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1St DIY Major Service

Jam911

Well-known member
Joined
31 Oct 2010
Messages
1,720
So I spent 6 hours of today carrying my first DIY Major Service.

I have to report beforehand that I was worried about access to and replacing the spark plugs and also bleeding the brakes.

But I have to say it all went very well, aided by some but not too much swearing and occasionally banging my head on the exhausts.

Access to the plugs was the hardest part by far and without borrowing my mates ramp it would have been impossible. I did not have to remove the silencers as some say but it is very tight to get a socket in let alone a torque wrench or your hands for that matter.

Being able to actually see what you re doing is very hard too.
Removing the coil packs and associated wires was a ***** as was getting them back on/in.

I think it took about an hour and a bit to do the first spark plug and then I got faster and faster, it still took about four hours in total.

One strange thing was that I really struggled getting the first coil pack back into the block, I had to tighten the bolts to get it back in securely. All the other ones pushed back in quite easily. This concerned me so I removed the first coil pack and compared it to one of the others. Upon inspection it had what looked like an adapter on it and none of the others did, so I removed the adapter and it went back in fine. So it looks like it shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Now I wonder if that is why the car would occasionally feel like it had a miss fire / hesitate when holding a gear at about 50/60 mph....

I also replaced the heat shields as they had rotted to bits and once I worked out how that fitted they are a simple fix.

Changing the oil and filter is a simple job too.

Air box takes a bit of messing about to get it out but then the air filter and pollen filter are simple.

The poly belt is surprisingly easy too but I did have a hand on the final part.

When replacing the brake fluid I first sprayed the bleed nipples with freeing oil and left them for a few hours before releasing. I was very nervous about this and I brought stainless steel replacements and I was going to swap them out but in the end I didn't want to push my luck, so I just flushed through with new brake fluid.

Car now runs very smoothly and I am having lots of wine to celebrate.

Also it was fun to work on my own car and very satisfying too.

Plus I saved £1000 on what my local OPC would have charged me to do the work.
 
All in all an excellent job young man .. satisfying isn't it :)

It's not all about the cost .. it's an achievement :thumb:

Trust me .. the more you do and the faster you get .. with practise then a plug change is less than 1 hour but a ramp helps a hell of a lot .

No idea on this adaptor thing though . a picture might shed light on it .. the coils just push over the plug and whilst a little tight don't really give problems .
 
Jam911 said:
Also it was fun to work on my own car and very satisfying too.

Plus I saved £1000 on what my local OPC would have charged me to do the work.

Great job! :thumbs:

When can I book mine in?? :)
 
Great Job :thumb:

Out of interest would you be worried come sale time or are you keeping the car?

Im considering doing the services also DIY but I wondered about the effect of resale if you had to.

Do you regularly get the car checked over by an independent or?
 
I did think about not having an OPC full service history but:

1 I intend to keep the car, at the moment.

2 I keep all receipts and any future owner would see that the car is very well
cared for and not skimped on at all.

3 I am probably more careful servicing the car than any OPC would be. IMHO

4 Any specialist work will be at an indy and fully receipted.

5 The car will have over 100k miles on it in the next 12 months and effectively
be worthless ...almost.

6 I intend to drive it as much as possible it has been my daily for 8 years now and I still love it.
 
Nice one!

Do all my own stuff now (pretty much).

As regards re-sale?

It's staying for the foreseeable, but I keep all receipts, take photo's and keep records of everything in a large box file.

Personally, I would rather have an enthusiast kept car with stuff like this as opposed to a few OPC/Indy receipts.
 
Ive started doing the interim (annual) oil changes myself.
It's dead simple and I resent paying for something so straightforward.
My Indy was quite shocked I had signed the service manual myself.
If someone wants to argue it's worth less when i eventually come to sell it then so be it - but it will have had more regular oil changes than Porsche recommend - that's a quality problem to have!
 
Official documentation is only any use when people don't know what they're looking at. No offence to Porsche owners, this goes for any consumer product out there.
 
I've done all my own stuff to the car, including fairly major work like clutch and flywheel for 5 years.

They are no harder than any other car to work on, time to bust that myth!

I do my plugs on the deck with wheel removed, reckon I could do them blind fold now :floor:

I'll tell you when I sell it if its had any effect on value... Traders prob won't touch it. However it is worth more now than I paid for it anyway....
 
Jam911, can I book my car in for a full service and especially the wine and cheese afterwards, or can you be paid in wine instead? :D

If you think the plugs and coils are a ball ache you want to try a gen 1 turbo, the best gynecologist in the land would be stumped, the near side one behind the turbo caused a near full strip down.

Well done for the effort, it's a great feeling to get it all back together and it runs.
 
I sold my 911 to the first person to actually view and he loved that I had maintained it in recent times myself.
 
The fact that most people who harp on about documented service history/OPC/Porsche specialist, etc. usually wouldn't go near a private sale through their own fear sort of debunks their argument.
 
Thanks for the supportive comments chaps.
 
Great work there. I wish I was as brave. :thumb:
 

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