Living with a Porsche 944

Another engine swap arrived in the darkness this past week... I was only expecting the engine but practically everything attached to it was included - bonus spares  :) Quite happy that a later model anti-roll bar was still attached to the cross-member too. This motor is filthy! I started stripping off all the bits and accessories so I can begin cleaning it all up... It's pretty obvious that this engine needs some tlc split vacuum lines must have made this baby run rough! Moving around the engine I had a good look at all the nooks and crannies. There doesn't seem to be any oil leaks from the gaskets, but the rear of the balance shaft housings were both leaking - the blanking plates are just rattling around in there and it's obvious oil is leaking out. Talking about rattling around the seal around the thermostat is non-existent... So the plan is to strip this down and clean it up - maybe paint a few bits - then fit some upgrade parts and see if they ...

As part of the current front end suspension rebuild, it was time to remove the front cross-member and give it a serious clean and degrease. As you can see it was nasty! Due in part to the previous power steering leak that was fixed when I first bought my 944, the drivers side (this is RHD european car) was covered in a thick coating of grime. The cross-member is easy enough to remove by undoing the four 19mm bolts located on the underside. (Obviously the engine is out and all the attached suspension parts are removed). For this job I thought I'd try some GUNK foam degreaser that comes in a spray can - which turned out to be more of a spray on liquid degreaser and less of a foam... ...thankfully it did quite a good job of shifting the muck. After using the whole spray on can and reverted to the red backup can of GUNK - which doesn't do as good a job as the 'foam' stuff. It took a lot of elbow grease to remove virtually all of the grime off using a sm...