924Board.org

[tj924]

I've finally taken delivery of my '82 n/a 924 .Awesome car to drive & it runs & sounds sweet indeed.

While driving home (a few hundren km's) I noticed that the wipers intermittently come on by themselves (either one complete wipe or just a couple of little jitters). This also usually happens when I first turn the key or use the indicators. Any ideas as to where I can start to look for this problem?

I think, but haven't yet confirmed, that I also have some other weird electrical problems as well. For example:

* I've seen a single tail light on when the key was in the ignition but not turned. I confirmed the lights weren't on & noone was in the car. It just turned off after a while.

* I think the parking lights come on one at a time but not simultaneously.

* The electric aerial doesnt work. The original tape deck/radio has been replaced with a radio/CD player & the radio does work, but I'm wondering if the electric aerial was never hooked up or something. What causes the aerial to activate/deactivate? If it turning on & off the radio or turning the key in the ignition like my other (2004 model).

* The electric mirror doesn't work. When I play with the little knob that should move it I can hear something, but the mirror doesn't move.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've never worked on a car in my life (even though my Dad is a mechanic) but would like to try my hand at this one to save myself a few $ if nothing else.

TJ

[dpw928]

TJ924,

The intermittant wipers could be the a short in the switch or exposed wires at the connector under the switch. Another possible item to check is the intermittant wiper relay.

The tail light staying on is probably due to your leaving the turnsignal stalk in the left or right position. The 924 is made to leave the front and back turn signal lights on (not blinking) if left activated with the ignition off.

Power antennas have a separate power lead the runs from the head unit to the antenna (not the large radio signal wire). This lead provides 12 volts to move the antenna up or down.

The older power mirrors had strings that connected the motor to the mirror frame. The strings get old and break. The later mirrors had better connections to the frame. If you can hear the motor running but there is no movement, the strings have probably broken. There are a lot of good used replacements available since all Porsches used the same setup for many years.

Have you gotten a Haynes manual yet? There is one being offered free on the Rennlist 931 board.

Dennis
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81 931 5 sp
78 928 5 sp Silver
78 928 AT Euro Black

[gohim]

The first thing that you need to to is get a Service Manual for the car. It will provide you with critical tightening specs (torque specs). The commonly available Haynes Manual is cheap, but not comprehensive, and full of majopr errors. Still you should keep one in your car for roadside emergencies. The best service information comes from the Porsche Factory Service Manual Set.

Get yourself a good couple of torque wrenches. When you are new at car repair, it is very easy to undertighten or overtighten fasteners.

The wipers occasionaly wiping one cycle by themselves is an indicator that there is a bad ground connection from the wiper switch to the steering column.

This can usually be corrected by removing the steering wheel (remove the horn pad, a single bolt holds the steering wheel on). Start be disconnecting the battery, to avoid accidents). Make sure that you mark the steering shaft and steering wheel so you can put the wheel back on the same way that it was before you tool it off. Otherwise, the wheel wheel will sit cocked when you are driving straight down the road. Under the steering wheel you can see that the switch gear is heald to the steering column with either three or four small diameter screws. These screws are all that make the electrical ground for the switch gear to the steering column. Later in 924 production, Porsche realized that a bad ground here causes the problem that you noticed with the windshield wipers, and added external toothed lockwashers under the screws during production. The lockwashers were not installed on the earlier cars (about 76-79), and often times are lost or not reinstalled by people servicing the steering column. Remove the screws one by one, and use a piece of abrasive cloth to clean the screws, and the copper contact areas under the screws, then reinstall them with external toothed washers. Make sure that the washers are not too large in diameter, or too thick. While you are in there, you should clean and relubricate the horn contacts on the switch gear and the back of the steering wheel, and relubricate them with a high pressure/high temperature, non-hardening electical compatible grease (distributor cam lube will work).

Power antennas come in automatic and manual. Automatic antennas go up and down automatically when the sound system is turned on. Manual antennas have a switch which must be pressed/flipped/etc. to move the antenna up and down. As Dpw928 mentioned, automatic antennas have a lead that runs from the power antenna to the sound system (sense wire) so the antenna can tell that the sound system is on (they also have power and ground leads, for a total of three leads on the antenna). Manual power antennas usually only have two leads (power and ground).

You should state the year of you car when you ask for advise. Were changes made to the cars over the course of it's production life, and the answer to a question may differ depending on the production year. One example would be the fact that the later cars do not have headlight relays, and a radio relay was added to reduce the starting load on the electrical portion of the ignition switch. This makes a difference on questions about how to wire sound systems. Or if you were having problems with you headlights, would affect the trouble shooting procedure.

[tj924]

Thanks guys. As I mentioned at the top of my post, it is an '82 n/a 924. I have the Porsche Worshop Manuals on CD so I'll start looking through that to get details on this stuff.

I need to pull the steering wheel off anyway as I managed to pick up a 944 steering wheel for an excellent price which I plan to fit as it has a diameter of 360mm vs 380mm for the original. I'll check out the ground connector when I do that.

I'll also check out the "torque wrenches". What's a good size to start with?

TJ

[Smoothie]

[Khal]

I've recently removed my steering wheel, and the indicator assembly.

Here's a pic with the wheel off, you can see the three screws Smoothie's talking about (top left, right and bottm centre);



Yours is an NA '82 and mine's a Turbo '81, so I can't guarantee they'll be the same. But I don't see why they'd change it...

Be careful of the little piece of metal on the right of pic -between the W-shaped clip and the plastic clip. It's a spring contact of some sort and the bloody thing will just pop out on you. I took the whole lot apart and it was right bugger to get back together!

Oh yeah, and I bent the horn contact, too (the little brass bit at the bottom of pic) Bloody horn would stop sounding So I literally pulled the pin. So watch out for that one. Haven't got a replacement yet...

And with the tail light, yeah, that happens when you turn the indicator on with the ignition off. Me ol' Bimmer did it too. Had me weirded-out for a while until I was told by a local mechanic that many European cars do this. Apparently it's so that when you park them on the side of the road, you can leave the outside front and rear park/brake lights on so that other drivers can see the car -like a type of hazard light. Something to do with all the dark, tight laneways in Europe?
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'80 924 Turbo