ROFLMAO

Good thing there is a Duke grad around to keep the everthing in order! Now, where are those strippers . . . :twisted:

:D:D

LMFAO. Nice. :lol:

Update 6 July 2007

What a crap day. Let me recap:

1. Got brake clean in smuggler's box, and the "acid proof" paint turned into liquid tar. Under the battery. Had to pull the battery and hose all the paint off with two cans of brake clean. Good riddance.

2. Pulled the steering rack because it was binding. Opened it up to look at the thrust block. Torquing the cover back on stripped one of the bolts (with the torque wrench. POS. Buying a new one Monday). Helicoiled the rack, cover back on.

3. Spent 2 hours trying to undo the bolts that hold the U bracket right below the last U joint, just above the steering rack. Did finally get them out with some advice from Matt DeMaria.

4. Thought the old fuel tank seal would peel off and allow me to press the new on one. Nope. It's stuck like glue. I scrubbed and scrubbed but gave up after an hour, still have more than half to do.

5. With the front suspension in, I was swinging the front wheels through their steering radius and noticed my cool new brake lines interfere with the through body sway bar. Dammit. Have to go get new brake line stock tomorrow and make new ones.

6. Bolts don't fit quite right in the ducktail. Not sure WTF the problem is there, gave up as its the least of my worries right now.

So, no tech for me tomorrow, which was the goal.

Chris,

Sorry about the day full of problems. But when it's done, you'll have an awesome car--just remember that on the crap days.

Peter

Like I'd know :roll:

Update 7.July.2007

First, some pictures from yesterday. I was too burnt out last night to post them. First is a lesson in metallurgy. What happens when two dissimilar metals like steel and aluminum are in contact with each other for, say, 22 years? Electrolysis and corrosion. I think the former leads to the latter, but WTF do I know? I'm an EE not and ME.

Attachment 6158

Anyway, here are the AL crossmember support brackets. On most cars they hold the under body sway bar. You have to remove them to remove the steering rack. Mine were stuck, and good. In fact, the first time I redid my suspension, I thought these brackets were welded into the crossmember. Some heat and a BFH got them out (DR would have been proud). I guess this is what anti-size helps prevent.

Here a picture of my steering rack mid-clusterf**k:

Attachment 6159

The helicoil was successful in recreating threads so I could reassemble the rack. The process of installing the helicoil was successful in filling the rack with shards of aluminum. Sweet! Now I get to completely disassemble the rack, clean it and regrease! I think the only thing that didn't send me over the deep end with this was the fact that I had been to SPE (Matt DeMaria's shop) earlier that day and, one the way home, passed a bike shop. Thinking about the steering rack, I ran in on a whim and bought a 32mm headset wrench, which is perfect for removing and installing turbo tie rods. Remember, this is before I FUBAR'd the threads. In the bike shop I thought "I'll need this one day, might as well get it now". "One day" came a lot sooner than I thought. Dammit. :XX

On to today. Today is the day I was hoping to have yesterday. You know, where stuff fits and things work? Well, that pretty much all happened today. Must be the date (7.7.07).

I took a trip to the PCA Potomac Tech session today to pick up a couple parts of my cage I forgot at Cliff Claven's house. While there I had the chance to look at the front brake lines on KFJ's car - his car also has 964 brakes with a through body sway. Bingo - completely different routing. Instead of going out and behind the caliper is a nice geometric pattern, his lines hugged the caliper and actually went between the inner bleed screw and the caliper to the strut. I picked up a 30" brake line on the way home from tech and had new lines in less than 30 minutes. I even remembered to put the barrel on before flaring! Must be that whole 7.7.07 thing.

Battery went in and there were no shorts. A quick run through of all remaining electrical systems showed all are still functional. The WW kill circuit works perfectly. No electrical fires. So far, so good.

Sat down to deal with the old fuel tank seal. Turns out its way easier to remove dry than with solvent. All the brake clean/acetone/goof off I tried the night before had dried, and the seal pull of with a little work. Some acetone to clean up the remaining glue and the new seal went on. Easy. Pulled the sender while the tank was still out to have a look inside. Clean as a whistle. No rust, no sediment, nothing. Good times! (BTW, I'm not sure what I would have done had I found the fuel tank was toast at this point. That may have been the thing that would have pushed me off the deep end)

Tank goes in, fuel lines hooked up and 3 gallons of gas go in. No leaks so far. Have my wife jumper the fuel pump on to pressurize the system while I look for leaks. So far so good. No leaks at the tank, the pump, the fittings at the rear firewall (thank God because these are damn near impossible to get to with the transmission in the car), at the filter, or on the engine.

OK, fuel, electrical, oil. Ready to start. And...

It runs! First try! No shit, I almost fell over. I figured there was something I'd forget to hook up. It was a little rough at first, but seemed to settle in OK. I didn't run it long because I wanted to be able to get it under load.

So what's left? Brakes. Bled the entire system. This was a job because there was ZERO fluid in the system. None. Like, new from the factory none. I went through 3 quarts of fluid before I stopped seeing bubbles from the system. I pressed the pedal to set the pistons on the pads and the pedal felt good. Next step is to drive around and work the system, then flush completely for next weekend.

Last job of the night was the ducktail. I said last night the bolts didn't fit right. This was true - because they were the wrong damn bolts. I was using M7 x 1.25 instead of M8 x 1.25. Since the M7s have the same thread pitch, there threaded in and felt almost right - but not quite. Today I looked and found the original bolts, and turns out they're M8s. Huh. That would explain why we couldn't get the tail on last night. As it turns out, the combo of bad mood + beer + late night is not a good one for fitting body panels. Just a little tip from me to you. ;)

So with the right bolts the tail goes on. And it fits like pretty much every fiberglass duck I've seen fits - like crap. Passable, but still crappy compared to Porsche standards. Oh, well, nothing I can do about it outside of shelling out for a factory original aluminum frame tail from an RS - which ain't happening, let me tell you. So the tail is on, the color is a good match (same paint as was used on my last tail, so I wasn't worried), and for 10' away it looks like it fits pretty well. I will say it doesn't seem happy with lots of stress form the decklid shock. I may have to go with a prop-rod solution here because it looks like you're going to snap the tail in half every time you close the decklid with the shock attached.

So here's the car now:

Attachment 6160

Attachment 6161

For tomorrow:

- Torque up the rear suspension and make some wild ass guess as to toe and camber
- Put wheels on the car and put it down. Spend the next 2 hours messing with ride height. I hate that job.
- Reinstall driver's seat
- Drive!

Plan is to put some miles on it to get the suspension settled in before trying to align. I'm also going to take it out for some quick runs then come back and make sure everything is still bolts to the right place and none of the fluid systems (brake/fuel) are leaking.

Almost there...

Congratulations Chris. You have done a remarkable job in paying such great attention to detail. Your anticipation of how the car will drive has got to be at an ultimate high right now. I hope it exceeds your every expectation.

Outstanding! Well done Jazz. Can't wait to see it on the track!

You can tell lots by how organized and clean his garage is...