Typically long and pic heavy post. Sorry!
Seasons greetings gents.
I'm all food and drink'd out so thought I'd do a quick end of year update. (Not that quick actually, now I've read it back).
As usual feel free to skim through. :thumb:
As mentioned previously my car went to my Indy, Jamie Nelson, Nelson Porsche Stockton, at the end of October.
Well guess what? It's still there!
No fault of Jamie's at all.
As usual it's a case of "all the best laid plans.." etc.
I'll explain later in the post, but you know when you just need a little bit of luck for everything to come together, it never seems to work out does it. :grin:
Especially where old cars are concerned.
So anyway, I'll back up to 8 weeks ago or whatever it was and I headed off to Jamie's which is 70 miles away, with Craig following me with a boot load of parts.
I'd been gradually gathering parts over the last year or so whenever I spotted a decent deal. My Indy would supply the service items and anything else that I left to him.
Parts I supplied -
Millers 10/50 oil and genuine filter -
A set of Surefire coil packs and genuine bolts, courtesy of Coulstar on here, thanks buddy. -
New coilpack heat shields and stainless bolts -
Sachs Clutch kit -
Genuine water pump and gasket plus a low temp thermostat -
New air/oil separator and latest revision header tank cap, which we collected from OPC Newcastle on the way down -
And finally a rebuilt gearbox with powder-coated brackets. This is where the problems began. :grin:
This is the list of work I left Jamie :-
Major service inc cabin filter, fuel filter, spark plugs etc.
Check oil filter for any debris.
(This is always done anyway)
Fit -
6x coil packs and new bolts.
2x coil pack heat-shields and stainless bolts.
Remove gearbox, clutch, etc.
Inspect IMS bearing and when known to be ok, flip outer seal off.
Oil leak from IMS/RMS area -
Replace IMS cover.
Replace RMS seal.
Renew brake pipes over gearbox (due to corrosion).
Fit new Air/Oil separator.
Fit new clutch and then refit flywheel with new bolts.
Fit rebuilt gearbox and brackets.
Cable tie gearshift cables around bracket as a backup.
Repair or replace accelerator cable due to corroded junction box under car.
Fit new water-pump, low temp thermostat and header tank cap.
Flush out old coolant and replace with new.
Fit new aircon pipe under car due to leak under drivers side floor then re-gas air-con.
Brake fluid change.
"”"”"”"”"”"”"”"”"”"”"”"”"”"”"”"”"”
I basically wanted everything done that could be, that didn't involve going into the engine.
So how did it go?
Well seized bolts were the order of the day, as usual.Some snapped -
This -
From here -
My coilpack bolts were seized solid and they just rounded off when trying to undo them, so the exhausts had to be removed to gain proper access -
Also my AOS bolts were seized solid so Jamie had to chip away at the AOS until it all broke away. Then he could tackle the bolts.
You can imagine the time the above added on alone.
All the little hose clips around the water-pump area crumbled if you so much as looked at them.
New ones ordered from Porsche and fitted.
Once the box and flywheel were removed this is what we had -
Cleaned off a bit -
What's gone on here??
Some joker has siliconed around the seal in the past. Sheesh. :roll:
This pic shows the difference between the old and new style IMS covers. The old type on the left, has a single round seal.
The new type on the right, has a multi ribbed seal.
You can also see a strange looking area on the tapered section of my old IMS cover. This is actually from where the casting hasn't cleaned up when it was machined during production.
All refitted with 2 different grades of Wurth sealant as back up.
Turns out the brake pipe next to the one we knew about, needed replacing too. Very crusty.
Other stuff :-
Jamie managed to strip the throttle junction box down, de-rust the swollen cable end, reassemble and seal up, which is lucky as I could not find a used one anywhere when checking all the usual breakers.
(See last years service on page 2 about this)
All of the other work on the list was completed and the following parts supplied by Jamie -
Spark plugs
Fuel filter
Cabin filter
Under-car air con pipe
Brake pipes
IMS cover
RMS seal
Gearbox oil
Brake fluid
So what has been the problem then??
The short version is I need my gearbox rebuilt and the car is still away. The more in-depth version is below.
Basically when I test drove the car, when I went to buy it, it had the slightest bit of whine at higher speeds. In hindsight I maybe should have walked, but after seeing a few dogs and this car ticking all my boxes I thought 'How bad can it be?". Doh!
Coming from the GT3 I wasn't familiar with this common fault now affecting so many of the 996s out there. GT3 MK1s suffer from damaged syncro's as they are brass in the MK1, but other than that I wasn't aware of a problem with 996 boxes.
So I stupidly hoped it would just be diff bearings or something. A few weeks after getting the car home me and Craig checked the gearbox oil out of interest. It took 1.3 litres to fill it. The box only holds 2.7 litres. There's the problem then. Unreal.
There are no gearbox oil leaks at all so who knows how that's happened.
Anyway, the car drove perfectly. The gear change is perfect, no other word for it, even from cold. It just had this slight whine at higher speeds.
I read up a bit and spoke to Jamie and he said 'Yeah that is the next big thing with these 996s, after engines". Great.
I've read of some people covering 30k miles with the box whining, only deciding to rebuild due the noise becoming ridiculous, rather than due to failure, but I can't live with niggles and especially not ones that would deter me from heading off somewhere far in the car. Since I aim to do another Euro trip in a year or two I decided to look at my options.
As luck would have it a GT3 owning Pistonheader had a C2 box that he's had rebuilt 7 or 8 years ago, due to losing 2nd and 4th gear on a track day. He had a trip planned soon after so fitted a second hand box. He later sold the car with that box still fitted, hence he had this rebuilt one sat in his garage.
I paid £850 for it which was a total bargain. Only problem was it wasn't an LSD box like my factory one.
What me and Jamie decided though was just to fit the 2nd hand box and run it for a year. Then once it proved to be fine, I'd have my old LSD rebuilt and fitted into this box over winter one year.
Anyway, to cut a long story short Jamie got all of the above work done and stopped back late one night to get the box in. That's when I got the text '2nd gear pop-out". *****!
I'd heard about this fault as a previous car I looked at had had a rebuild due to it.
I did think Jamie was winding me up at first as he once told me I needed an engine rebuild before admitting a few minutes later that I didn't. :grin:
That was payback for the time I borrowed his van to nip out in and I rang him and told him I'd rolled it. I was actually ringing to see if he wanted any lunch bringing back.
You get the idea....
He wasn't joking though, and the box was useless.
So I now had a faulty box in the car or a working whining one on the floor.
The faulty one came out and went back to Simon, who I'd bought it from, even though it was a year since I'd bought it. Credit where it's due, Simon had said if it didn't work he'd refund me and he stood by his word. This I massively appreciate.
So now I had my whining one. it was tempting to stick it back in and worry about it next winter, but I thought, no it's pointless when the box is on the floor ready to rebuild.
So the box is now with the guy Jamie uses for gearbox work. He's been in the game 30 years and is very good but sensibly priced. Trouble is the other guy that worked with him has just emigrated so there's a massive queue and there's a certain Mr Ragpicker one place ahead of me in the queue, having his big power Turbo gearbox rebuilt and upgraded.
So that's where we are up to. Very frustrating for me as I have 2 weeks off and had loads to do. I want the car looking how I want by May, which sounds like plenty of time, but there's paintwork to do, aerokit to fit, GT3 wheels and tyres to fit, callipers to refurb and change to red, then interior, although that can wait.
Plus my wife is in Malta, so apart from seeing to the dogs I have full uninterupted man-time.
It's very frustrating for Jamie too as the car is blocking a space in his workshop.
He was going to stick his box in ('98 C2 LSD) to let me take the car away but he's decided just to keep hassling the gearbox guy instead.
I don't foresee many parts being needed at all, as like I say the box functioned perfectly with no crunching or even any notchiness when cold. That's what makes it so annoying, it just whined a bit.
It will have a full strip and examination and any parts ordered but I'm not expecting much more than the 2 main bearings which are £300 each, so theres £600 plus labour straight away. It hopefully won't be the £3k some places charge though.
So I now have another week off with no car to work on. I had planned on referring my callipers as I've said. I have the paint here, all new seals and titanium nipples.
Hey-ho.
I will over the next couple of days have a look at refurbing my GT3 wheels. I've brought them up from Craigs where his conservatory has become our 996 Parts cave, and have cracked all the bolts off. Not one snapped thankfully.
I have sanded through the powder coat on one rim and it's perfect. I need the other 3 to be the same and I can get them mint myself. Any kerb damage hiding under the powder coat though and they'll need some professional work.
That brings us back to needing a bit of luck for things to fall into place though eh.. :wink:
Anyway, apologies for long post but its technically a diary of my ownership so I need to log it all.