teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
11/19/15 2:18 p.m.
chiodos wrote: Does the oil pressure gauge say...druck press.?

Yes it does :)

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
11/19/15 2:20 p.m.
Mad_Ratel wrote: The older cars have an oil cooler on the motor, then the sump, and an external. the motor really was oil cooled in hot climates. I've been in dad's 83 with it hitting 220*F, we flick the switch on our rigged up fan on the front cooler and watched it drop to 180. Druck is german for oil I believe.

I've seen 250F stuck in traffic. Need to rig up a fan too.

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
11/20/15 6:21 p.m.

So, the first attempt (after thinking about it) to add some oil temperature in the winter: block off the engine (primary) oil cooler airflow to some degree, after removing the front (secondary) oil cooler cover we made the other day of course. Here's the bottom of the primary oil cooler. Air from the big fan blows down through this and around the cylinders.

The piece of card we cut to block off most of that flow:

Installed:

And the result after 20 minute sprited driving in ~40F outside temperatures:

Looks like about 170F so not very conclusive but we don't exactly have data on what it normally does when it's 40F outside. At least it didn't overheat. In fact it didn't even open the secondary thermostat.

Next we try it in colder temperatures (excpected over the weekend and/or remove the rear whale tail.<img src="

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
11/23/15 8:29 p.m.

Went tailless today in an effort to see if the whale tail is contributing to keeping the oil temperatures a bit low in colder weather. It's clear to see how much less restrictive the whale tail and open deck lid combination might be when compared to the deck lid grill.

Now for some cold weather testing just as it's warming up again :(

mazdeuce
mazdeuce PowerDork
11/24/15 6:37 a.m.

I drove my 964 to an autocross in 38 degree temperatures on Sunday and it heated up enough to open the thermostat on the oil cooler within 15 mimutes. I also have a whale tail.
Yes, different car, but I was thinking about your car as I drove.

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
11/24/15 8:10 a.m.
mazdeuce wrote: I drove my 964 to an autocross in 38 degree temperatures on Sunday and it heated up enough to open the thermostat on the oil cooler within 15 mimutes. I also have a whale tail. Yes, different car, but I was thinking about your car as I drove.

Yes, they are a bit different. Does the 964 have an engine mounted oil cooler or just the front one?

mazdeuce
mazdeuce PowerDork
11/24/15 8:20 a.m.

I'm 95% certain it only has the front one, though I've clearly been wrong before. I did actually trace all of the oil lines on my car before deciding that the oil leak was small enough to deal with for the time being. I need to buck up and buy all new soft hoses and O rings and tear it apart and clean it.

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
11/24/15 8:24 a.m.
mazdeuce wrote: I'm 95% certain it only has the front one, though I've clearly been wrong before. I did actually trace all of the oil lines on my car before deciding that the oil leak was small enough to deal with for the time being. I need to buck up and buy all new soft hoses and O rings and tear it apart and clean it.

Yes you do LOL

964 does NOT have an engine mounted oil cooler according to the interweb.

mazdeuce
mazdeuce PowerDork
11/24/15 8:34 a.m.

Which is why I said 95%, because I haven't actually pulled the motor and looked at all the pieces.
I have to figure out if I can replace all of the soft bits with the motor in the car or not. I actually feel kind of bad hanging out with the Porsche club guys. Their 964's are clean enough to eat off and mine looks like my wife drives it to work three days a week. I just don't have the time/inclination to fetishize the cleanliness of the car.

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
11/24/15 9:07 a.m.
mazdeuce wrote: Which is why I said 95%, because I haven't actually pulled the motor and looked at all the pieces. I have to figure out if I can replace all of the soft bits with the motor in the car or not. I actually feel kind of bad hanging out with the Porsche club guys. Their 964's are clean enough to eat off and mine looks like my wife drives it to work three days a week. I just don't have the time/inclination to fetishize the cleanliness of the car.

Driving 'em trumps cleaning 'em in my book. Carry on sir.

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
11/24/15 6:58 p.m.

Tailless test drive tonight. 37F; the coldest it's going to be for about a week. Not liking the look :(

A 20 minute drive at 55mph to a restaurant for a business meeting prduced this:

I'd say that was 180F. I was hoping for more, after all, it wasn't that cold and the oil cooler is still covered. The exterior thermostat didn't open and it didn't overheat. Maybe I'll try restricting the deck lid grill a bit.

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
11/29/15 4:16 p.m.

The oil temperature issue continues to frustrate us.

The standard decklid grill is about 101 square inches while the whale tail is about 162 square inches in area. This is just measuring the individual slots and doesn't take into account the sizes of the relative mesh and slats but let's assume they are at least "similar" So it seems plausible that the whale tail would be a) less restrictive and b) capture more air when in motion. So we reinstalled the whale tail but covered half the slots with packaging tape in an attempt to restrict cold air flow to some extent but, alas, with 37F outside temperature and the engine oil cooler still covered with cardboard we only achieved what appears to be 160F. Is this a good enough oil temperature to be thrashing the engine at redline and wide open throttle? It makes us very uncomfortable. We are going to try blocking off 50% of what's left open and see if that helps but at that point we are concerned about restricting air intake for the engine itself. Temperature outside is only going to get lower.

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
11/29/15 4:29 p.m.

Perhaps driven by the need to score a victory over the car, however small, we decided it was time to install the LED gauge lamps/bulbs we have had on the parts shelf for some time. This is not for bling but for practical reasons as it is very difficult to see the odometer at night; a fact that came to light during a recent TSD rally.

So we had to pull all the gauges out one at a time, locate the illumination lamps and replace them. Actually quite easy once you figure out how to get them out of the back of the gauge.

The effect is quite illuminating.

You can't see the volt meter hidden behind the steering wheel which is fortuitous as it still has it's old yellow incandescent lamp in there. We will need to source a 194 LED replacement to finish the project. And yes, we also fixed the offset steering wheel position, and not by just moving the yellow tape either.

Mad_Ratel
Mad_Ratel HalfDork
11/30/15 6:58 a.m.

Here's a question, maybe your temperature gauge is off. I.e. not reading correctly.
Have you confirmed that it matches oil temp in the sump tank?

Mind a link to the thread detailing which led's you need? Dad wants this so much for his car right now. (where did you buy them?)

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
11/30/15 4:38 p.m.

I feel pretty good that we have correlation between the gauge and our infrared sensor. Aiming that at the block and tank yield temperatures that are in the range so to speak, perhaps a little lower.

I think I got them from someone in this thread. It's been a while. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/644374-ultimate-led-ba7s-bulbs-gauges-ala-etarga-pic-vid.html

Petrolburner
Petrolburner HalfDork
11/30/15 5:52 p.m.

Are you getting your oil temp from race conditions or just highway driving? You will generate a whole lot more heat under WOT and redline.

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
11/30/15 9:05 p.m.
Petrolburner wrote: Are you getting your oil temp from race conditions or just highway driving? You will generate a whole lot more heat under WOT and redline.

Right now just highway driving.

tdrrally
tdrrally Reader
12/1/15 7:47 a.m.

have you tried using the oil cooler as a heater inside the car? it worked wonders in my 70 beetle, less air flow inside the car and you get warm

Mad_Ratel
Mad_Ratel HalfDork
12/1/15 8:14 a.m.
tdrrally wrote: have you tried using the oil cooler as a heater inside the car? it worked wonders in my 70 beetle, less air flow inside the car and you get warm

The 911 has the best heater you could ever hope for. You could literally bake a turkey with the car if you wanted... (the heat is literally air blown over the headers.. with some cold air mixed in to prevent burns.) we know this b/c last summer the flap stuck full open on heat... was 140*F inside the car...

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
12/1/15 8:49 a.m.
Mad_Ratel wrote:
tdrrally wrote: have you tried using the oil cooler as a heater inside the car? it worked wonders in my 70 beetle, less air flow inside the car and you get warm
The 911 has the best heater you could ever hope for. You could literally bake a turkey with the car if you wanted... (the heat is literally air blown over the headers.. with some cold air mixed in to prevent burns.) we know this b/c last summer the flap stuck full open on heat... was 140*F inside the car...

We left it running after we painted the interior a couple of years ago. IIRC it got to well over 100F inside. Don't need an internal oil cooler.

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
12/1/15 6:12 p.m.

Mixed bag of progress today but no oil temperature posts; not cold enough to do any meaningful testing.

First off, to make sure we win this weekends RallyCross we added some stickers/power.

[URL="http://www.thayerauto.com/"][/URL] is the series sponsor in case you were wondering.

Then we installed the last of our LED gauge illumination lamps: the aftermarket voltmeter. It cost nearly as much as the bloody voltmeter!

Then the postman arrived with a spare transmission. OK, it was a big truck. We are now practising round the clock so we can do transmission swaps between runs at the next RallyCross.

Mad_Ratel
Mad_Ratel HalfDork
12/1/15 7:01 p.m.

not exactly inplausible.

other than lining up the splines it is pretty easy to change out the transmission... i think four bolts and the one wire for the reverse sensor. (not including axle bolts and bellhousing...)

the axles are the biggest pita. I recall 12 bolts each axle... and you have to use some locktight on it. not red but something to hold it. We've dropped a brand new axle it beats the snot out of the exhaust when it drops. (which is how we justified tuned length headers and BB exhaust...)

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
12/7/15 5:40 p.m.

We had a very interesting weekend with the car, racing and making a movie!

Firstly Ryan Symancek arrived Thursday as guest driver and filmmaker for the weekend. Ryan is famous for his film series he made for /DRIVE about his experiences building his first car for RallyCross and driving a Group B Lancia 034 in New Zealand among other things. After those exploits were were hoping he wouldn't be underwhelmed by our little 911. We needn't worried.

Friday was spent prepping the car, loading the van and shooting some moving footage from the back of our Audi. It was an interesting process and the car was a star performer. Here are some iPhone shots we took of the proceedings.

One interesting result of all this was that the oil temperature reached 195F. It was 46F outside and mostly were were making passes at around 50mph so that was somewhat encouraging especially as this somewhat replicated the conditions we expected Saturday at the event. Consequently we decided to remove the plastic tape blocking of half the whale tail slots.

Race day morning we were greeted by thick fog and freezing temperatures. We were happy we had left the winter tires on the car and that the venue was only an hour away. The temperature kept going down the closer we got till it was only 24F when we unloaded and set up camp!

By the time the runs got underway the sun had emerged and burnt off most of the fog. It even climbed above freezing, barely. Ryan managed to spin the car on his first practice lap but after that he got it down. The thing is so easy to drive anyway, once you figure out not to lift mid corner. After 8 runs each and much filming Ryan finished 2nd and I was fifth, after I demolished a bunch of cones on my sixth run. I'm rusty, what can I say?

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/hoRssnt7-54

https://youtu.be/hoRssnt7-54

The car ran flawlessly, almost. After my debacle with the wall of cones I suffered a stuck throttle at wide open and shut the car down mid-run. It fired right back up at idle so we are not too sure what happened. One theory is that broken pieces of cone got jammed up in the throttle linkage as it runs almost under the transmission. At these temperatures cones just shatter when you hit them! Another is that, due to the deep ruts that were forming we were jamming frozen mud into the linkage and jamming it up that way. Either way it is a bit worrying and something we may need to address if we decide to RallyCross the car again.

Oil temperature-wise we got some good results. whale tail fully open but engine oiler cooler still shrouded we saw 195F again during the runs. This was in temperatures in the mid- thirties so quite encouraging. We drove the car home below freezing but only got 140F at highway speeds, not surprisingly.

So we can't wait for Ryan's film to be done now and released to YouTube. Expect it in about a month. Oh, and our new mascot, RALLIDOG was a big hit too.

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
1/21/16 9:55 a.m.

We think we have the oil temperature concerns addressed now. With some 5W40 oil in there and a cover over the engine oil cooler I think we should be fine. Time to move on to other issues: poor running and "popping" noises at idle!

We read on the forums that the popping noises are probably due to intake leaks; either from aging vacuum lines, oil filler gasket or, more than likely, intake manifold. It seems the bolts come loose and they can suck in the paper gaskets! These issues might also account for the rough idle. Of course there are other possible causes for the idling so we decided to look at plugs and ignition too.

So off with the distributor cap. Doesn't look pristine in there.

Neither does the rotor arm

We found these loose wires in front of the engine too. Can't believe after how many times we've had the engine out we haven't noticed them before. We must have forgotten what they were previously for, surely.

Plugs all look OK though the gaps were a little tight.

Uh Oh, another oil leak. Put it on the list.

So we gapped the plugs, cleaned up the cap and rotor, checked the oil cap gasket, looked around for deteriorating vacuum lines and checked the intake manifold bolts. Every bolt was loose! Not hand tight loose but almost. We torqued them back down and fired it back up, hoping that would be sufficient to sort it out for now.

It was :) Runs like a champ again. I think we'll plan on removing the intake manifold and replacing the gaskets and vacuum lines next time the engine is out. Which, judging by the proliferation of oil leaks recently will be quite soon.

Next we are off to Sno*Drift rally with the car to do some spectating and sell some wheels! Stay warm.

teamilluminata
teamilluminata HalfDork
2/4/16 7:17 a.m.

Last week we talked about prepping the car for Sno*Drift rally, even though it wasn't competing. Well now we feel obliged to let you know how it all went. Of course it wouldn't be rally unless you were burning the midnight oil just before you left and that's exactly what we did though, of course, it wasn't planned that way. When we moved the trailer into position to load the car the next morning we found the lights only worked if we jiggled the trailer plug back and forth. Uh oh! We carefully removed the plugs cover and promptly three loose wires came out of their terminals with no clue as to which terminals they were.

We have no documentation of what terminal does what and the interweb wasn't forthcoming so we dashed out to Autozone before they closed to purchase another plug so we'd at least have a diagram and, if needed, a spare plug. The issue soon became that there were three loose wires and only two loose terminal screws. This was compounded by a wiring diagram that had the plug notch 180 degrees out of position which suggested our plug was always wired wrrong. But it wasn't as it always worked before. Oh, and the wire colors were all different too! It took a few hours to realize all these but when accounted for we got it back together. The extra wire? That turned out to be the trailer brake ground so we twinned it up with the trailer ground. PHEW! still Wednesday; just. Loading up the car and trailer next afternoon was unefentful, thankfully, and the weather wasn't too bad with just some light snow forecast for later. Piece of cake.

So it was an easy drive to Lewiston and some logistical jiggery pokery soon saw the 911 parked at the rental house and the RALIVAN and trailer locked up in the local hardware store's yard (same owner). Then a quick jaunt over to race HQ in Atlanta via the snow covered "scenic route" had us registered, acredited and smiling. The Nokian tires proving more than adequate for the snow covered ice encrusted back roads. Back to the rental. Drinks, dinner and rally banter ensued. The next two days were a blur of spectating and hob nobbing with participants and rally enthusiasts at our vendor booth and both parc exposes. The car really is a massive hit, even getting more attention on local TV than the rally cars. (see below) The car ran flawlessly all weekend and proved more than adequate for the conditions. There's just so much grip! After sitting in Atlanta service for two cold days the RALIVAN sputtuered into life Sunday morning to drag us all back down state without a hiccup. All said a thouroughly enjoyable but exausting weekend.

Video:

https://youtu.be/zgWYWqSb-Lw

https://www.youtube.com/embed/zgWYWqSb-Lw

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