfectly composed balance of nature and landscaped manipulation, and enjoying it all from the cockpit of the flat six is really just too good.  Such an indulgence - it's amazing.

Now that I have sufficiently expressed my gratitude, I think it's time to update the blog with my most ambitious project to date (save changing the oil... which is a whole thing in and of itself.  It's as simple as taking out the plug and draining it, but to do it correctly, you must maintain enough engine heat to keep the oil-cooler manifold open so all of it will drain.  This temp is just shy of 200 degrees.  Releasing the plug on 15 quarts of scalding hot oil is pretty dramatic...), which is the addition of a front fender mounted oil-cooling radiator and fan assembly provided by Elephant Racing.

elephant racing carrera oil cooler.  it gets a whole lot uglier from here on out.

I was hoping to avoid this job, as it involves breaking loose connections that haven't been touched for over 30 years.  I tried to have a porsche garage take it on, but they informed me it's too difficult working on these old cars, and didn't want to open up a can of whoop-ass worms should something give way - so I was left to my own devices, once again in the streets of Brooklyn.

The first step beyond assembling the cooler with the requisite stone guard, gasket, and fan assembly is removing the stock trombone cooler piping (literally just a loop of pipe, kinda resembles a trombone) and relocating the horns.  This was a fairly simple task as I purchased new, functioning Hella OEM horns which fit the space well and tucked up into the front of the fender-well nicely.

inside fender:  new horns, old backside of headlamp bucket.  what's all that bracket...?

This revealed my first snag: what to do with the mysterious bracket on the backside of the lamp globe.  This isn't supposed to be there, and serves only to confuse.  If I wasn't on the street, I could have left it alone, walked away and worked out some custom fabricated hanger piece that could incorporate this sturdy piece of metal into the install, but I can't just leave a jacked-up, oil-less 3-wheeled car on the street in Brooklyn, so I did what any other hack mechanic with a location constraint would do:  I beat it flat with a maul. 

From here the install went fairly smooth.  I got the lower bracket mounted up with stainless sheetmetal screws and sealed the whole area with clear silicone to prevent road detritus buildup and eventual rust.  I love silicone...  did the same with the upper bracket - if these areas collect grime and rust out, it won't be because of the silicone seal!

Working the short and very sturdy connector hoses was a pretty aggressive wrestling match, but I eventually worked them on.  I was able to work out the twist on the return line evident in the photo below, so don't worry - everything is straight in there now.

oil, with a twist

This was done at the end of July, and has proven to be VERY effective at keeping engine temps down, especially in stop and go traffic.  Where once I was climbing up to metal-shearing temps greater than 250º f, I am now under 180º - barely operating temps, and this without the fan hooked up yet.  I'll update this winter when I get that happening. 

Striped or stripped?

I had this notion to add a set of home-made 1970's R-inspired vinyl racing stripes.

I bought ample material (a real nice, high quality 3M vinyl in off-white matte) and measured the areas I had in mind... but somehow got the cut wrong.  Measure twice, cut once, right?!?!  I was able to fabricate a set that will work on the car, but not in the area I intended, and certainly not the size.  I think I'll think on this a little more before committing.  Here's a gravity assisted mock up:

I know it's only vinyl and can easily be removed, I'm just not sure I want to waste the time to get them on there.  I can think of worse problems...

Back-seat drivers.

Wow.  October.  Hard to believe that I fixed the AC on this car back around Memorial Day, and haven't had an opportunity to post news of the fixer-upper-over-under-project since.  

It hasn't been an entirely uneventful season:  I did manage to complete all the small projects on my list - a few of which I will post here.  And we did enjoy the beautiful weather by trekking out to Robert Moses Beach on occasion, and I did manage to log 6000+ miles on the 911, and occasionally go to work.  Oh, yeah - and we moved.  Citizens of Brooklyn we are no longer!  So I have a good excuse for not updating the everyman porsche how-to blog.  

What's more, we moved to bucolic Northern Westchester along the river.  We now refer to Croton on Hudson as "home,"  and home it is:  thousands of livable square feet, a swimming pool, endless amazing-to-drive roads, and... wait for it.... a garage!  So my whole schtick around not having a proper work space, parking in the streets of NYC, and lugging my tools to and fro is now a moot point - a point that I am more than willing to let go.  

Got some good projects out of the way though under those conditions, and without further adieu, lets get into it.

Rear "seat" 3-point seat-belts:

Kids.  It's hard to live a selfish life once you start introducing new humans to the family, and I love my kids more than anything - more than life itself.  ...let me retract that:  I love my kids and my life with them - so let's all stay alive for a while, shall we?!  911's have a pretty bad (and undeniable) reputation for being hard to manage at the limit and therefore quite deadly...  something about cantilevering all the weighty parts of a 2400 lb car with 200+ horsepower behind the rear axle makes them predictably unpredictable.  Now, I'm not in the habit of taking turns at high speed with my 5 year old in tow, but I can appreciate the need to have him properly strapped in for expeditions of the grocery-getting and ice-cream-run variety.  The lap belts that come stock on the car are about as bad as having no seat-belts, hell - they might be worse... so time to upgrade to some PEP Parts aftermarket 3-point seat-belts.  Ya'know, for kids  (I am linking to the product that worked in my application after many hours of online research and reading through multiple forums on the matter.  Do your own research, and if you happen to read this and go strictly on my word, well - then it's on you if it doesn't work out). 

In the 1982 SC, the rear parcel shelf and the perpendicular area behind the rear seat-back is a one piece combination of particle board/paper and some kind of compressed plastic hard core-foam, joined together somewhere around the right angle from seat-back to parcel shelf,  wrapped in vinyl (or leather, or...).  There are 4 screws holding it all in place, and a tab fitted to the particle board section behind the seats meets a metal loop on the car's firewall.  I didn't see anywhere online what this tab was all about, so here it is (once you know what you're working with, it all becomes very easy - or at least easier):

TAB.

So as you can see, once you remove the 4 screws, it's an up-and-out motion to remove the whole thing, speakers and all (which I upgraded to a pair of Alpine 517's - sound great and fit perfectly.  Matched to a blaupunkt under-seat 8" powered subwoofer, the system really pops, with just the right amount of, well, everything - and all in stock locations.  OK, to be fair, the sub-woofer is under the driver's seat, but is not visible from outside or within the car. You would never suspect how nice the system is by looks alone).

Being that I really didn't know precisely where these things should mount up on the steel firewall, I decided to take a chance and positioned the cut-outs for the belts first, then mark the position on the rear metal deck after.  It was the only way I could think of to get it in the right spot relative to each other.  So using a found photo of aftermarket belts installed, I used a sharpie and the plastic grommit that came with the kit to sketch a guideline for my razor.  Looked good to me - fairly straight and about in the right spot as I "a to b" compared the photo to my mark.  I cut out the vinyl and the thin layer of subcutaneous foam, and proceeded to rout out the shape from the odd plastic material with a cutter bit on the Dremel.  Oh - if you don't have a Dremel tool, stop reading right now and go buy one.  Countless hours saved over many projects by the hand of this tool.  Amazing.

rough, rough opening for seatbelt pass-through.

After a little clean up of the opening with the Dremel, I positioned the included plastic grommits.  Took a little maneuvering to get the inner layer of foam to stay put, but once it was all worked and screwed into position, the assembly was pretty clean.  For whatever reason, I opted to not take a pic from the visible side, so here's what it looked like from the important side, the side not visible from inside the car...

hole: ready!

Aha!  Found a pic...

From here, I proceeded to snap the shelf/seatback assembly back into position in the car. I then poked a sharpie pen through the hole and marked the metal deck where it lines up.  I removed the parcel shelf, positioned the belt reel behind my marks, outlined it with the sharpie, removed the reel and used my x-acto knife to cut away the sound deadening material from the metal deck/firewall.  Looked something exactly like this:

It would appear that I jumped the gun a bit, as there is already a hole in position in this pic.

After much positioning and checking the underside of the firewall I marked the hole position and used a stepped-drill-bit to cut the 7/16" hole (I think that's how big it was... use the bolt as a reference so you get it right). 

 Here it is on the driver side.  The base of the belt reel fitted perfectly against the metal ridge visible in the top left of the cut-out.  This is how I determined where to position the exact location of the reel (it was too perfect!) and proceeded to drill the hole for the retaining bolt.

The belt kit came with large, 3" diameter washers to offer a little resistance to just pulling through the firewall in an accident.  I also bought a separate set of dedicated bolts and washers and proceeded to double them up inside the engine bay.  I would have to say that between the two large washers, the aggressive lock rings, and the torqued double nut arrangement, I am confident that this isn't going anywhere.  Here's a slightly out of focus shot of threading the bolt and reel through my perfectly positioned hole (dumb luck came a bit into play here).  And apologies for the questionable photos... I pride myself on taking the time to do a nice job with the photography, but being outside in the high-noon July sun through the large greenhouse back window, I put photography on the back burner (no pun intended) and focused (also no pun intended) on just getting it done.

I failed to snap pictures of mounting up the rest of the belt hardware (see note above regarding "cabin heat" and "sweltering summer sun"), but suffice it to say, it all fit well and lined up.  I decided to trim about 30" from the seat-belt at the reel, and re-seated it with the reel's retaining pin as the amount of belt material was about 7 feet more than necessary. Being that the reel was over full, it would not recoil enough to keep the unused belt taught.

In the end, it proved to be a clean install, looks factory and is solid as all get-out.  Now I can pop my boy in the back for ice-cream runs without any pangs of guilt, because I know he's solidly in there and will be safe, sharp turns not withstanding.

all aboard! next stop: Blue Pig Ice Cream!

Inner Door Latch Handle UPGRADE

Also this summer, I upgraded the inner door latches.  This was a really easy job, and will probably take more time to type this then it did to do the job (I am a terrible typist.  I do generation X proud.)  I did snap a couple pics of the process though, and seeing the parts may prove to be very helpful for anyone else doing this upgrade.

The handles used to open the doors in these cars are flimsy.  It's quite literally the weakest part on the car, and are suspiciously out of step with the rest of the build quality - almost certainly developed on a Friday (Gott sei Dank, es ist Freitag!) 

The process is pretty simple, and I will just come right out and describe it here in a few easy steps:

1. Remove Map pocket from door.  This provides easy access to existing handle hinge pin and spring clip.
2. Remove metal "L" connector from plastic seat on back of handle.  Swing handle out to 90 degree angle from door, so you can get in there for step 3...
3. Remove top spring clip.  See photo of removed clip below.  Laying a large, light colored sheet under work area is highly recommended as these things tend to fly. 
4. Slide hinge pin out of the bottom of, um, the hinge.
5. remove flimsy plastic handle
6. remove white plastic seat from old handle, and snap it into new, high quality aluminum handle you just received from Rennline. 
7. reverse steps to re-install.  Take your time inserting the clip as they are small and easily lost. Also, the hinge pin is a really tight fit into the new aluminum handle.  Next to impossible to get in there, so grab your small round file and ream out the handle a bit.
8. open and close your door maniacally a few dozen times as you take in the solid, tactile feel that this has been missing for 35 years.

Easy Peasy.  Pictures?!?  Yes!:

Birthday stack: air filter, bosch fog lenses, hella horns, and new door openers!

Bits.

Clip, lower right.  This is what you are trying to work off that hinge pin...

Stationary hinge points and connecting rod.

Connecting rod, up close and personal.

Install Complete!!  Open and Shut!

Euro H4 Swappout

As quite an afterthought, the previous owner of this car threw in a set of Euro-style H4 headlights.

They were pretty beat up.  Lots of road wear, a visible crack in one of the glass lenses, and entirely the wrong color (guards red trim... very wrong).  I appreciated the gesture but didn't think much about it at the time, as I figured these were just headlamps and wouldn't be difficult or expensive to upgrade from the odd looking U.S. spec "sugar-scoops" when I was ready.

Euro H4 Headlights.

I later learned that these lights cost well over $300 a piece to buy new, and vintage were at least that much, so I decided to have a hand at restoring the included freebies.

The metal trim rings were red and pretty dinged up.  I knew first thing that I would either have to change the color, or rethink the direction I wanted to go with the car entirely.  And after some sanding, I quickly learned that the soft metal trim rings were beyond my skill level when it came to patiently working out dents and imperfections, of which there were many.  I rough sanded and put a couple coats of flat black on them, shelved the project, and forgot about it for the time being.

A month or two later I found a set of nice and straight, dent-free cosmetic trim rings in "gris argent metallic" (aka: silver) for sale on ebay.  One $50 snipe bid later,  I had them shipping to my door.

So this cosmetic trim ring solved the problem - they cleaned up well and I was able to get them fitted and primed without issue.

I also had to work out the issue of the pitted and foggy glass.  After much polishing and sanding, I gave up on the idea of buffing out the glass - there were simply too many pits, and most were deep enough where it would be next to impossible to work them out.  I instead decided to try 3 wet layers of gloss clear coat.  Damn if it didn't work like a charm:

BOSCH!

I managed to completely strip the adjuster screws that stubbornly reside in the inner trim ring.  They are held in position via a thin metal clip, and undoing them turned out being their undoing, as they were rendered completely useless.  Impossible to find substitutes, I resorted to buying some more common 64 mm M4 pan-head screws from my local hardware guy and got to work grinding them to the right shape/size to fit the recessed dimples of the inner trim ring.

The clear plastic concave "washers" that fit around the adjuster screw heads were also completely shot, so I quickly fabricated a set courtesy of an empty Poland Spring bottle and a Dremel tool.

Re-assembled with fresh stainless adjusters and shiny glass.

Installed!

fuchs wheel refinishing

It is a widely known and accepted belief that wheels and tires make the car, a notion that Rob Dickinson of Singer Vehicle Design sums up nicely in this really amazing video by Chris Harris (a video I have personally added several dozen ticks to the total-view-o-meter, and will probably reference throughout this blog as it comes up...).  And living in Brooklyn, I have witnessed first hand the attempt of many would-be car guys bolting up outrageous rims of every description to the most unassuming of cars in an effort to "make" their car.  It's not always trans-formative, but I always appreciate it when I see a Camry with a nice set of wheels - whether it works or not.

For my purposes, I wanted to keep the time-tested factory look of the car intact but modify it a bit to make it my own. Being that this car is a daily driver spending much of it's time pounding the streets of Brooklyn (which definitely pound back), I decided to use the streets as my palette.  It helps that the paint already on the car is the exact shade of beat-down asphalt... 

street palette - gotta work in the white somewhere...

So, here we have rusty metal, UV damaged asphalt, and some cracked crosswalk paint... Beautiful! Now, on to refinishing the stock 6" and 7" Fuchs Wheels...

Scrub Brush: check.
Degreaser: check.
Whirlpool Tub:  Check?!?!

I have read about other Porsche guys using chemical strippers, but I currently live in a 2-bed condo with 2 kids.  Using Aircraft Stripper in that environment is akin to living next to Chernobyl in the late '80s - so I went with the elbow-grease method of hand sanding, and by "hand" I mean  5" random-orbit palm sander and a Dremel tool (it's fair to say I did a fair share of finish work by actual hand...).   Still required some precautions (ie: dust mask), but I think I got through it with my current brain cell count largely intact.

almost stripped. fuch.

I eventually got them down to bare metal, and that which I couldn't get off I figured was stuck on there good enough.  With a kinda-shiny alloy wheel in tow - I made haste to my "spray booth" for priming with duplicolor's etching primer.

I almost stopped the process here, as I really liked the look of the military-matte-green-ish primer on these wheels, but thought better of it and went ahead with the next steps, which for me was laying the base color: Duplicolor's Racing Bronze!!   

base coat dry and ready for masking

This wasn't as easy as I expected, but still pretty straightforward.  If you use this, or any metallic color via rattle-can, please make sure you keep the flow of paint perpendicular to the painting surface - getting off axis causes it to "dust up" which doesn't look very good.  You will have to sand and re-coat if this happens.

 curing in the "spray booth"

After four or five coats, I let it dry long enough (about a week) to mask off the "petals" and outer rim with 3M Vinyl Tape & low-tack painter's tape and proceeded to add matte black, also Duplicolor Wheel Paint, to the surrounding recessed areas.  Masking off the petals was definitely more art than measured precision as I allowed the contours of the wheel dictate where the mask should go.  I've seen others approach this area differently, but I like the overall size of the colored portion vs the black background on my set up, and it looks real consistent from section to section, and even wheel to wheel. Don't be afraid to play a little jazz here - you will know when the look is right!

The background painting process went very smoothly, and peeled off the mask after allowing 20 min of dry time before applying 3 coats of high gloss clear, followed by 2 thin, even coats of matte.  This technique provides an excellent sense of depth to the clear, but still reduces shine consistent with the quasi-race-inspired-hot-rod look I'm going for.

In the end, they all came out better than expected, and 7 months in still look like the day I mounted them up. I found the Duplicolor Paints to be a real decent product that yielded the results I wanted, and thus far has proven to be very durable.  All this took a little over a month (including cure time) and cost about $60 in materials...not too shabby.

AC Fix

We finally had a couple decently warm days over Memorial Day weekend here in Brooklyn, so I decided it was time to look into restoring what little AC this car has to offer (even as a new car they aren't known for cabin coolness - unless you do major upgrades, a la The Mister Ice Project.  I was on the fence as to whether or not I should remove the ac components altogether for weight savings, so I likely won't be making these upgrades - but it's an interesting read if you're into AC function and general geeking out).  As luck would have it, my parents were visiting for the long weekend and they drove their '03 BMW 325xi.  Their road-trip vehicle of choice isn't what I consider lucky in this case, nor is the fact that they discovered their car was suddenly lacking air conditioning while on this trip... what I consider lucky is that I went with my dad to the local Pep-Boys garage while he got the Bimmer's AC charged with a fresh dose of "nonfreon."

As dad was talking through the diagnostics with the Pep-Tech, I noticed they had a canister of 134-a refrigerant (make sure your system has been updated to accept 134-a before purchasing/installing) with a trigger release pressure gauge for DIY charging on a shelf in the front of the store. 

For $35 I had to try it.

Before I could take this step though, I had to install the belt which I bought at Pelican Parts earlier this spring.  So we left the store minus one BMW, and while we waited for the call from Pep-Boys, I popped the lid and had a look.

A pretty easy job all told - the compressor pump is mounted on a slider plate secured to a mounting bracket on the right side of the flat 6.  There are 3 screws around the perimeter of the slider plate, all easily accessible with a 13mm open end wrench.  A fourth nut is threaded onto a fixed post attached to this sliding plate which moves the whole assembly back away from the engine pulley to gain proper belt tension:  

bolts used to position compressor and tension belt.  4 on top plate are used to adjust fore/aft alignment

Loosen the three bolts enough to free the slider, loosen the tensioning nut, and the gap is easily closed enough by hand (and a little leverage) to work the belt on.  To get the last bit of belt over the edge of the compressor pulley, I used the handle end of a crescent wrench I had handy -  think of seating a bike tire on a rim.  

belted

Once on the pulleys, tighten the adjustment nut so the compressor slides away from the engine pulley, and voila - a tight belt, ready for coolness.  I don't know what the exact tension specs or v-stretch ratio (I'm making these terms up) are for this particular belt, or if it matters... I tensioned it so it was snug, and when pinching the belt together between the two pulleys, I was able to gain maybe 1/4" - sorry, trying to think metric here:  3 - 5mm of movement on each side.  Felt tight enough - I'll check it in a week or two for stretch, and re-tighten as necessary.  Check that the pulleys are straight relative to each other, tighten the bracket bolts, and you're done.  Easy Peasy.

good pulley alignment is key to non-shredding belts

Now that the belt is on and the compressor secure, I plugged in a random loose wire that was dangling nearby, and fired it up for a test.  Amazingly enough, when the AC knob is turned on inside the cabin, the compressor clutch engages and the compressor starts... compressing!  Time for the gas!

The kit comes with a bottle of compressed 134-a refrigerant, a trigger assembly with a pressure gauge, and a quick release at the end of a 12" - bah... 25cm hose.  The quick release is connected to the low pressure fitting, which is easily chosen out of the lineup wearing a blue cap - remove the cap, and snap on the hose:  

blue on blue for low pressure fitting

With the engine running and the AC on, check the gauge.  It should read at a minimum of 25psi.  Mine read exactly zero - so yeah... needed a charge.  From this point it's ridiculously simple as you squeeze the trigger, slowly pressurizing the system with brand new cold-making goodness.  The process takes about 10 minutes, and I checked every minute or two to see where we were with regard to pressure (the gauge goes flat while actually releasing refrigerant).  With an empty 18oz can (system purportedly handles 20oz max) and a gauge reading 40psi, I figured I was done.

almost there at 35psi

Preliminary testing proves positive, with significantly cooler air forced out of the tiny and rather useless dash vents.  System draws a lot of power from the engine, so I don't think I'll be driving around much with the AC blasting.  But - for hot & humid and/or rainy days, on open-road drives, I definitely think it will be a welcome feature to have running.  I am very impressed by the system, one that sat dormant for a number of years and performs perfectly well with an hour of work for under $50.