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Showing posts from December, 2009

Load of hot air

I have a fan - it works well. But I don't have hot air. Which means that the school run I do with my eldest is a pretty freezing cold affair. It's also impossible to defrost the windscreen let alone ourselves! I've been watching eBay and the Porsche forums for a replacement heater control unit after checking virtually everything else in the HVAC system for faults. The heater control unit is an expensive item from Porsche, and so far they've been selling for more than a ton on eBay. Thankfully one came up on eBay that was a fair bit less - sure it was used but the seller assured me it was fully working. To be honest it was cheap enough to risk and with positive eBay feedback as meaningful as it is it was well worth getting some hot air in the cabin. It looks like it's going to be a cold winter. Removing the old control unit was straight forward. Before I fitted the replacement I cleaned up the two connectors just to make sure 23 years of crud wasn't going to keep

Amp readings

Right so the new 72Ah battery is a stormer, but my newly acquired multimeter from MachineMart showed that my alternator was indeed not up to the task anymore. A couple minutes on the internet and a replacement was looking at at least £160+vat plus my alternator in exchange. Didn't seem like good value at all. I had heard that alternators can be rebuilt, and often it's just the voltage regulator needing to be replaced. That's not something in my capabilities I thought so I contacted a mechanic friend of mine who put me onto a chap who rebuilds these things for a living. My concerns about cost evaporated when I heard how much he'd rebuild my Bosch unit for. I just had to remove it. It was about 2 degrees in my garage earlier so I'm not looking forward to that and it looks like it's going to be a while before things settle above zero. I hope the new battery holds out until then.

Tale of two batteries

So the battery was flat this morning, which can be expected for cold weather and little use, and so began my tale of two batteries. The first battery was supplied by my local Kwik-fit. This was contrary to my gut feeling and I reinforces just why I will never buy anything on the spot like that again. I took the 944 down to have the battery checked after having to jump start every time I shut down. Turns out the battery was nuked and the helpful tester reckoned the alternator wasn't charging correctly either. As I didn't feel like any more inconvenience I enquired about a replacement. What was recommended to me by the gent behind the counter according to the "blue book" he held, was a 59Ah replacement. The problem was that a 72Ah battery sat in my car. I was informed that the higher Ah unit would overload the electrical circuits. I was puzzled. I should have just walked away there and then. But no... Later that evening when I needed to start the 944 to go to my kids Ca