2003 Porsche 911 Turb-OOOOH

You're far more grown up than I am - I got as far as "they look cool" in my internal debate and that was the decision made.

In reply to Dammit :

LOL!  I think my wife would argue that with you!  I just spent far too much money (even buying used!) on an APR exhaust for the Golf R just because I wanted more race car noises out the back of it. 

Ok, have gotten several quotes to refinish the calipers and they're all $300-325 for the pair.  I've also been told by several people that stripping the paint off the calipers is a huge PITA.  So I'm just gonna throw them on as is.  Laziness wins again!

Got the Spider Clips from DemonSpeed and installed them today.  They're actually a Porsche part from the 997 Cup Cars, they lock the zircon pucks in place because Porsche just glued them in.  That glue fails and if a puck pops out and gets chipped/cracked while you're changing pads you're pretty much screwed. 

This is what they look like...

Easy to install, just push them into the center of the zircon pucks...

Here they are totally seated

I was able to immediately test them too, as the calipers came with one zircon puck unglued.  I seated the puck all the way, stuck in the spider clip and it's securely holding the puck in.  Perfect and a bargain for $70 compared to the $800 the pucks cost...

Got a pic of the car on track last Fall

Took a friend out for a ride in the car today and the first time I went heavy into boost I heard a large boost leak from the passenger side.  Then the car got very unhappy as far as running and idling.  Luckily got it back home and onto the lift ok.

Lifted it up and all the lower boost hoses are totally fine.  Argh, that means I have to take the rear bumper off to inspect the upper hoses.  Drat!  Guess I'll do that Sunday morning while my son is at Sunday School...

First time I blew a hose off under boost I thought I'd destroyed the engine, the feeling of relief when it started back up and ran fine once I'd re-clamped the hose was immense. The engine in my Volvo was rather more straightforward to work on than that in your 996 however.

Have you run your car on a drag strip? I imagine the engine being over the rear wheels and the ability to put down power through the fronts would translate to a fast pass, but that's total assumption.

In reply to Dammit :

Yeah, it totally sucks when you blow off a boost hose, especially on this car since the upper ones are inaccessible unless you remove the rear bumper cover.  Oh well.

I've never taken it to a drag strip.  I imagine it'd do pretty well but I'm just not that into 1/4 mile stuff.

Took advantage of the nice weather today (it's supposed to snow tomorrow.  Again.) to fix the boost leak on the 911.

First I popped the engine lid to see if I'd get lucky and I'd blown off the connection to the intake Y pipe.  Nope.  There are 12 boost connections on this car and 2 of them are inaccessible without removing the bumper.  Yup, that's where mine was.  I was able to figure it out by giving each hose in the engine bay a tug and the one on the passenger side had play.  Sigh...

Bumper off..., again...

This is what I found.  The boost hoses snap into place with an O ring, there's not really a "clamp" there. 

Hmm, those bolts are loose.  Wonder who did that?  You, yeah, you in the mirror, I'm looking right at ya!!  So after snugging those bolts/nuts down I start to push the connection together and realize I can't get to the back side of the hose with the airbox in place.

Pop the airbox off and snap the hose into place, which seats with a satisfying "click!".  I check the other side and while it's not off, its not all the way in either.  Push it into place, get another nice "click!".  Give both hoses a good pull and they stay put.  Good.  Airbox back in.

Start putting the bumper back on.  There's a connection right in the middle of it to plug in the harness for the license plate lights.  That I always forget to connect.  So, bumper on, top plate on, drivers side tail light on.  I'm beginning to put the passenger side tail light on and something's bugging me.  Did I plug in the license plate harness?  Hmmm, better check.  Drivers tail light off, top plate off, pull the bumper out a bit.  Sigh, nope!  Plug that back in and put it all back together.

Take it for a test ride to the bank so I can pay my daughter her allowance.  (It's not that much, I just owe her for 3 weeks worth and never have any cash).  rrrr-RRRRR-AAAAHHHHH!!!  Oh, boost, how I've missed you!  Fixed!

Next up, install the GT3 front brake calipers, 350mm brake rotors/front/rear, flush the brake fluid and do an oil change.  Will do that in the beginning of April.

Snowing like a bastard right now.  Really happy I did all the work on the 911 and the R on Friday/Saturday when it was 50-55F.  Now that I'm thinking about it I bet I could've seated those boost hose connections by simply removing the airbox and not the bumper cover.  Better visibility with the bumper cover off but probably not needed.

Also, Brock aka One Lap man hinted that the route in 2021 will be running thru my neck of the woods again.  Hmmm, wonder if I can shake that time free from work/family to run One Lap in this 911?

Grabbed some Porsche Guards red touch up paint and built up the chipped parts on the caliper faces.  Then knocked them fairly flat with some wet sanding.

That left flat looking paint so I got some VHT high temp clear coat from Amazon. 

First I taped off the seals and caliper pistons/pucks.  I don't care about the bleeder screws because I'm replacing them.

Then I found a box big enough to hold one caliper and act like my "paint booth"

Next I shot the clear coat.  I did three coats, the first one a light coat and the next two medium coats with 10-15 minutes of flash time between them. 

Also found a larger box, I mean paint booth, that would hold both calipers at the same time

Defintely not perfect but a whole lot better than before!  I'll let them dry over night then I'm ready to put them on the car.  Well, as soon as my ankle heals from surgery...

I remember having a boost hose blow off under full boost on my S4.  Scary......

In reply to AnthonyGS :

Yeah, I was less than happy when the boost hose popped off.  At least now I know all I have to do is pop out the airbox to fix it next time, which takes less than 5 minutes.

Getting the car ready for the summer driving season.  Did an oil change today on it.  Wasn't as clean as I'd like, I used two tupperware containers to catch the oil coming out of the turbo drains and ended up tipping both of them over!  Argh!  Also was an idiot and undid the oil pressure relief drain vs the pan drain.  Getting that spring back into place and rethreading the plug was a PITA!

Job done properly tho and I didn't break anything so good.

Next up is installing the GT3 front brake calipers, 350mm brake rotors, new brake pads and flushing the brake fluid. 

Decided to put the GT3 front brake calipers along with pads/rotors on today.  Purportedly (foreshadowing!) they bolt right on.

So, I confirm the part numbers before I start and I do have the correct ones.  I take off the wheel, remove the hard brake line from the back center of the stock caliper, remove the caliper and remove the brake rotor.

The GT3 stuff is markedly bigger.  6 pot caliper vs 4 pot

350mm rotor vs 330mm

So I grab the GT3 caliper and the longer bolts and try and put it on.  And it doesn't fit.  I'm totally confounded here, this is supposed to bolt right on.  Some careful examination reveals the caliper is hitting the knuckle on inside top edge.

I send the pics to a friend and he looks them over and calls me back.  Apparently I have GT2 calipers, not GT3 calipers.  They're basically the same but the upshot is I need to flip them side to side.  So I grab the drivers side GT2 (??) caliper and sure enough, it fits perfectly on the passenger side of the car.  Ok.... At least I know these fit, so that's a relief!

Time to remove the bleeder screws and the crossover tube and flip them top to bottom and bolt this up.  The bleeder screws come out no sweat as I'd just replaced them but the crossover tube was a different story.  On one of the sides it came out but with the top two threads!  Argh!!  After some careful work I did get a bleeder screw to thread into it, but I'm not sure if it'll hold pressure.  The bottom 4+ threads are fine.  Thoughts?

See the aluminum on the crossover pipe?  That's from the caliper threads.  Next problem I have is the crossover tube doesn't fit on the other side of the calipers.  It's too short, way to go Porsche, would've been nice if you'd made these symmetrical! 

So I figure maybe I can use the crossover tubes on my stock calipers.

Nope, it's not wide enough.  This is where my same friend chimes in with the proper part numbers I need for the crossover tube.  I check around, none of my typical parts places carry it, it's dealer only.  Call Sunset Porsche, there's only two left in the country and they're at the warehouse in California.  Sigh, Ok, so I order them and will just wait I guess.

My choices are to put my stock stuff back on, flush the brake entirely and that'll let me drive the car.  Or leave it apart and wait crossover lines come in, put it all together once and flush the brakes once.  Then pray that damaged bleeder thread holds.

It looks like based on a quick google search that the bleeder screws should be torqued in the 6-9 ft-lbs range (you can double check and get a source you are confident in) so if you can get there without removing the rest of the threads you should be fine. The threads shouldn't be doing the sealing on these either, rather the base of the fitting is sealing to the caliper just like a flare would. Maybe a bit of heat would have helped these come out cleaner, it's too bad that it happened though.

If you've got the right flaring tube you could always make a new cross over tube reusing the fittings, but that doesn't sound very 911 Turbo to me lol.

These could be another option from Willwood provided the end is the proper shape to seal in the caliper and it engages the good threads lower down in the caliper, with these you could torque them down and in the future when you are bleeding you don't need to worry about damaging those threads further. 

https://www.wilwood.com/LineKits/LineKitsProd?itemno=220-6069

I can definitely snug down that bleeder just fine.  I don't think it'll blow out and should hold pressure.  I won't have the crossover tubes for at least a week, so I could easily send the caliper to my friends shop and have him completely fix all those threads and get it back in time...

OK, these are GT3 calipers but the knuckles are different between the rwd cars and my awd car.  Mine are much larger and the calipers will only fit one way, whereas on the rwd cars there's plenty of room for the calipers to fit either direction.  Hence my needing to flip them on my car.

I've played with that bleeder and it's seating well and tightening up just fine, my inclination is to give it a try, it seems like having a shop put an insert in could make things worse then they currently are.  Thoughts?

From my engineering days I was always told if you have two full threads engaged you're good to go. I would run it and build up your trust. Its a small surface area and I don't think that even under full brake pressure there would be much force on those threads. 
And they tighten at 6-9ftlb as quoted above. Nothing. If they tighten you should be fine. 

It snowed yesterday evening but it got warmer than I expected today and I managed to shrug off being stymied by the front brakes and started working on the rear brakes.

Porsche does something really weird brake line wise.  They have hard lines coming into the wheel well, then they go to a flexible line that mounts to a bracket on the knuckle and from there they have another hard line that goes to the caliper.  No idea why they do it and I really wish they had a flexible line with a banjo bolt going into the caliper.

When I was working on the front I had to disconnect that line to the caliper and trying to get it back into place is a serious PITA since you're dealing with fine threads and a hard line connection.  My friend who clued me into flipping the calipers also told me to remove a 10mm bolt that holds a bracket onto the knuckle where the caliper hard line meets the flexible line.  That should give me room to move the line around.

Ok, lets take a look where we're starting here, lots of grooves on the rotor and a slight lip.  I suspect these are stock so they have ~33k miles on them.

Take off that 10mm bolt, then take off the two 10mm allen bolts that hold the caliper on.  Support the caliper off the side, I used a bungee that I tied around the upper control arm.  Since this is the rear and I'm reusing my stock calipers no need to remove the brake line from the back of the caliper.

Time to take the rotor off, so remove the two phillips head set screws.  I had to use a dead blow hammer to persuade it off.  Clean up the hub with a wire wheel/brush

Plop on your new rotor and put the set screws back in.  Since I'm going with a larger rotor, 350mm vs 330mm stock I have to use spacers and longer bolts.  Handily a guy on Rennlist sells a kit for a reasonable price

Hang the caliper, put the 10mm bolt back into the bracket for the brake lines, pop in some new pads (Ferodo street pads for me this time) and you're here.

Let's get the wheel on and see how it looks.

I decided I didn't want to leave the front end of the car up in the air, so I put the wheel back on and dropped it back onto the deck off the bridge jack.  I don't have a caliper on the front right tho, so I wrapped the line in three plastic bags and used the bridge jack as a table for a tupperware to catch any drips.  I really don't want brake fluid falling on the R, that would suck!

Currently at a stand still on this until the crossover lines show up.  Then I'll be able to put those on the calipers, mount the calipers/pads/rotors and flush the entire system with fresh fluid.

Then this should be ready for the season...

Any reason you can't Just rebend the longer hard line?  Or make new ones with some hardline and a flare kit if you have one. 
 

frustrating when you think you have everything you need for a project.  At least it isn't the night before a big track day

In reply to jfryjfry :

None of the lines I have are long enough.  I don't have the skills/tools/parts to make some hardlines.  I've got the proper ones on order, hopefully they'll be here soon...

Ahh I see now.  Yeah, ugh. I thought that stuff only happened to me.  Really it doesn't. What happens to me is I THiNK I have the wrong part, I order what I THINK is the correct part, I wait, then I scramble to make the new part work and after some preordained amount of time later I  realize that the original part was correct all along. 

In reply to jfryjfry :

I really hope I ordered the correct parts.  I got the crossover pipes from a 997 Turbo, which uses these same size calipers but orients them the way I have to.  Fingers crossed!

Ok, parts arrived on Thursday, so I instantly went out to make sure they fit. 

Whew!  They do!  Got them into place and decided to wait until Saturday to install everything because it snowed Thursday and didn't get warm until Saturday.

Releasing the brake line from the bracket on the knuckle made it much, much easier to get the line back into the caliper.  What wasn't easy was getting the 10mm bolt holding the bracket onto the knuckle!  That took 5-10 minutes of struggling to finally get back together. 

However everything really does fit now and I have proper wheel clearance even.

Here's the difference in brake pad size, the GT3 pads are close to 50% larger than my old stock turbo pads. 

Pretty subtantial increase in swept area of the pads plus the rotor is 20mm larger in diameter.  Time to flush the brakes.  Nothing really left in the reservoir since it all bled out the right front line when I had the caliper off. 

The previous owner put Ate Super Blue in and left it in there for at least 6 years.  At this point I've pushed something like 4-5 QUARTS of brake fluid thru the system and it's STILL coming out like this.  Seriously, WTF?  Are the lines just totally tatooed by the Super Blue and it's always gonna come out green?  At least the stuff in the reservoir finally looks clear.

So that's basically a full quart of Ate TYP200.  The 911 is really tempermental about the fluid level in the reservoir.  I ended up having to open another quart of TYP200 to top it off, much to my dismay.  I guess I'll use it to flush the brakes one more time and see if it's still green.

Backed out of the driveway to go bed the pads and heard a nasty sound.  Backing plate(s) are hitting the rotors.  Sigh, back onto the lift.  That's when the right ramp spat out when I was halfway up.  Luckily I stopped and was able to roll the car back some, get the ramp into place and pull on.  Used a screwdriver to bend the backing plates away and then went for my ride.

Bedded the Ferodo pads in, 10 stops from 60-10, got em nice and smelly. Hitting a solid 1.0-1.1 bar of boost, so looks like I've fixed all the boost leaks and the boost hoses are staying put. Was going on a ten minute cooldown cruise and stopped at a light.  That's when a Charger SRT decided he wanted a go.  It would've been rude to not accomadate him and I smoked him before I shifted into 3rd.  Slowed down and he gave me the thumb's up as he passed.  Filled the car will some Shell fuel and put it on the garage deck since the weather is nice now.