Hi again,
So, the year is 2016, lots of things still to do and buy.... This was a very expensive year....
It starts with an item I'd been waiting to come up for sale.
With the 'Cobra RS" decals on the car, someone had taken the standard stainless steel sill covers off and had them powder coated black, then had the orange Cobra decals fitted. However, these had not been refitted properly to the car. They had been fitted too far towards the back of the door where the curve goes up towards the striker plates. This meant that the covers wouldn't stick down properly as they didn't have the slight bend in them.
Only picture I have with the old sill cover on.
So on the 26th January 2016 when a brand new set of black 'Carrera" sill covers came up for sale I snapped them up straight away.
As the stainless steel ones had obviously already been off before and stuck down again with double sided tape, they didn't take much getting off. After getting the old tape rubbed off and glue removed.
The new ones were stuck down in the correct place this time. These are some of the little jobs that look great when complete and just give you a little bit of satisfaction that you done it yourself.
I knew this year that I wanted to get the oil leak from between the engine and gearbox sorted. This is one of those things where the 'while you are in there" saying comes up, with the gearbox being off I might as well fit a new clutch, the one in there had only done 25k miles so had plenty meat left, but there is also the problem that some clutches don't like to be fitted more than once and can shatter very shortly after being refitted, so when on the 2nd February 2016 a brand new Sachs clutch kit came up for sale at £90! yes, that's £90! I bought it.
It was apparently old stock that they had bought it in for a customer who never returned to collect it. Lucky find that turned up just in the nick of time!
The next two items were just too cheap to let go really, so on the 17th February 2016 I won a Genuine 'Carrera GTS" rear engine lid badge. The thing with this was that someone had lost the 'G" from the 'GTS" which didn't make a difference to me as I didn't need that part anyway and the Carrera badge is the same size as a normal one for my car so I just threw the 'TS" part in my man draw, most likely never to be seen again.
And on the 11th March 2016 I won a brand new albeit a 997 replacement service book, as my service book is nearly out space for service stamps it just made sense to buy this rather than stamping a piece of paper or something.
It's now almost service time so I started to gather the items required. Thing is, for once all I needed to sort out was the 10 Litres of Millers Nanodrive as I'd already got the clutch. But before it went down to Nelson Porsche, I had to sort out it's MOT first.
On the 8th April 2016 it went down to Jamie's for service, to find out what the oil leak was, coming from between the engine and gearbox. It turns out that both RMS and IMS were leaking.
So Jamie ordered the newer style IMS cover and RMS. There was also signs of a possible leak from the sump, so I had that removed and resealed too.
While the car was away, I was browsing eBay and the guy I got the clutch from was selling a few sets of brand new Dansk Sports Boxes. The price listed was already ridiculous but I made him and offer which he accepted! So I bought one set for myself at £200 and shortly after talking to Mark, ordered a second set for him and got that set for £180!
I also got a complete Dansk fitting kit from Euro Car Parts for a smidge over £25. Bargain!
With the Dansk boxes, they used a standard style exhaust tip which I did not have. I started to look around but struggled to find any that I liked. Mark told me about a set on Gumtree he'd seen, so I had a look at them and they looked quite good actually and for a mere £40 delivered I couldn't say no.
When the tips arrived they looked even better than they did in the advert.
There was a number stamped into the bottom which read 'EP4110" I had no idea what this was but decided to google it to see if anything would come up. Turns out that these were the Tequipment large bore tips! A £500 option! Couldn't believe my luck, nothing better than Genuine parts! Especially at such a low price.
Time to fit the exhausts
There was a local show on called the 'Fastlane Car Show" which is relatively local to me, so a few friends and I decided to have a run up, somehow my car had developed a 'Creaking" when under heavy-ish breaking. This to me sounded like something had rusted on the pedal or what was connected to the pedal. I didn't think it was too serious though so thought it would wait till I was next down at Jamie's.
At the show.
After the show, myself and 2 friends had a nice drive back on some 'B" roads. Actually it was a bloody excellent drive back. Myself in my car, Mark driving one of his friends Ferrari 458 and another of our friends in his Cayman GT4.
We got back close to home and decided as the weather was so nice, to pop into a local café out in the sticks for a cuppa and piece of cake.
By this time the creaking had got a little louder, so after refreshments we headed off, I had to drop Mark off so when we got to his we tried to find out where the noise was coming from. We removed the plastic guards from under the front trunk to see if we could see anything, but couldn't locate where it was coming from.
I then just took a slow drive home to do some investigation work to see if anyone on the good old Tinterweb had had a similar problem that could point me in the right direction of things to check. Turns out no one seems to have had this problem. It would have to wait till next weekend so I had time to strip it down further to try find the fault.
The following Saturday I got in the car to pull it out the garage, I pressed the pedal quite hard and the creaking was still there, I thought maybe it was heat generated.
I called on a friend who lives a few doors up from me to see if he could help, he was a fully qualified time served mechanic and is bloody good at what he does. Only took him 10 minutes to find the fault.
Turns out that at some point the bolts that hold the calliper onto the hub and had been stripped. These had both been drilled out and helicoiled. Problem is, they had not been drilled straight. Because of this the calliper was not straight, so when braking the calliper was having to bend slightly to put both pads against the disc. So all the time I've been breaking, the calliper has been bending and had weakened the aluminium which is where the noise was coming from.
After assessing what I needed, such as new hub and calliper etc. I'd have to remove the complete strut too. Now although the KW suspension had only seen about 25k miles, it was in a sorry state of affairs, I had noticed this when I first had the wheels off to clean them along with the inside of the arches and wanted it refreshed at some point anyway, so while I had the strut and the hub removed, I could send the spring away for powder coat and get the shocker cleaned up. Problem was I didn't want to send each side off on its own, I'd rather send the full set.
Because my garage is only big enough to fit the car in and to squeeze my skinny ass out of it,
I needed a rolling chassis so I could pull it in and out when I needed to work on it. Back to good old eBay, and what do you know? Soon after a second hand set of suspension off a C2 was listed. The starting bid was only £9.99 but the guy wouldn't post it. I messaged him asking if I won the item would he package the stuff up so I could send down a courier, to which he replied yes. So I let the auction run its course. The bid hadn't budged the whole week, I was sure it would go for around the £80 - £100 mark, and to be fair I was willing to pay what it cost to get it as I needed this to get the job done!
So when the auction ended and I'd won it for the starting bid I was pretty chuffed! I then checked on Parcels 2 Go and got a price of £15 for postage next day delivery. So that's a full set of shocks and springs for £24.99 delivered. I messaged the guy and told him that the parcel would be collected on Monday before 12pm. He told me that he was not going to be in so would leave the parcel down the side of his house. I checked with 'P2G' and they said it was fine as long as I put a note on saying where the parcel would be.
Now, this was meant to be delivered to me on Tuesday. It did not arrive. I got in touch with 'P2G' and they said they'd look into it. On Wednesday I get a message saying they had no idea where it was, they told me it had been collected but never made it back to the depot. Bloody excellent, just my luck. The parcel was only insured for £10! I couldn't have cared if it was insured for £100, I just wanted the suspension.
Eventually after all hope was lost, the parcel turns up at my work! The box having been opened but all items were present! Thank God!
I then had a little winge at 'P2G' about what had happened and as an apology, they refunded me £10. So a full set, albeit used, delivered for £14.99. Beat that.
Now that I had everything I needed to remove the KW's, I got started. First removing the KW and then replacing with the standard items.
After I had all struts removed I made a list of things I'd need, first was a tool kit to strip the kw's down into individual parts, I did not get anything with the car so got on to the UK supplier and they had a nice little tool set which included 'C' spanner, pre load adjuster and allen keys for the rebound and one for locking the height adjuster plates.
Once the tool kit had arrived I stripped the struts down into individual pieces.
Next I needed to source some parts as a 'while I'm in there" kind of thing, I wanted:
Front stabiliser drop links
Rear stabiliser drop links
Front track rod ends
New Sachs strut top mounts
O/S front hub
N/S front hub
Front Powerflex Black Series anti roll bar bushes
Rear Powerflex Black Series anti roll bar bushes
Because of the O/S hub having been helicoiled I was worried that the N/S might have been done also, so seeing as both sides were going to be stripped down, I bought a pair. One of the new hubs was missing the ABS sensor and the two that were in my old hubs were seized solid, it even tried angle grinding around them to free them off, but it was just too much hassle so bought a new Bosch one off eBay, when it arrived it actually had the Porsche part number stamped on the side.
I then removed all arch liners front and rear and then the rear anti roll bar. I removed the front callipers so I could send them away for refurb complete and new seals. I made blanking plugs to cap off the front flexi pipes so I didn't lose all the fluid and leaving the rear callipers on meant that I had some braking when rolling the car back in the garage. The rear callipers also needed a refurb but this was to be sorted after the new year.
After that, I sent the springs away for powder coat along with the rear anti roll bar and a few other little things I wanted done. One of the plastic dust boots on the front struts was damaged so I purchased a new pair of them.
While I was cleaning the shockers up I noticed that the fronts weren't returning to the fully extended position when pushed right down, I took all the settings down for each shocker, then set the front two the same, but still wouldn't match up, the rears were fine. So I contacted the KW dealer to enquire about getting them serviced, he said to send them down so they could bench test them, so I did. The test came back that one of them was quite weak. I needed to have both front shockers stripped down and rebuilt with new seals and refilled etc.
I've heard that you can get bilstein's serviced for £85 each, or there abouts. I was told it would be expensive to have the KW's serviced as there was only one place that does it in the UK, but when I got a bill for £406.20 + return postage for the fronts only! I was still a little pee'd off. Absolute ripping B'stards. I'll never buy a set of KW's again. (Not that I bought these obviously).
On the 6th October 2016 I was again, shock horror! Surfing eBay when I can across a listing for a set of front Brembo brake disks. It was a pair for £52.30. I thought that couldn't be right, so I done a quick check on Google and sure enough they were genuine Brembo discs, I then rang Mark and told him about them and he said at that price he'd have a pair too. There were only two sets available so I bought them both.
When they arrived I noticed that they weren't sided, what they had done was send me 4 O/S Front discs, obviously I needed two O/S and two N/S.
So I messaged the seller, Euro Car Parts, and told them what they had done, I was told to go to my local 'ECP' and they would change them over for me. When I got there all hell broke loose, turns out that they had sold me a pair of discs for the price of one. My local 'ECP' weren't prepared to swap them for some reason as they said they'd lose money? Anyway, after 4 - 5 phone calls to head office they were told to just exchange them for me to let me on my way.
ECP also had for sale a set of Brembo front and rear brake pads at a good price so I bought those too, and later ordered a set of Brembo rear brake discs and handbrake shoes. The rear discs alone cost me three times what the front did, but I'd saved so much on the fronts that I couldn't complain, now the whole braking system was Brembo. The callipers, discs, shoes and even brake fluid.
Mark and his wife had been away to Florida to spend Christmas holidays over there, when he came back he had bought us both a brand new pair of Rein engine mounts that he got from Pelican Parts while he was there, he got them for about £70 each. Luckily, he managed to sneak them through customs to save the import tax! Ha.... Nice one Mark, thanks a lot! much appreciated.
While he was away he messaged to tell me that Opie Oils had a sale on the Millers Nanodrive, so I was straight on to the website to order 10 litres needed as I knew there was an upcoming service in March.
Now with the miles I do I was told that the oil did not need changed every year and I was just wasting money so I decided I was not going to change it this year, especially as I've only done about 600 miles as the car was in pieces. But it had been started and stopped a few times just pulling it in and out the garage to work on, and doing this, petrol can seep into the oil, so thought it best be changed.
That's the end of 2016. I had a lot to do to get the car back together, boxes of bits just waiting to be fitted, Couldn't wait to get started!
Hurry up lighter nights, I have work to do!
Thanks for reading.
Take it easy
Craig