Week Umpteen

It's been a while since my last update. For the past month or so, all capital projects here at Tinotopia have been on hold as a result of the recent downturn in the tech economy. I'm not precisely sure how long it's been since my last update (and I'm too lazy to check), so this is just week umpteen. In the future, I think I'll just date these little horror stories. It'll be easier then for future generations to chart my descent into madness.

It's also been pretty hot, so I have been reluctant to spend much time in the garage fixing those things that don't require large infusions of parts.

This weekend's progress saw the installation of a new shift bushing. It cost me something like $3.00, which is actually a rip-off if one considers only its mechanical value. It's a little plastic cup that fits into a larger metal cup and which receives the ball on the end of the shift lever. $3.00 for about 2 cc's of plastic is pretty expensive.

It's in the 'value to the consumer' department that it's a real bargain.

The original shift bushing had mostly rotted away. The former owners -- you already know what I think of them if you've read my other pages about this car -- or their mechanics just substituted grease for bushing. This never works. After a dug the remains of the old bushing out, and got all that grease out of there, it slipped in and fit perfectly, and the play in the shifter is reduced to about 3 inches from about 18-24 inches.

I also finally installed the new brake pads this weekend. I wound up having to take the calipers back off the car in order to get enough leverage to back the pistons off. This makes me suspect that the cylinders are in fact all gunged up inside. I hope the rebuilding the calipers will do the trick, as new calipers are one of the few expensive parts on this car.

I have verified that the front-underneath sheet metal on the car does need to be replaced. The photo at left shows the front-left mounting point of the front suspension, as seen from, well, further to the front and left. The threads in the pan into which the bolt in the lower right-hand corner of the photo screws are only very tenuously attached to the rest of the car. Nothing has broken loose yet, but I wouldn't feel comfortable driving it any further than the body shop. And one nearby at that.

That repair is just expensive. The metal costs about $200 or so, but the installation seems to be expensive. This guy had the same problem -- though probably not as severe, judging from the relative condition of his car in general -- and he paid over $1700 to repair it, as detailed here.

I don't see why the whole piece needs to be replaced, actually. It's largely in good shape. A lot of these rust out seriously as a result of acid leaking from the batter (which is just above), but that doesn't seem to be the case here. It seems that a patch should work, if you could get it in there and aligned properly. I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has any experience or strong opinions either way on the matter.

This hole is possibly more troubling. It's the right rear mount point for the front suspension. The right side of this photo is to the front of the car. The big problem is that this piece of sheet metal doesn't seem to be available. I suppose the repair will have to use a home-made patch. The flat piece of metal coming in from the right side of the photo is the front suspension.

This is that same hole, seen from the other side. This photo was taken looking into the compartment in the trunk where the auxiliary gasoline heater goes, if you're lucky enough to have one. This car just has an electric fuel pump in there. (The fuel pump results from the installation of the VW engine. I'm not sure I like the location of it. It seems that it'd be far better to have it near the engine, so in the event of a leak you're sucking air, not pumping gasoline. It needs reinstallation anyway, since it's currently just bouncing around in the little secret compartment there, not attached to anything except the fuel lines and electric wires.)

The big red arrow points to the hole. You can see the suspension piece peeking through, if you look hard enough.

I did get the gas tank out of the car, to make sure there wasn't anything else hiding under there:

You can see from this that the front suspension pan has already been replaced once on this car. This would explain why it's in good condition, at least relative to everything else I've found lurking on this thing. And it's still in need of replacement.

The other interesting feature you can see in this photo was the novel gas-tank sealing method used.

In the 911 and 912, the top of the gas tank forms part of the trunk floor, and part of the exposed underside of the car. Hence, it's important that the gas tank be sealed to the body -- if it's not, you'll wind up with a wet trunk sooner or later.

Well, the good people at Dr. Ing. h.c.F. Porsche KG thought of this, and there's a perfectly good Porsche factory part that does nothing but seal the gas tank.

Of course, the geniuses who worked on this car didn't use that. Oh, no. It probably costs about $50 or $75, which is admittedly a lot of money for what amounts to a big O-ring. Still, even $75 is cheap if it keeps your stuff dry: see what I say above about mechanical value vs. value to the consumer.

The previous mechanics were, apparently, not economists. They looked at the Porsche price tag and decided to improvise.

So what, you ask, did they use?

Tar.

That's right, fucking tar like you'd use to repair a roof or a road. Tar, the substance that has spawned a whole category of car-care products that do nothing but get the stuff off your car. If you look closely, you can see where the tar ran down in a few little streams before they managed to get the gas tank back in.

Don't go thinking that I'm being hyperbolic, and actually talking about some auto-body sealant that's very similar to tar. This stuff isn't very similar to tar -- it is tar.

Jesus. I can't really say anything more about this right now. It'll get me too upset. Tar for Christ's sake. I had take a shower afterward, and I had to use the little fingernail brush everywhere I'd touched the gas tank, just to get the tar off.

I swear.

This isn't the car's original gas tank. I'm pretty sure of that because there was no gunk in the tank. And anyone who'd let their mechanic repair their Porsche with tar (tar!) would, you just know, also seek out the very cheapest gas they could find. If you take care of a car for thirty years, you wind up with crap in the gas tank. If you treat a car like this for thirty years, you usually wind up with mice in the tank. I assume that the old tank rusted away. This one is in good shape, though, which is both incredibly surprising and nice. New gas tanks for these cars are pretty expensive.

I also took off one of the rear brake rotors, to see whether I needed any more parts (other than the rotors themselves, of course) for back there. The cylinder I inspected needs rebuilding (at least), but most of the other stuff (parking brake, etc.) looks to be in good shape.

The only real notable thing was that the left rear wheel was missing the cotter pin in the spindle nut. (I'm just guessing that you'd call this thing the spindle nut. It holds the center of the brake rotor against the wheel bearing -- or against the part that spins, anyway.) The nut is notched all the way round, like the top of a crenelated tower. The spindle itself has a hole drilled through it. After you tighten this nut down, you put a cotter pin through one of the notches and the hole, to keep the nut from ever working itself loose. Of course, this was not done on this car. I don't know why I'm surprised. After all, why should keeping the wheels on the car be a priority?

My dad actually once had a VW Beetle with the same condition -- and on the same wheel. One night, while he was driving home on the Interstate from work, the nut worked itself loose, and the wheel came off. The car tipped back and to the right, throwing up a shower of sparks from where the suspension and brakes (or what was left of the brakes) were dragging on the ground, and he was treated to the sight of his wheel, brake drum still attached, bouncing past him. He made me go with him to look for the wheel the next day -- there was a new tire on it -- but we never found it.

Anyway. The only really interesting thing about the rear brakes was the condition of the brake pads. You can see here that one of them is worn completely down to metal -- there's no lining material left, at all. The other one is in nearly new condition. The piston behind the nearly-new pad -- the inboard one -- was not seized, as I could move it with my giant Channel-Locks. It sure wasn't doing much with that brake pad, though. My suspicion is that the last time the brakes were repaired on this car, only one pad was replaced. It certainly wouldn't be the most absurd thing I've discovered.

Just to emphasize this point a bit, here's a photo of the brake pads from the side. Left to right, we see the inboard brake pad and the outboard brake "pad". In the background are two new replacement pads. The inboard pad is about 1 mm thinner than the new pads. I wish I knew who had worked on this car before, so I could go steal their tools or do something else to keep them from ever doing this to another car.

I also stripped out most of the rest of the World's Cheapest And Nastiest Car Alarm, which of course the previous owners saw fit to install. Hey, there's a big market for Porsches with Volkswagen engines, dodgily-repaired rust, bad paint jobs, no brakes, cheap aftermarket mirrors, and wheels that are about ready to fall off. The thieves just can't get enough of the things! Better put a $49.95 alarm on it! Jesus. Tar! God!

That's all I have to report for this week. The next task, obviously, is to repair the rear brakes. After I've got that sorted, I'm going to roll the thing outside and sandblast the turn-signal cavities and other minor accumulations of cruft. This car has been painted at least five times, and nobody's ever cleaned those cavities out properly. The plan is to take 'em down to bare metal and prime them. I don't feel like sandblasting the entire car, as it's too much work and too easy to screw things up, but little things like these I can handle -- especially since they don't show.

After that, I think it'll be time to get the bodywork done. I shudder to think what that'll cost (I'm going to have the paint and such all done at the same time). As soon as it gets back from the body shop, I'll replace the headliner and do a few other interior tweaks to take care of the worst problems there. And after that comes the engine rebuild (I'm keeping the VW engine, I think), transmission overhaul (2nd gear synchro is funky), and replacement of worn suspension bits. As soon as the bodywork is done, though, I'll at least be able to drive it, as long as I never have to downshift into 2nd. Cough, cough.

All I'll have left then is the purchase of four new wheels (the spare wheel is okay, though it still has the original tire from 1968 on it), and I'll be in business.