Living with a Porsche 944

Managed a few minutes in the garage chasing down a slightly hunting idle. Went through all the vacuum hoses and gave them a tweek and found one small connector, erm, disconnected...sorted that and there was a minor improvement. Dang... Next was to check the idle control valve, so I disconnected that, started the car and let it run for a moment then switched it off. Reconnected the ICV and started TheHoff up - purrs like a young lion. Result! Then it was onto the jumping temp guage. Checked the two spade connectors under the manifold, they were a-ok. So to the guage console I went. Removed the 6 screws holding on the binnacle and then the four securing the gauges. Gave the temp guage brass connectors a good clean with brake disk cleaner as the contact cleaner was finito... Put it all back together and... Perfect!

A trip to the Ace Cafe is always a welcome excursion and being the first time I drove TheHoff for anything further than the recent trip to the MOT station down the road. First things first though - some Vpower... All in all I did 150 miles there and back and it was a thrill - I even managed to miss all the M25 crashes and tail backs...I'm very happy to say that my 944 drove like a dream, sounds fantastic on the open road, sits just right and is all I hoped it would perform like after being off the road for 4 years almost to the day. STOKED. The conundrum now is how much more do I do to TheHoff - I had some more mods planned to make this 944 a lighter weight "Club Sport" but after driving a good distance and considering how immaculate the interior is, I'm having some major reservations about stripping stuff out like the carpets. I'm going to have to think of a compromise because I've got the hankering to build...

Fixed another one of those little things - the glove compartment light. As it turns out the bulb is not something your local motor factors or Halfords carry - it's 29mm x 7mm 12v 3w Festoon bulb that eBay offered up thankfully. One moment later...  The final part to fit was the anti-roll bar and assorted clamps - many moons ago now I had a lot of the old parts powder coated in accordance with a strict policy that reflected "eighties excess". It makes me chuckle thinking that on the outside this 944 looks stock but under the skin it's all a little crazy and fun. Anyway back to the ARB bits...   The problem was that the middle clamps had become distorted - not sure when but I'm pretty certain I wouldn't have sent them to powder like that. So I got some new ones from my OPC with a set of OEM rubber bushes as you can see on the right.   The trick to fitting the sway bar end mount bushes is - freshly boiled hot water to soften the rubber and ...