924Board.org

[PopUpProject]

Hey guys,

I am feeling mad, defeated, and floor time sounds really good right now. We put Poppy into air jail today and holy shit. She has been thoroughly ran through more than the girls on the corner. We found some major issues on Poppy and I have even more questions for the POs and yall than I did before.

List of disappointments discovered:
-AC has quite literally been hacked out of the car
-O2 sensor wiring also got chopped -> probably why she runs like crap and sounds like she has a nasty vac leak (still need to smoke test and see if there's a vac leak because me thinks I have a few of those as well)
-the fuel pump rewiring deserves a separate post because I am probably going to need every single persons help figuring out wtf they have done to this thing.
-need to redo the drums, shoes, cylinders, and whatever else goes on in there most likely
-almost all hardlines need redone for brakes
-side markers were rednecked -> now fixed-ish with proper pigtails and connector plate things for the bulbs, but don't have the booty on the engine side of the passenger harness so now going to be heatshrinked for protection
-all of the window switches are aftermarket and none work -> going to have to go hunting with the voltmeter and test the switches and begin that rabbit hole
-need a new sway bar (probably cuz this one looks questionable)
-need all new sway bar bushings (completely missing one, ones split, and the two others look decent at best)
-need both front tie rods and wheel bearings
-my heat shield is in about 10 pieces hanging on for dear life
-I got oil leaking from somewhere on the engine, basically the whole things coated so I sprayed and prayed with brake clean til I ran out
-redoing the shifter and all those bits are going to absolutely suck ass
-aftermarket-possibly-universal radiator with what looks like oem fans and the driver side fan's wiring has been knicked and the wiring is very corroded
-ground strap is holding on by a thread

So. uh. where do I go from here? I quite honestly want to curl into a ball and cry. I knew she was rough and she was going to need a lot of love, but I didn't think it would be THIS MUCH. I also don't even know where to start now because of above.

TLDR: I regret life decisions and need help figuring out where to start because this needs wayyyyy more work than what we originally thought.
_________________
Just trying my best to figure this out without total failure

Poppy the '82 924 Resurrection in Progress

[morghen]

The stuff you listed is a mixed bag of "they are all like that by now", regular stuff that needs to be done on any car and unusual stuff that needs to be redone.
Indeed quite some work.

You need to figure out what you want from this car, do you want a nice mint 924 to enjoy driving? Then this might not be the easiest way to get that.
Do you want something to play with, wrench on and call yours? then yeah...this is it.
At this point you may want to adjust your expectations and targets as well.

If you want a nice clean car, either buy another one or prepare for an extensive teardown and rebuild.

If the rest of the car is ratty and has redneck marks on it, the engine may be in a similar way. So check compression and maybe do a leakdown test to see if there is any value in the engine.

Here's some words:

-clean the engine, find the oil leak, fix it
-carefully remove the non-original wiring addons
-take a week to only work on the brakes, order all required parts in advance (find a shop that can do hard line flares for you locally as you'll need to make custom lines)
-take another week to focus only on the fuel pump, fuel hard lines and wiring
-remove all deffective or hacked equipment like remaning bits of the AC and O2 sensor system (by now thats broken and surely not working)
-shifter is not an expensive or difficult job, check whats worn/broken, order the parts or buy used and replace
-take a week to focus on the engine cooling system, radiator, wiring...etc
-fix essential electrics like grounds and major 12V feeds

Then, make your life easy, order an EFI kit from me, get it installed in a weekend and drive the car for a bit to lift your morale and treat yourself for all the effort so far.

After that, you'll have a running car with decent brakes and no crap on it. You can then focus on bushings, head shields, bearings and other stuff like that.
_________________
Supercharger and EFI kits
https://www.the924.com

[Legitimate Salvage]

Take a deep, cleansing breath... maybe two or three.

Anytime I've run into a job that seems simply overwhelming just remember: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

First bite, I'd get everything cleaned up. Getting off the oil, dirt and mung that's collected over the decades will give you a better sense of what's leaking. It's also cheap. Start with the engine bay and work your way back to the gas tank. If it's as dirty as I imagine, maybe this takes a couple to three weekends. With it clean, it will be much easier to assess everything (and as you go forward, it's much more pleasant to work on a clean car vs. getting coated in oil and grime).

Taking this amount of time cleaning will give you and up close opportunity to see everything that's wrong. You may find that some systems aren't as bad as you thought. You may find some new problems as well.

This is a good spot to decide where you want to go. Like Ciprian asked in his post, what do you want out of this car ultimately. Show car? Daily driver? Weekend cruiser? Long term project car?

You need make a brutally honest assessment. How much are you willing to spend in dollars and time. Don't get emotionally attached. Get a running list going of systems that need fixing, list out the parts, then get online and price out the parts. Add it up. The further north you get of say $5000, there's a very good chance you could find a 924 in much better shape, that's immediately driveable and an overall better investment of time and money.

If you decide to keep her and move forward I'd likely go in this rough order:

Address whats leaking.

Braking system/wheel bearings (no fun driving if you can't stop or a wheel falls off) plus any suspension/steering items that need fixing.

Cooling system (no fun driving if she overheats and locks up).

Fuel system (Ciprian's EFI might be a good option vs praying over the corpse of the kJet).

Electrical, etc.

Best of luck!
_________________
1979 924 NA - AKA the Mid-life Crisis
2012 Audi A3 - The Daily
1991 MB 300D
1984 MB 300D
1966 Mustang I6

[safe]

What morghen said.

If you don't want most of your listed problems, buy the most expensive 924 you can find.

The best advice for buying classic (old) cars is to by the most expensive example that you can afford. It will pay off in the end.

Or you can buy cheep and fix the issues and the process is "part of the fun" and a goal of its self.
_________________
/Magnus, Stockholm Sweden
=======================
Porsche 924 -79 NA, EFI and Turbo.
Porsche 931 -79
Porsche 911 -77, 3.2 Targa
Porsche 911 -69, 3.6, Coupe

[924RACR]

Yeah, agree with all of the above.

Fix the leaks, including the vacuum. Get the running gear safe. Make the cooling system work.

Then yeah, EFI is amazingly transformative in the friendliness of these cars. Both mine are now EFI and wouldn't go back.

A nearby friend is fighting with the K Jet on his Mercedes SL, with a V8... we've talked about EFI, but he hasn't dove in on it yet... we've made great strides with the stock K Jet and all, but it still doesn't have the utterly boring consistency and reliability of a modern EFI...
_________________
Vaughan Scott
Webmeister
'79 924 #77 SCCA H Prod racecar
'82 931 Plat. Silver
#25 Hidari Firefly P2 sports prototype

[PopUpProject]

Hey Guys,

Somehow Poppy runs and drives (minus the ability to stop) in her current state so our original plan was to fix the brakes and get the windows operational to get to Pitt Race on Nov 1st before they shut down for good. Long story short Pitt Race is a track in my hometown that I grew up with and wanted to get Poppy out for its final hoorah. I've never had a car to take to Pitt Race before so Poppy would have been the girl. She would not have been show worthy for Nov 1st but I would have gotten the chance to say she saw Pitt Race. Now? That plan is so far out the window its not even funny and I'm actually super upset over it. (I think its too late for me Magnus)

Back to talking about her original plan. I wanted to go more oem+ style with a track fitment. The plan was (other than getting her to Pitt Race) was to get her as back to factory as possible so we had a good slate to start with because she is a mess. We had planned on her just needing the shifter work, brake work, minor electrical work, and window work before she could go into a storage unit and we work on her over the winter in the storage unit without her catching into a ball of fire. I think now I might be begging my buddy for garage space over the winter because I don't want to throw her anywhere near a storage unit until I'm more comfortable that she wont spontaneously combust.

My plans now that I've discovered all of this? She is definitely going to be a long-term project. I originally had a small hope of her being done-done by this time next year, but unless I hit the lottery that won't happen. I am balling on a college-kid budget and to be quite honest had barely any car knowledge until 2 years ago attempting to fix a totaled 09 BMW 528. If you dig through all of my cries for help it probably becomes apparent I'm learning terminology as we go. If anyone pulls the engine on that car, they will find a nice chunk of hair that probably looks like a fox squirrel tail at the back of the firewall- definitely learned to pull my hair up thanks to that. I came mostly "pretrained"- I could change my oil, change a tire, do my fluids, jump a car, and change windshield wipers so over the past few years with the BMW I've learned my way around working in interiors and stayed away from engine bays because they scare me. We got Poppy so we could learn how to actually wrench on a car and I would have a car to take to shows with my SO, and Poppy is 10000% going to make sure we learn how to wrench on a car.

As far as Poppy's engine goes, we took her to redline for 5 mins for a redneck tune up the first night she came home so I am pretty sure the engine is healthy other than finding the mystery leak(s) and probably needing new seals because she still sounds good and runs well ( I think- besides the vac leak). I'll be buying a box of brake clean for tonight and giving the engine a nice bath. I'm also planning on an oil change tonight just to see what comes out.

As far as her life as a drum car- I'm now highly debating purchasing a new-to-me rear end with the 5 lug disk set up seeing as her rear brakes are demolished almost completely and we have to make new lines anyways. The only issue becomes money and the short-term cheaper option (I think) is to rebuild the drums and lines.

Morghen, I've been slowly digging through all of the hardwork you put in with the EFI Kit. (Your post was actually one of the first major threads I read through on here because I was like wtf is an EFI kit). It is very tempting. I think I need to figure out what I even have left of the oem system though before I can go further with that thought process because this is what I found at my rear fuel pump: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GBOuFHA5zA7LGLq95yTGaXosCzq5nlkt?usp=sharing We tried making sense of it and so far I have a larger mystery to how they wired this up.
_________________
Just trying my best to figure this out without total failure

Poppy the '82 924 Resurrection in Progress

[924RACR]

Yeah, I'm super bummed PittRace is closing too; not close by, but one helluva track, and had hoped to get back there one more time with my P2.

Given that your intent is track - you will for sure be happier with EFI...

As for brakes - again, for track work the drums are such a compromise, get the 5-lug upgrade all around and never have to worry about them again...
_________________
Vaughan Scott
Webmeister
'79 924 #77 SCCA H Prod racecar
'82 931 Plat. Silver
#25 Hidari Firefly P2 sports prototype

[PopUpProject]

Yeah I literally lived down the road from Pitt Race growing up Vaughan. I was never a car girl (still wouldn't really call myself a car girl) until I got with my SO and he's the idiot who led me to this point in time XD, so even though I lived down the road and went to the track for fun, I never had the opportunity to bring a car of my own and track it or even show it. I'm really bummed they're getting rid of it because ofc I finally have a car that would be worthy of running the track and getting the occasional passerby stare.

I will be updating everyone on tonights findings as Poppy is still in air jail. Hopefully my update will slightly better (probably not lets be real)

Plan for tonight
-pressure test new-to-me expansion tank from DC Auto
-heatshrink passenger side marker connections
-oil change
-spray and pray with brake clean everywhere
-air filter (because why not, ik its like the least important thing ever but I bought it when I bought my oil and filter and who knows if that things ever been changed)
-fix grounding strap

Send lots of beer and luck my way because I'll probably be screaming by the end of the night
_________________
Just trying my best to figure this out without total failure

Poppy the '82 924 Resurrection in Progress

[scm924s]

[PopUpProject]

[PopUpProject]

Poppy Update:

Whoever at porsche designed plastic nuts needs to burn in hell. The passenger side marker is acting funky when bending so probably going to have to end up cutting and splicing out some bad wire. In the sidemarkers current state, a 3/16 wingnut is too small and a 1/4 is too big, probably gunna get the threads down to a 3/16 and use wingnuts. Is this a good idea? Not sure, but don't have a better idea since I got the new-to-me sidemarkers already.

I have bluetooth exhaust bolts!!!!!!!! I was doing some measuring for the 944 exhaust to see how much fun we'll have doing exhaust work and one of the flange bolts to the cat has turned bluetooth. Based on my measurements it actually should bolt straight up to the current flange. Whether or not we can extract the bluetooth bolts and if the suitcase will fit are going to be the questions.

2 and a half cans of brake clean later the engine is mostly clean and I have found more chopped wires, yay. I have also ordered a crush washer because upon looking up which bolt was my drain bolt I discovered the crush washers existence. I also discovered some sort of sealant around the drain plug so I am praying the idiot before me just didn't have a crush washer and used whatever bs this is and its not a drilled out drain hole. I am officially scared to do an oil change and oil change is on hold until the washer comes in.
_________________
Just trying my best to figure this out without total failure

Poppy the '82 924 Resurrection in Progress

[scm924s]

[924RACR]

I'm a little unclear about what you mean re: the sidemarkers - they're metric threads. But I know what you mean about those stupid plastic nuts. Seems like they could be replaced, if needed, with more normal nuts and washers once the threads on the lights are chased.

Fair call on the drain plug; if it is completely bodged, the drain pan outright could be swapped with a replacement... which would also give an "opportunity" to replace the pan gaskets, which can be the source of leakage... can be done in-vehicle, just lower the crossmember. The biggest pain for that job would be cleaning off the old material, and getting the right RTV... not generic Permatex but better stuff like Elring Dirko or Hondabond - I used Hondabond on my last race motor build to excellent effect, but it's a bit runny compared to normal RTV and takes a little getting used to. But some sealant is required since the gasket is in 4 pieces...
_________________
Vaughan Scott
Webmeister
'79 924 #77 SCCA H Prod racecar
'82 931 Plat. Silver
#25 Hidari Firefly P2 sports prototype

[PopUpProject]

[PopUpProject]