Well, it ran and drove when I bought it. A Porsche 924s tale...

Where is the "Voitures et Cafe?"  Thinking of going to the one at Larz Anderson later in the year wen the car is closer to being "done."

The Voitures et Cafe was a one-off event organized by the French-car contingent of our local car "club". Hopefully they'll do it again.

"Club" is in quotes because it exists as a Facebook group with no real organization - occasional casual get-togethers, sometimes by invitation of a local liquor store owner who likes a bunch of cool cars parked out front. If you're in the general area of Arlington, MA, check out the Arlington Classic Car Club on Facebook, or shoot me a PM and I'll send you an invitation.

931EFR said:

Nice work! I just did front control arm and sway bar bushings this spring... Ended up having to make new mounts for the sway bar bushings as I wanted poly, and its yet another NLA part. 

Where did you end up sourcing your muffler from? Mines not as bad as yours, but its not long for this world either. 
 

The muffler is just an Ansa I got from Pelican Parts. I'm sticking with stock rubber replacement bushings to help simplify things.

Amazing what you can accomplish in a 2-hour sprint after weeks of prying on things, swearing, removing, reinstalling, and removing subframe bolts ad infinitum, swearing some more, bleeding, and inventing some new swear words... Finally got the engine mounts in and tightened down (and there was much rejoicing).

Also managed to wrestle a passenger-side heat shield back into place.

Started up the car and was amazed that it didn't sound like it wanted to shake itself apart. What a difference!

...and for an encore, while the engine was running, I recharged the AC using one of those home recharge kits, so now I've got working-ish AC as well. Had to shave down one side of the connector on the AC bottle as the low-side port on the Porsche is on the back of the compressor itself, hard up against the bracket, but I got it to work.

Now I've got to reinstall the rest of the front end...

Maybe it was because I was away last week and couldn't touch the car, or maybe it was that I'll be away this weekend, or maybe it was our observance of National Rum Day (it's a thing, look it up),

but whatever the impetus, I did another late-night, 2-hour driveway sprint and the car now has new control arms installed, complete with new bushings and ball joints:

Note to self, take off the front license plate when working under the front of the car. Got a nice gash in my forehead 2 weeks ago, got my shoulder tonight...

Sway bar installation is next, then I'll be done with this portion of the exam...

Making great progress!

The 9 - 11 PM time slot seems to be somewhat productive for me (and I really hope the neighbors don't mind - using hand tools only). Sway bar is in! Going to try to take some time tomorrow to put the undertray back on, bolt on the wheels and take it for a ride...

This is a good thing. This is the collection of tools I've had out for the last couple of months that I can now put away. This means I'm done with the current slate of tasks and the car is running and driving again!

https://youtube.com/shorts/DYn3QeuufpA?si=W5kKjuhZjDfsL4i5

Recharging the AC was an interesting challenge - it's one of the few really painful things to do on this car. The port is conveniently located on the back of the compressor, buried kind of deep

Had to modify the charge thingy to let me add refrigerant (bench grinder to the rescue)

Oh, and the bolts that hold the seat rails to the seat were just about to fall out (which is why my seat felt so loose), so I took a couple of tools back out of the drawer to tighten those up.

Drove the Porsche to work today, taking my back-road route that mostly avoids traffic-clogged highways, and takes me by an independent Ferrari/vintage sports car shop (always cool stuff to see in their parking lot).

Had the A/C going for an initial highway stretch, then windows down, and Huey Lewis on the stereo for the fun roads (I'm trying to limit myself to 80s music in the car to keep me in my personal just-graduated-college-and-am-driving-a-car-I-aspired-to-then-but-couldn't-afford time warp).

Got to work without the car overheating, or catching on fire, and more importantly, without me feeling like I've been inside of a paint mixer for 45 minutes. I'll call that a success for now.

Alignment is still off (but no more off than before), but generally everything seems to be working ok.

Might wait until next spring to start to address cosmetics and just enjoy the rest of the New England driving season before the weather turns nasty...

...and another observation form this morning's drive, modern cars are tall! Not just all of those SUV and crossovers, but even the small sedans. The belt-lines are such that in a vintage-ish car like the 924s, it's hard to see the driver in the car next to you - all you see is door. It's a little disconcerting. I felt like I was driving through a canyon of metal on the highway.

My son's about to get his license and I'm trying to make sure he keeps an eye out for older, lower cars as they're not as obvious on the road. I was driving home from Maine with him yesterday and we passed a gentleman in an old Healey (I'm just assuming that anyone driving an old Healey is a gentleman) on I-95 coming over the bridge from ME to NH - it was a good teaching moment. We both felt nervous for the Healey driver as there were a lot of trucks on the road at the time, and the Healey is neither the fastest, nor the most visible vehicle out there... Sounded nice, though.

I used to have a lowered Scirocco II as my daily and even back then (~2010 or so) it was disconcerting sometimes to see how much bigger everything was. 
 

catching my reflection in a semi's Alcoa was always a little worrisome...

In reply to nlevine :

I think I still have an 80's Member's Only jacket kicking around somewhere if you really need to feel the vibe.  Also, it's not the worst thing that your 924 is bright red.  People are cuckoo for cocoa puffs out there these past few weeks.  I got cut off twice in half a mile (by the same young lady in a E36 M3box Versa) on 128 in Burlington yesterday.  No ma'am, you can't just put your turn signals on and swerve.

Looking good and keep up the progress, it's nice to see one of these on the road up here.

I knew I was getting too cocky. Here's the current situation:

Feels like the fuel pump quit... Tow truck on the way (sigh). That's why I keep my AAA  membership up to date...

I remember being at the track, in grid in my LS 951 and looking up at my friends new Boss Mustang.  The size difference between the two was glaring

A quick first-round of diagnosis: relays go "click" when I turn on the key, but no pump sound.

Took a look at the fuel delivery system under the back of the car. "Crusty" is kind of an understatement:

Fuel pump looks original-ish

The filter doesn't look too bad

and I'm kind of wondering why I haven't been on fire yet...

I have a new pump, filter, and lines already, but needed to order all the clamps, sealing washers, etc. Of course, I just filled the tank, so I'll need to drain that down before I tear into everything...

In reply to nlevine :

Did the registry give you that plate as a challenge?  1 Lap in 2032?    Good luck with the fuel pump that does look crusty.

In reply to 11GTCS :

It would be interesting to take the car on 1 Lap, and I certainly hope to having it running more reliably well before 2032.

I took the license plate as a lap-time challenge, just not sure which track...

Started pulling the fuel system apart. 

Of course, all of the rubber mounts tore in half when I was removing things, but some vise grips, a Dremel tool, and some mailbox paint took care of those remnants:

The pump bracket cleaned-up ok and got painted (did the same with the filter bracket).

But this hose connection has been the bane of my existence for the last several weeks:

Porsche definitely put the fuel system in before the transaxle as there's not really room to get a long-enough wrench in there to get the leverage required to break the crustiness, so alternative measures were needed to avoid dropping the rear end.

Got out the Dremel tool again to cut off the rubber hose and some of the metal crimp so that I could get a socket on the hose side, and "hug" the transaxle to get a wrench on the other side. It's not a dumb idea if it works, and it came loose with only putting up a little fight.

And as a bonus, I replaced the in-tank fuel strainer (fortunately it just screws in). The old one didn't look too bad (it wasn't full of junk, anyway).

Now to start reassembly with the new pump, filter, and hoses...

Well, I was so sure it was a fuel issue...

Finally got everything re-installed - new pump, new filter, new hoses connecting them all. Turn the key, and...

...cranks, no-start.

Checked power at the pump, fuel in the rail - both good. DME relay goes "click" at all the right times.

Now for more diagnosis... sigh...

You getting tach bounce when you're cranking?

In reply to docwyte :

I was so annoyed, I didn't check and gave up for the day. Reference sensors is high on my list to check, but when they were "bad" before (I've changed them twice - the second time with the expensive Bosch sensors), the failure mode was a hot re-start problem, Never had the car just die while driving before, which is what had me digging into the fuel system.

Just because a relay goes "click" doesn't mean it's working properly. Have had issues on some of my E30s where the contacts get worn out/arc and end up not actually making contact in there, or they'll partially make contact but with a bunch of voltage drop and get really hot. One of my race bikes had a partial relay failure like this in the middle of the desert, and we run into it all the time in equipment at work. Check that you've actually got 12V where you're supposed to have 12V, or take a couple male spades and make a temporary relay jumper to eliminate it as a potential problem. 

In reply to gearheadE30 :

I pulled the relay again to check continuity/resistance for each branch when closed and it looks good, also verified voltage where it's supposed to be in the socket. Symptomatically, it feels like reference sensors (again), even though they're pretty new and the car just died while driving. Need to pull them both and take a look. All other fuses and electrical connections look good. Could also be that the Motronic box just decided to quit, but I don't know if that's a likely thing...

Did a little more debug:

• Fuel pump has voltage when cranking (and I can smell fuel from the exhaust, so I think it's getting fuel)
• Coil has power when it's supposed to
• Bought a cheap little oscilloscope and verified that I'm getting the right signals at each of the reference sensors (picture of new o-scope)

Since it's a little cold outside to spend time under the dash to trace signal wires back to the DME, I removed it from the car to see if there's anything obviously broken inside the box.

I'm seeing a couple of places on the PCB with what look to be non-original solder touch-ups, so I think somebody has been in here before. Will keep digging...

Anybody have a spare 944/924s DME I can borrow to try in my car to see if I'm on the right track? (Pic for part number reference)

I do love 80s tech...

Everything in this thread looks very, very familiar to me. 

In case you haven't seen it, I documented all of it somewhere in the middle (2018ish) of my massive multi-car build thread here on GRM.