Yeah, that's pretty bad. I've sprung two hardlines on my Sequoia that didn't look half that bad (both during hard braking, to boot). I guess its only bad in comparison to the rest of the car, which isn't gonna rust.
Yeah, that's pretty bad. I've sprung two hardlines on my Sequoia that didn't look half that bad (both during hard braking, to boot). I guess its only bad in comparison to the rest of the car, which isn't gonna rust.
I got some time to get back to the 944. I have some pictures that I will post up shortly. Here is what went down this weekend.
Friday, we had something that rarely, if ever happens here in Ottawa Canada. A tornado touched down, maybe 15 miles away from my house/ area. We lost power for a good 14 to 15 hours so not bad for me. There are still some areas that are waiting to get it back. I figured since my kids were out at work, fairs and my wife was gone shopping I would take the opportunity to go check out and work on the 944. it hasn't had much love since I moved last month. A bit of downsizing meant it had to go to a place with more space and the 924 gets to sleep in my new house in the garage.
I go out to the 944, through a ton of stop and go, because half or more of the stop lights are out and people forget how to drive or what a 4-way stop is. It actually took me 30 minutes longer than normal to get to my car. When there, I grab a steel line cutter and cut the line that I thought was the leaky one. Get some good R9 hose to replace the section of line I removed to test and make sure that there is no leak. Turn the key and crank, but nothing happens. We check spark, and that the Injectors are firing. Both are Good. So off to get some gas.
$10 of gas later and we crank it over, look under the car, and I cut the wrong line. 
So next Saturday I will go back, replace the Correct line and see what happens.
Pics added the line we cut and what we replaced it with.
Chunk removed from return line:
Line seperation:
R9 Replacement line (High pressure Fuel Injection Line)
Went back out to work on the 944 again. Progress was made and that is good, but frustration is setting in as we are getting closer to getting this car back running and driving. It is so close that I just want to hear it run on its own power.
To that end I cut and spliced in the fuel line that actually goes to the engine and not the return line. Tightened the clamps down to make sure that the no fuel would leak out, and it is holding gas now and making it to the end of the fuel rail. I know this because we were able to see that we have pressure there. Checked the pressure at the end of the fuel rail, and we are getting 2.5 to 3 bar of fuel pressure. Bonus. But the car only pops and bangs, it will not catch. We removed the injectors, because we had those rebuilt earlier in this resurrection. What we found is that two of the injectors had extra caps on them. After removing the extra caps and putting things all back together, it still just pops and bangs. It is closer, but we did find the following air intake was split. You can see the crack in the intake line. This happened after one of the big Bangs as we tried to get it running.
So now that we have made progress here in the engine bay I need to go through my parts collection to see if I have an extra part. So after that I went inside and replaced the Steering wheel because the one that came with the car was pretty much worn out.
It was a bit wet and rainy but we still got some movement on this. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will be able to find the part I need and get this beast started.
As to the tires, I've kind of given up on 15". I went ahead and got some 16" style-9s (staggered 7" front 8" rear) for the 924S in order o have better tire choice (and a better stance). They're a perfect fit, are real Porsche, and can be found for cheap (though I assume you know all of this already). May be worth looking into in order to expand your tire options.
In the future I will probably go with a larger wheel and tire size for the 944. This past year I was able to pick up a full set of cookie cutters with R comp tires that have some life left for about 100 bucks along with a ton of other goodies. Hopefully in the next week or two we will be able to hear this car roar again for the first time in 7 years. 2 since I have owned it.
Well we got the intake boot from a local 944 guy that was parting out a car. Took the old and ripped one off but didn't get the chance to put the new part on. Man the old one was torn almost in 2.
The distraction came with the indoctrination of a new Garage hand as we replaced the ball joint in his first car. My son, Luis, got to find out just how good it feels when you get down and dirty. Plus he got to hear his grandfather chew me out for doing too much of the work, instead of letting him do it. Just a few pictures showing the work. Car in question is a 2006 Hyundai Elantra GT. Nice solid car, for a Canadian car that has been run rain, shine or snow.
we did it and got the 944 running today. It was not meant to be today, but in the end we got down and dirty and made it run.
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So here is the back story. After going through everything on the car in the past three years, we decided to go back to square 1. Start with the easy stuff and see where it takes us. So we began by looking and ensuring we were looking at Top Dead Center with the sensors and the timing belt. It all looked close enough that the car should have started. Next we looked at the spark plug wires, because looking at TDC and where the rotor was sitting on the distributor cap, we noticed that Plug wire #1 was sitting on the spark plug # 4 cap position. After moving all the plug wires around to ensure that they were where they should be (Firing Order 1,3,4,2) the car still wouldn't start, in fact it wasn't even popping. My dad and my brother pushed in on the injector connectors and the car fired! It ran!. We let it idle for a few minutes, shut it off, and started it again.
So finally after 4 years of ownership and 10 years of sitting, the 944 lives and drives again. Still a few more things to do before we take in to get it saftied, but it is a runner again.
Here we go again.
Out to my parents place to work on the 944. We actually did knock quite a bit off the to do list for the car to get it ready for the street again. Little things like putting the air box back together, re-installing the timing belt cover and really fixing the drivers seat in place so it doesn't move around anymore. The last one was because my dad leaned back a bit and the seat came up out of the floor, so I figured it was a good time to do that. The we tackled the exhaust that I had to cut off last year in order to get to the to gas tank. I thought it was going to be a lot harder because we did cut the bolts in half in order to remove it. In reality with a little bit of heat and a punch we got what was left out and then tackled putting it back on. But WAIT!! I remembered something. I had a spare exhaust when I bought the car. I lined it up with the original and it seemed a bit wider in circumference than what was on it. I think it was from the last owners 944 Cup Car that he was rebuilding and he just tossed it in with the boxes of extras when I picked up the car. My dad and I made sure the exhaust tip was held up and then made sure everything lined up. It did, added some new bolts and we got hooked up and ready to go.
Ends of the two Exhausts for quick comparison:
Reusing the old crush part between the exhaust and the catalytic, a bit of a clean up was done on the wire wheel before putting it in place.
Connection at the catalytic ready to accept muffler section:
Nice connection with new bolts all set and ready for exhaust to flow through:
All held up and ready to flow.
With all the exhaust up, we went to fire it up and ...... NOTHING!!!! The thing ran last week and now we find out that we have no spark and no power to the injectors, but the fuel pump is working. Test with an extra DME, swap out the DME relay with a brand new one and Still nothing. Thinking I have a bad ground somewhere. So that is the next item to look at.
At least we were able to knock a few items off the list. Just frustrating that the car has decided not to run after being able to drive it a few miles last week.
We diagnosed the problem with the car today. It is the DME itself that went bad. At K&B Auto today there was an '84 944 sitting next to mine. It was strategically placed. This car is a runner and was in for some simple maintenance. We swapped my DME into that car, and No Start. So we now know for sure that the DME is bad. This was after we cleaned the DME ground, and the main ground. After doing all that we sawpped in new window switches, and the windows now go up and down from both sides, made sure that we had the exhaust hung with the middle rubber to ensure it does not rattle, and finally added the sway bar brackets to make certain that does not fall off. Slowly we are getting there and will get this car back on the road again after 10 years.
Keep it going!
The new DME came in last week.
Friday I took the afternoon and went out to install it. Not hard right. Just plug it in and go. Well it wasn't that easy. We did plug it in, and the car still wouldn't start. WE wiggled wires, tapped and tested everything again. We did get it going 1 time, and it quickly accelerated as the cable came off so we turned it off and it wouldn't start again.
GRRRRR, this car is scared to run. That is all I can say.
Skip ahead to Sunday. My dad goes out to do some tests. He pushes the key in the ignition a bit harder or further than what it was. Note, the key was in far enough to crank the engine and turn in the tumblers. The car started several times this way. Several times, until it ran out of gas. So more gas and I think a new ignition switch and we could be in business.
I was able to get some extra time to work on the 944. Decided I wanted to try and sort out the headlight quandary, while determining what is going on with the "Intermittent Start Issue" Began by cleaning the grounds on the headlight connection, and that didn't fix it. Looked around some more and it looks like someone hacked the wires and tried to solder them together as there is a big blob of solder. I will need to get on to that next visit to the car.
I had some extra time. We made sure all the connections were tight and secure to the DME and turned the key. It fired and started!!!! e36-M3!!! I didn't do anything but give it a jump and cranked it over. It ran. We let it run for a while to get up to temperature and then i took it up and down the road.
https://www.facebook.com/mike.kirby.9235/videos/10156014455127331/?t=0
It is a quick video of it running.
After we got back, we turned the car off and ........ It wouldn't start again. No matter what we did. I am beginning to think this thing is possessed. In all seriousness I am thinking there is still the factory security system and it could be the cause of this whole thing. That is the other item to check next visit.
So it sounds like the ignition switch and the tumblers need to be replaced if pressing on the key temporarily fixed it.
Stefan said:So it sounds like the ignition switch and the tumblers need to be replaced if pressing on the key temporarily fixed it.
I have a new switch ready to go in. Also the test car (one of my dad's clients) is back so we will retest the DME this weekend in that car to make sure it runs, and go from there. I am leaning right now to the factory Anti-Theft that is in the car as being the culprit. If I actually had kept all the receipts, this could almost be a 2019 challenger, but I have a feeling I have more than that in the car right now. 
I'm late to this thread and I know you are still experiencing issues, but I think a congratulations is in order on getting it to run at all (if only occasionally). I'd be tempted to tell you that you're on the home stretch, but I'm not trying to jinx it!
Went out to search and test the Porsche Anti-theft module in the 944 yesterday. Found out that it has already been removed!! So that is not the cause of the no start problem. We did get the car started twice and drove it again. It does run, and it runs well, we just cannot get it to start regularly.
Time to make a call and see what I may be missing, but at this time, I don't think much.
The few times I have been able to drive the 944, I found the aftermarket steering wheel to be a bit small. Making it difficult if not near impossible to read the speedometer. Originally I bought this smaller diameter wheel for two reasons.
1. The original wheel was worn and sticky when the temperature was hot outside. It just looked bad.
2. I thought the smaller diameter wheel looked cool.
Well looking cool and being functional seem to be mutually exclusive at this time. So I went searching on Amazon looking to find bicycle handlebar tape. This stuff was expensive ($50 to 60 dollars). I choked when I saw that. I did another search for Automotive steering wheel covers and found a Lemonbest Leather steering wheel wrap. Told myself, "Self, how bad could it be?" So I bought it. and it came in two days later. Here are the pictures of wrapping the wheel. Still need to put it back on the car.
It came out not to bad, and my sewing skills got a work out as well. LOL.
New steering wheel looks nice..... 944s are definitely a love - hate relationship.
We did it. We figured out the problem and why the 944 didn't want to run more than once a week. After checking the volts and AC amperage, we determined that it was the reference sensor. However, it wasn't the reference sensor. When I installed the new sensors in the car I was limited in space to actually tighten them in properly. It appeared that due to it being loose and essentially flopping around in the sensor block that it wouldn't get a proper reading. After tightening it down properly, the car started and ran 4 times in a row.
Oh and I installed the original steering wheel again.
Now I can focus on the other items. Like brakes, lights and interior stuff.
I will get a video up here once I figure that out.
Finally got some more time to work on the 944. Now that we got it running properly it was time to address the brakes. The old rubber lines are probably original equipment so it was time to work on getting them out and replacing with the Braided Stainless Steel lines I purchased years ago. Before anything we made sure that the bleeder valves would move, because without being able to bleed the brake fluid out after replacing the lines, there is no reason to start. Fronts moved and rears didn't. This should have been a warning. We still got them out, replaced with new ones, but it was 30 minutes spent on bleeder screws alone. Then we started on the lines, beginning with the rears and nothing was moving. I liberally, very liberally sprayed the connectors with PB Blaster. It was dripping rust brown on the ground. I tried to move both the passenger and rear side without success, so I went to the front. Again doused very liberally with the PB Blaster these guys moved so continue on wayward son.
Starting with the front on the passenger side things came apart pretty well. I did cut the hose, because it was old and just getting in the way. So snip, snip and twist twist it was out and the new line went in.
The drivers front line was a bit more difficult as it did not want to move very well. The line connectors were welded together with rust and no matter what we did it would not play nice. We tried heat, cold and force. In the end we removed the original hard line and bent up a new one. Sorry no pictures of that process. The picture below shows just how bad it was.
We did get it all back together and bled out the fluid and air from the fronts. In the process we blew a hole in the drivers rear hard line. So next week we will cut, splice and replace that along with the rubber lines. I still hold out hope that I will drive this car, legally by the end of the summer.
It has been a week since the last update. With it being the long weekend before school starts, we went out to the Parents place with my daughter in tow. It was supposed to be the start of a garage clean up, but we worked on the 944 instead. We brought it inside this time so no rolling around on the ground. Put the car on the hoist even with a leaky rear brake line, took the rear tires off and swapped in just the drivers side braided flex line. We also had to bend up another hard line that went from the flex line to the brake caliper. Then it was time for the family lunch. By the time that was over I didn't want to rush the passenger side, so we will get that done on Saturday, hopefully and then we should be good to go.
With the hole I have in the passenger rear rocker panel, I am thinking it is going to be a replacement panel, I will get some pics next time I am out. From my inspection there is not a lot of good metal left to weld a patch on. So off to the interwebs to find a new rocker panel for the car.
yep, I was having all kinds of issues wiht random no-start and stall while driving.
My reference sensor and wiring were good, but the adjuster bolt on the lower bracket for it had come loose, so the sensor would slowly creep down with vibrations until it hit the ring gear, which would then pop it up sometimes too far for a reading, then stall. Then repeat.....So frustrating to finally figure out. Damn Porsche engineers for not just putting that stuff up front and reading off the crank pulley like BMW does with the same exact part!
It lives!! At last I have gotten through all the "big" bits. The 944 now runs, drives, and stops! We finished up the last of the brake lines today. We rebuilt 3 out of 4 of the hard lines and added in the braided, stainless lines. We then took it for a lap around the block. It is a 4 kilometer block, but we drove it the whole way. All the lights worked as well. To say that I am stoked is an understatement. Some picks of the rear lines installed
nice!
When last we left the 944, it was a runner and a stopper with a small oil leak from the internal oil / water cooler. Last week we started addressing this issue. We have done everything else, so why let it leak. The parts came in on the Friday and the Sunday I was out there taking things apart, cleaning bits and pieces and generally getting everything all prepared to go back together.
As with all else on this 944, it is not an easy part to get to. Two bolts come off the top around the exhaust header and two from underneath. Also need to drain all the rad fluid and remove the oil filter. Needless to say, even with 3 catch pans, I made a mess. We did catch most of the anti-freeze, but that will not be going back in. At the end of the day we were able to get it all apart and mostly cleaned up, when friends stopped in from out of town and put a stop to the work. At that point we were two hours in, and we will get it all back together, hopefully on Sunday.
I do have pictures, but just not available to add at the moment. I will update with the pictures later.
With a couple more track days, I am pushing to have this car compete and ready to test before the snow flies here in The Great White North of Canada.
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