ROLLING BACK THE YEARS
Sometimes you make the most progress on a project car when you least expect it. That was certainly the case for Chris Horton, when he finally got outside in the early summer and tackled a whole host of minor but pressing faults on the 924S
One of the many luxuries I promised myself when I ceased to be the editor of this fine publication, now over a decade ago, was to spend more time with my cars. (And my family, of course…) It never really worked out quite like that – I had to earn a living (and still do), and gradually various other revenue-earning activities occupied the many hours that I would otherwise have spent hunched in front of the Mac – but eventually, older and I hope a bit wiser, I have come to realise that unless one gets out there and does something, anything, then one day soon it will all be too late. Tempus fugit, and all that.
Satisfying to report, then, that after a long period of inactivity during a long, cold and thoroughly demoralising winter, both the 924S and the 944 are making progress again. For the latter that means little more than my recent visit to see my friends at Auto Umbau, where the car has resided these past few months, to fit a replacement battery and give it a few runs up and down the Wrest Park estate’s long driveway. Were the ‘S’ a sentient being, though, it would probably be reeling in shock at all the attention it has suddenly received. (Including, albeit not from me personally, new timing belts. See the how-to stories in the May and June issues of the magazine.)
The first job, which shamefully I had been thinking about – and deferring – for years, was eliminating the always nasty and now seized-up and frankly rather dangerous electric aerial that, as was the way of these things in the 1980s, had been fitted to a hole crudely drilled through the left-hand front wing. (It had seized with about three inches of the mast protruding from the panel, hence the potential hazard.) You might remember my earlier rant at the similar atrocity that had been perpetrated on the car’s right-hand rear wing, for an external keyswitch for the after-market and by that stage utterly useless alarm system. Seriously, even then, who would do such things to a Porsche?
The tubular nut at the base of the antenna came undone quite easily, but I knew there would also be a lower support, tucked away beneath the outer panel, and to get at that I would first have to remove the special charcoal-filled canister via which the fuel system vents to the atmosphere. That, too, was surprisingly easy – just two 10mmheaded sheet-metal screws into so-called spire nuts on brackets inside the wheelarch; although none of the parts look to me like genuine Porsche items – and immediately brought with it the realisation that the rubber hose into the plastic canister, from the ‘T’-piece inside the engine bay, had rotted through, obviously rendering that device completely useless, as well.
The answer, in due course, will be simple enough: a new piece of hose, which for not entirely logical reasons of originality and authenticity I shall order from Porsche. Meanwhile, the canister has been ‘filed’ in the garage and, horror of horrors, all those nasty hydrocarbons are continuing to vent to the atmosphere via the open ‘T’-piece – just as they have most likely been doing for perhaps the last decade or more. (Interesting to note, during a casual inspection at this year’s Tipec-organised Simply Porsche event at Beaulieu, Hampshire, that several other transaxle cars appeared to have been ‘modified’, either temporarily or permanently, in this way. Quick, send for the pollution police...)
With the canister removed I could see that the aerial was secured, via an equally crude and now corroded metal strap, by the screw also attaching the trailing edge of the wing to the ‘A’-pillar. No surprise there, then. Remarkably, however, the screw was still in good enough condition for a 10mm socket to fit snugly, and came undone just as easily. This allowed me to pull the aerial forward and down and, since it would be going straight in the bin, summarily to cut through the cables. Most satisfying. (The 12-volt supply to the aerial motor had been disabled long ago, but had it not I would, of course, have disconnected the car’s battery
to avoid a possible short-circuit.)
The cables passed into the cabin through a further hole in the side of the bulkhead, sealed with a stepped tubular grommet with a slot down the side. Ideally that grommet needs to be replaced with something flatter, but for the time being I have closed off the hole by pressing some good, old-fashioned (and sadly now rather hard to find) Dum Dum mastic into the middle of the existing one. Likewise the hole in the wing itself I have temporarily plugged with a standard flat grommet, if only to protect my fingers from the sharp edge when washing the car. It would be nice to have the hole welded, though, so maybe I shall have that done when the rust in the lower areas of the front wings is dealt with – or, since it would be useful to have occasional access to news and traffic reports on my minimalist Blaupunkt radio, perhaps I shall fit a simple manual aerial. We shall see.
One other slight annoyance was the indicator repeater, whose tiny securing tab fractured as I removed it (purely to make it easier to attach the bulb holder again; talk about one thing leading inexorably to another…), but for the time being that, too, seems secure enough, and I know I have some original-equipment spares somewhere – the same orange lens was used on Mark 2 Golfs. (The first two that I found among my VW and Porsche spares are clearly pattern parts, with crudely moulded securing tabs, that I would fit only in dire emergency. In fact, I think I shall simply discard those, as well.)
Next task was to fit a new generator drive-belt – for want of the correct item a job held over from when ‘we’ (that is to say Sid Malik at Porsche-torque) did the timing belts. Whether it is the right one even now I am not sure – it’s one rib narrower than the old one – but perhaps that’s just a case of the manufacturer using a single part to suit both earlier and later vehicles. Either way, it works just fine. I first had to take off the power-steering belt, of course, and I would have liked finally to refit the engine’s aluminium undertray, but it’s a bit of a faff to do that, and the right-hand engine mount is scheduled for early replacement, so a few more weeks (months?) without it surely won’t do any harm.
There was one other task held over from the timing-belt job, too. You might remember that the small separator plate, designed to prevent the toothed faces of the camshaft belt ever touching each other (which would obviously be Very Bad…) had at some earlier time been fitted with the wrong M6 securing nuts. Certainly they had been functioning well enough, but the correct Porsche ones not only have a specially designed shoulder, to locate inside the tubular ends of the plate, but crucially are also of the self-locking variety. Quite why someone had fitted some rather flimsy non-locking alternatives I shall never know – you really don’t want stuff like this coming adrift, do you? – but I wasn’t happy about them, and so ordered a pair of the correct items from Porsche. Only slight problem was the price – around £5 EACH plus VAT. Oh, well, it’s only money.
Fitting the nuts meant taking off the upper half of the plastic timing-belt cover, which was made easier by lifting one side of the car on a trolley jack for access to the lower screws, and also removing the airflow meter and air-filter assembly – and that alerted me to the slight misalignment of the ‘P’-clip securing the top radiator hose to the filter bracket. That, too, was no big deal, but in truth it was very slightly squashing the hose, with a possible reduction in coolant flow, so straightening it would be well worth a few minutes’ effort.
No more developments on the front-wing rust yet – I really do want to address that during the summer, while everything is nice and dry – and nor the shredded seats, although I’ve a lead on some reasonably comfortable-looking bucket jobs at a friend’s garage, and looking like they need a good home. I’ve made a bit of progress on tidying up the door cards, too, but for obvious reasons of space that – and what turned out to be a full overhaul of the tailgate seal and the two latches – will have to wait until next time. Oh, and I think the fuel tank is starting to pinhole, just above one of the metal support straps: there is a faint but distinctive whiff of petrol at the blunt end. No rest for the wicked. PW