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Complete Ignition Service

Today was the day to tackle the ignition service. I knew the car had an ill-fitting distributor cap, and having checked the plugs a couple months back I knew they were past their best too by now. Furthermore, JM Garage had pointed out that the leads were past their best also. Essentially the whole shebang had to be changed, and in my pursuit of recovering all my BHP this was a vital service to perform on my 944 at 200,584 miles.

It didn't take a genius to see that the condition of the existing parts was appalling. Since my last inspection of these bits & bobs at the onset of winter, the dizzy was now very loose and the rotor had obviously been smacking the sides of the distributor cap as it flopped around. Both had visible signs of damage!

The new Beru on the left and old Bosch Distributor Cap on the right - just look at the damage and dirt inside that dizzy:

Take a look at that knackered rotor on the left - the striking edge has been bent back from hitting the ignition points and walls of the distributor cap:

It's no wonder my 944 has been a little lumpy and running rough! Having said that it wasn't as if the car was terrible either - it's amazing what poor condition parts a car will run with.

When removing the rotor I did discover that the little 3mm allen bolt had been rounded off in a pervious attempt to service the car.  Thankfully I could gently hammer a 1/8" allen head into the bolt and remove it.

I left all the plug leads connected to the distributor cap, spark plugs and coil so that I could attach the new ignition leads in the correct order. Incidently the OEM quality ignition leads I bought from GSF turned out to be Beru leads with Porsche part numbers - for the princely sum of £42! That's more than half the price from any Porsche parts supplier.

Once the new rotor and distributor cap had been installed, I set about connecting the king lead to the coil and the distributor cap; then removed the plug lead from the first spark plug; replaced the plug with a new Bosch plug with a 0.8mm gap (and a bit of copper slip on the threads); connected the new silicone ignition lead to the new plug then to the matching connector on the distributor. I repeated this process for each of the remaining plugs and leads.

It was quite obvious that the old plugs were shot.
This was an easy job to do and with all new ignition bits in place, I hope my twenty-four year old Porsche 944 is going to run as sweetly as when it was delivered! Now for the oil service and air filter replacement. Then maybe a rolling road session to see where this baby is on power after all these years.
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