On the road again...

Well, she's back on the road. Did 180 miles today driving to a meeting, and not a problem.

But I suppose and explanation is in order.

In our last visit (Its been a while) we were speculating that loose sending unit wires gave us a false negative on the oil pressure. Well, it turns out it was not a false negative, there was no oil flow. After buttoning the new oil pan and baffle back up. We pulled the observation ports in the cam cover, and saw very little oil in there. We pulled the oil filter, the sending unit, and the oil pressure relief valve. None of them had any oil flowing by.

Stumped and frustrated we called it a day, and retreated to our homes to check with friends and forums for possible ideas. There were quite a number of experts who felt that we needed to prime the pump, but Brent insisted that he's never needed to do that on any of the Porsche's he'd worked on. Refusing to buckle to the consensus, Brent pulled the suspension and oil pan back off, and found this:



One might ask how we missed that the first time. Well, he did pry it a bit to get it opened up for the camera, but bottom line is we just didn't check it closely enough.

Brent and his Dad put things back over Easter Weekend (I suspect I'll find a cold welcome from Mrs. Brent on my next visit!!!) and voila!! I received a cell phone call on which was played the most melodic 2.5L inline 4 cylinder orchestra I'd ever heard. It is indescribable how smooth a porsche engine with a correct balance shaft alignment and oil pressure sounds. You just can't imagine the difference.

There are a couple entertaining stories about gorilla-men breaking off bolts and extractors, and other miscellaneous excitement, but I'll save those for another writing.

For now, suffice to say that I am eternally endebtted to Brent for all his help, and essentially saving me from thousands of dollars of repairs, that I probably would have had to defer. Without his help, and the help of John, Conan, Dave, and Dave, who also made the 2 hour trip on a couple occaisions to help out, I wouldn't be writing about Spring Fling in a week, I'd be reading about it.

In the end, there weren't really a large number of problems with the car. There were problems that took a lot of energy to diagnose and solve, and which had repurcussions on other parts of the car, but it isn't like the car is a basket case.

The fundamental problem was that whomever did the timing belt replacement installed the balance shafts 180 degrees out of phase. (I suspect that the shop in S.D. that did the restoration messed this up)

The excess vibration most likely caused...
1. The fuel rail brake that could have ended in calamity, but didn't
1.1 The fuel rail brake caused the ignition wire cut, easy to fix.
2. The alternator to give up
3. The oil pressure sending unit wires to come apart.
4. The oil pan baffle to break
5. The oil pickup tube to break, which killed our oil pressure.

We went through a lot of agony to diagnose the oil pressure problem, but we ended up validating or updating the Rod Bearings, Oil Pressure Sending Unit, Oil Pan, Oil Pan Baffle, Piston/Piston Walls, Oil Filter, and finally the oil pickup tube. We never found any metal or shavings in the oil, or any other sign of -excess- wear and tear. It is clear that the pickup tube was the only failure in the oil system. Let's just hope I haven't jinxed it.

There is a lesson here. Many people who saw the car thought that there was a lot of vibration in the engine, but we all just shrugged it off as a characteristic of an old engine. Two different qualified Porsche mechanics worked on the car. One even noted the vibration, looked at the balanced shafts, and decided that they were not a problem... all this happened well before the car was ever driven hard. Had I taken more seriously the symptoms and gotten other opinions, I might have saved a lot of trouble.

Trust your instincts, post your questions, seek help, don't just "hope" it will get better. BTW, this applies to that funny pain in your left arm too.