Well, let me tell you a story, about a geek, and his toy.
First off, I bought this car in july of 2000, it's a 1986 Porsche 944 Turbo, often called a 951 to the P-car lovers out there. These photos were taken about a year after the car was bought.
Then, I got silly, and brought it to a track. Not just any tack mind you, but Watkins Glen International. The holy grail of tracks for the P-car faithful. This track is a challenging technical track, and quite basically, I suck at driving around it. But that's why you practice, right?
In the garage:
Get Ready:
Get Set:
GO!!!!!!!
After three days on the track, the car was still running like a champion race horse. Unfortunately this champion race horse had a broken leg, but it was still running great. According to the rennlist 924/944/968 guys, it's time for a new clutch. I have two choices, pay someone to do the job and hope it's done right, or do it myself, and know it's done right. Have you ever seen the oil change instruction for women? Let's hope this clutch job doesn't end like that!!
I read the instructions, and it sounds easy; Then I sobered up.
Step 1: Put the car up on jack stands (Thanks MaryAnne!)
Step 2: Obtain suitable quantities of beer
I find that the large single serving containers of beer are useful for all types
of Porsche work.
Step 3: Drink aforementioned beer.
Step 4: Panic,
Step 5: goto Step 2, repeat....
Well you get the picture...
Before you ask, NO, I've never done this before, about the most work I've ever done on a car is changing the oil. So, I need some tools. There are two ways to buy tools I guess. One way is to go to Sears and buy Crapsman tools. they're ok tools, and the warranty is hard to beat. The other alternative is to buy Snap-On tools off of E-bay. For those of you who don't know anything about tools. (which is hard, because you've must have lived under a rock for all of your life) Snap-On tools are the cadillac of tools.
As to doing it? To be honest with you folks, I never would have attempted a job of this magnitude without Rennlist. There's also a great write up by Mike Kehr from the Rennlist archives, hosted on Paragon Products Tech site, go there, read it, read it again, and then re-read it. it will make these pictures useful. (I hope)
The first thing you need to determine is wether or not the car has the two
piece crossover. It looks like this,
and attaches to the wastegate. if it does, jump up and down, and
celebrate!!
First off, you have to remove the exhaust, this is pretty straight forward
actually. remove it, and put it in the living room:
Get a piece of 8X1.25 mm threaded rod,
and make yourself a clutch lever pin puller. make sure you remove that
blasted retaining screw first.
It helps to have a few buddies to help with the pesky clutch housing bolts.
It also helps to have them well lubricated if you know what I mean!! I
find that Labatts Blue works wonders.
I don't even want to talk about the speed and reference sensors. what a pain in the ass that design is.
Success!:
The clutch housing is out!
This is what a pressure plate that is still attached to the flywheel looks
like:
Why in hell did Porsche use those damn 8mm 12pt internal hex head screw anyway? What in the hell where they thinking? Here is how you remove those damn pesky stripped screw. I stripped 4 of the 9, and I was even using a brand new Snap On cheese head bit.
Get out that Snap On air drill and start
drilling:
insert the Snap On extractor: whack it in:
and turn it, it should break free pretty easily:
DON'T BREAK YOUR EXTRACTOR!!! I almost did! Extractors
are made of hardened steel, and can't be drilled. Luckily I backed
it off when it didn't feel right. I went to a bigger extractor, and it
broke free easily. Thanks to the friendly Snap On Dealer, the twisted
extractor has been replaced.
So, now that the pressure plate is off, we finally got to the object of this
whole exercise, it's only taken about a week of on and off working to get to
this:
Yes, boys and girls, that's what the clutch plate looks like. See the
broken spring?
Next up is the flywheel: again more of those damn 12 point internal hex screw
that are affectionately known as cheeseheads. Luckily, the flywheel bolts are 12mm, and
a lot meatier than those 8mm's. Get out the 1/2" breaker bar, and a wrecking
bar to hold the crank still.
There, it's all torn apart. Sit down and have a beer or two.
Since your waiting for the parts you have on order, you might as well clean up all the crap you took off, right? Well, just how do you go about it? The transmission has 16 years of crap on it, and there's no easy way to clean it, and it's also 10degrees Farenheit outside. My thinking is that if I'm dirty, I take a shower. Seems logical to me, how about you? so, if you have a dirty transmission, why not give it a shower? right?
The good news is that a Porsche Transmission does indeed fit in a bathtub:
You really wanted to know that, right?
Looks like my car was involved in some sort of accident along the way, this
is a date code from 1989 on one of the body pans:
Next up: Putting it all back together!