Project Lazarus

[rexcramer]

This is why men drink.

[husker boxster]

Originally Posted by rexcramer

This is why men drink.

Someone on RL describing his misadventures with changing the CPS said he swore so much and so loud his dog left the garage.

[husker boxster]

In order for me to move fwd with the 928, I must remove a plate on the bottom of the bell housing. The plate is held on by 6 bolts, 4 of which are easy to get to. The back 2 however, are not accessible unless the exhaust pipes are dropped from the exhaust manifolds. There are 2 exhaust manifolds that each have a flange with 3 bolts holding the exhaust pipe to the manifold. Of course the 3 nuts are fused onto the bolts AND the flanges, and won't budge when trying to remove them with a wrench.

So the nuts must be cut off. But there's no room for a hack saw. Time for a dremel to grind them off. Other than the nut at the bottom of each flange that can actually be cut off, the top 2 must be ground off. Takes a bit longer, but is doable with the dremel. Spent parts of 5 days working on this. After doing a couple, I figured out a system that worked faster on the remaining nuts. All 6 are ground off.




But I'm not out of the woods yet, as I need to get the flanges separated which will allow me to lower the exhaust pipes. The remaining bolts are still fused in the flanges. The next step? Heat. I bought a new benzene torch, as my old one almost caused an explosion. There are 2 types - a lower temp one using blue bottles of fuel and a hotter version using a yellow bottle. Since I have a few old blue bottles already in the garage, I bought the blue torch. Tried it on the 1st bolt I’d ground the nut off and it wasn't hot enough. I called a mechanic friend and he suggested the yellow torch. So I went back and bought it (I've always needed 2 benzene torches). It did heat the metal to red but it didn't loosen the nuts - that's when I decided to grind them off. Now I'll heat the metal to red hot and hopefully drive the bolts out of the hole. At the very least, I hope I can get the exhaust pipe flange off the bolts, allowing the exhaust pipes to drop down. If that doesn’t work, my mechanic friend has an acetylene torch and he can get them off. But that escalates the project.

So after I got all the nuts off and before I tried yellow heat, I gave 1 of the bolts on the driver’s side a few good whacks with a hammer and punch. It flew out and the vibration knocked a 2nd bolt half way out. The 3rd bolt gave a bit more resistance, but it came out too. I had the driver’s side out. The bottom passenger side bolt still wouldn’t come out (this is the one I tried early on and assumed all were stuck because of this one). Went to the top of the flange and both popped out with some persuasion. I took a small screw driver and carefully drove it between the flanges and they cracked loose. Took the punch and hammer to the last bolt and it popped out. Yay!


But no time to celebrate just yet. There was a pipe running down from the engine bay to the cats and it was joined together by a nut on a threaded flare section. This pipe was keeping the exhaust pipe from dropping down. The bottom, immovable nut was a 22mm and I had a flared wrench for it. But the other nut was big. I measured it at 27mm and went on a journey to find an open end wrench at a parts store, while the nuts soaked in Aerokroil. Took me 3 tries to find one but I was in business. Got home and tried working them loose. No go after several attempts. Decided to try blue heat on it since the line appeared to be a non-steel or iron composite. Gave the big nut a good bit of heat, then tried my wrenches again. It came loose! I loosened the nut and the exhaust dropped down. Finally, some success.


I loosened the 2 previously inaccessible bolts on the plate and removed it. I painted some stripes on the flywheel, one on top and one on the bottom, so I could tell when I’d turned the flywheel 180 deg. Then went on top and made sure the offending cap was clear of the hole. Turned the flywheel and the cap came out. More success.



Decided to do some clean-up on top of the bell housing before putting everything back together. Also took the opportunity to clean one of the twelve ground wires on a 928 that can cause electrical issues. This makes the 10th of 12 that I’ve cleaned. This one is normally buried but only required 1 bolt and wire to be removed to get to it since I already had a bunch of stuff removed for the CPS. Then put the CPS in and got the pig tail routed and connected. Sweet Baby Jesus, the CPS sure looks good back in place.




I’m going to put the fuel lines back on tomorrow and hopefully try starting it again. Then on to measuring the thrust bearing.

[piper6909]

Originally Posted by husker boxster

Here in the Rust Belt, bolts like that are par for the course.

Anyway, good luck starting the car. I'm excited and at the same time scared for you. In the back of my mind I'm still worried about the condition of the timing belt. The fact that you cranked the engine and it still held should make me feel better, though.

Keeping my fingers crossed for you!

[husker boxster]

Here's some pics of the offending CPS cap.




Unhooked the line coming out of the fuel pump. No gas out of it when I crank.

Going to pull the LH computer and send it off for analysis / repair. That will take a few wks.

[husker boxster]

Early last wk I pulled the LH ECU from the passenger footwell. I contacted a friend in our club who has an 87 S4 and asked if he was done repairing it (he was doing some of the same fuel lines I've done). He said it was still apart and new parts weren't scheduled to arrive for 2 wks. So much for trying my ECU in his car.

On Wed I packed it up and stood in line at the Post Office to send to a guy in AZ for analysis and rebuild if broken. His website said to send it to his PO Box if you used USPS, so I did. It was scheduled to arrive Sat. Sent Louie an email stating I'd sent him my ECU and arrival date. Checked the tracking # Sat morning and it had arrived on Fri, so I sent him an email saying it had arrived. Got a response back from him saying he had closed his PO Box on Wed, but the Post Office would forward it to his mailing addr. OK, but it wouldn't be until Mon before he got it. He emailed me late Mon and said he'd received my ECU. He said my ECU had the original board that always fails, however, his diagnostic tool was broken so he couldn't verify if my ECU was good or not. I had to decide whether to chance him fixing a good ECU and wasting $495 or having him send it back and have someone else test it and fix if broken. I don't need to throw $500 out the window, but figured it makes my car worth that much more if it's repaired, knowing it won't fail in the future. I let him know this morning to go ahead and put the new board in. He just emailed me and said the ECU was done, it was in the mail, and should arrive on Thu. Fingers crossed it solves my starting issues. Based on what the shark doesn't do at ignition, the symptoms point to the LH ECU.

While the ECU was off being worked on, I did some more work on the seats. I found there's a crank tool in the tool kit that's used to crank on the seats to move them fwd & back. Currently my seats won't go fwd enough with the power button to get to the rear bolts. I cranked on the driver's seat with the crank and got it fwd enough to get to the bolts. Got them out and the seat came out. Success! It was dirty under the seat, so I had full access to get the droppings and dirt removed and gave the carpet and floor a nice shampooing. I also shot some penetrating oil on the seat's threaded bars that are used to move the seat back and forth. They had a bunch of crud on them. Then hit them with a wire brush.

Feeling good about the driver's seat, I moved to the passenger seat. I had the seat as far fwd with the crank that I thought I could go but it still wasn't far enough fwd (there are 4! bolts holding the seat in the rear). I could get to 2 of the 4 bolts. So my plan was to spray the threaded bars with penetrating oil and then run the seat back and forth a bit with the switch. It wouldn't move with the switch, so I was going to run it back a ways with the crank. Part way into my motion I hear a crack and two of the plastic teeth on the gear go flying into the footwell. Great. Why did I think things would continue to go well? Thinking I'm really screwed, I went back to the Internet for more knowledge. Supposedly I can take the cable out that drives the seat and stick a vise grips on it and manually turn it. We'll see. I haven't gotten back to it to see if that's true. My seat adventures were Sat & Sun.

Yesterday I removed the steering wheel. The stitching has let go. Took it to my upholstery place. Was hoping he could stitch it back together or replace it with new leather. Unfortunately, the color appears to be like my Granite Green exterior - the dark parts of the interior can look gray, green, or brown depending on the light (the seats and carpet are a bone color). Got a call from the upholstery guy this morning and he can't restitch it because the leather has shrunk and he doesn't have leather hydes hanging around, so I retrieved it up today. He would be able to stitch it up if I bring a new leather kit for it, so I started searching the Internet this afternoon. It may be hard to find a match for my color, but I have a few leads. The search continues...

I still need to measure the thrust bearing play. I've been reading up on how to do it, but haven't mustered the courage to do it yet. Maybe tomorrow or Thu.

On a positive note, I found $2.99 under the driver's seat. I parlayed $2 of that into a PowerBall ticket but none of the #s hit.

Here's some pics of my steering wheel. They don't really accurately depict the true color.

[husker boxster]

Got the ECU back yesterday. Put it back in and connected it up. Connected the battery and turned the ignition to ON. Heard energizing noises. That was new (and positive). It was evening, so I waited to go further til today.

This morning I hooked the battery up again. Had a hose coming out of the fuel pump / fuel filter to see if gas would come out. It was dry before, meaning the fuel pump wasn't getting electricity. Turned the ignition to START for a few secs and then checked the hose. Fuel was coming out! That's new & positive. Hard to see in the pic, but that's gas dripping out of the hose.



Hooked the fuel line back up to the fuel filter so that gas would be sent to the engine. Sprayed the throttle body with a shot of starting fluid and gave it a try.



Have some fuel leaks to track down, but today was a significant milestone.