Porsche 964 Refresh

We received a 1992 911 in for a mild refresh.  The owner loves the car and plans to keep it forever.  He wanted us to go through and identify anything that needed repair and address a few items that were bugging him.  The first was the ride quality.  His wife refuses to drive in the car as it is too rough.  Two things were obvious fixes: old tires and blown original dampers.  

The tires were an easy fix but first I attempted to convince the client to go with smaller wheels.  The car came to us with 18" rims vs stock 16".  The consumer market likes cars that have BIG wheels and are lowered.  This car was set up that way.  This owner does not track the car nor drive it overly aggressively.  So I am trying to convince him to consider stepping down to 17" rims to bring back some compliance to this car.

Since the car is not being tracked, we decided to install a set of the Bilstein PSS10s.  These dampers are pretty popular and considered a single adjustable with a clicker located at the base.  This makes them quite easy to adjust with 1-10 clicks.  1 = softest and 10 = hardest.  We are aligning the car with the RS spec ride height but with a stockish alignment.

We also took the opportunity to have the undercarraige dry ice cleaned as it was also nearly as nasty as our 996RR!  The corrosion that we found required a hard brake line replacement as the fitting was frozen.  We changed out all the rubber brake lines as they were original - 33years old!

Project 996 Road Rallye: Part 8

 IMS bearings are cited as a weak link of the 996 cars.  The market has punished their values significantly because of this issue.  These IMS failures, which will take out an engine, affects less than 10% of the cars.  We plan to offer this IMS replacement service as I feel the cars are great sportscars that can be had at a great value due this perceived, yet correctable, weakness,

We are testing out a rear chassis brace

Our car did not appear to have ever had an IMS change.  With over 100k miles on it, we decided to swap it out.  This also gave us a chance to inspect the Rear Main Seal and the clutch.

With the gearbox out you can see where the IMS resides.  We used a special puller tool to yank out the IMS bearing after setting the engine to top dead center.  This is not a job for a beginner as it requires some specialized tools and certainly some clear knowledge of these engines.

We inspected our bearing and found it was in good shape.  You can see it shown below with the seals off.  Ours was the dual row bearing that is known to be better than the single row.  You can also watch a bit of the removal and inspection process in our YouTube Video.

We have sourced a replacement bearing recommended to us that we will install soon.  The clutch and flywheel are worn so will get replaced when it all goes back together.  The rear Main Seal was not a source of any leaks but will get changed as it is old.

We are contemplating pulling the engine to fully inspect and clean it.  The dry ice cleaning took care of the underside but now that we can see the top of the gearnox and engine, the grime and gunk needs to be addressed!

Tomorrow we are hosting a Tech Seminar about this build at our shop.  You will be able to see all of these bits in person.  Come join us!