Living with a Porsche 944

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...

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.

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...

With MOT, insurance certificate and Road Tax reminder in hand I headed off to the Post Office - purveyors of all things postal and the holy grail of road tax. Permission to drive on Her Majesty's roads without threat of arrest or crushed 944. It should be such a simple affair: hand over the documents and a cheque, and get handed that colourful round little disc to put in your car window. But no, am I the only person who thinks that I shouldn't have to lose a month of road tax because it's more than 2 days before the end of the month? I couldn't buy road tax from the beginning of December, I had to buy it as if from the beginning of November. That means I pay for 6 months tax and only get five; or pay for a year and only get 11 months - especially when the road fund is raided for other government spending. I think we're taxed enough not to want to pay for a months road tax and not get it! So as a matter of principal I'm parking the 944 in the garage and waiting a...

Excellent news - my 944 passed MOT today. It felt so satisfying. After all the work that's gone into car over the couple months; the delays and the bruised knuckles and the desire to throttle an old Porsche engineer every now and again. Now to get it taxed so I can roam the B roads!

I researched this process on Clarks Garage (where they call it a Control Arm) and in the Porsche workshop manual, it didn't seem like it was going to be much of a problem. I marked the castor mounts position which everybody was saying was the most important thing to do because the suspension geometry might be effected - and that was pretty easy, no problems there. I don't know what all the fuss is about that really. Removing and replacing was straight forward. The only difficulty I encountered was separating the ball joint from the spindle; and the anti-roll bar from the wishbone. I resorted to borrowing a crowbar from a friend and I wished I'd done that sooner. Well now I know. In fact if I do this again I'm going to remove the ARB completely first and then replace all the bushings too, but first let's get the 944 though MOT and on the road again.

After waiting a month my front replacement wishbone has arrived. I missed the free MOT retest due to the seller's failure to ship my part. I was told a couple of times it had been sent - why can't people just be honest? I finally lost patience and raised a dispute with PayPal to recover my money. I had resigned myself to buying one of the refurbished units from Hartech, but lo and behold what lands on my doorstep this morning - the wishbones I paid for more than a month ago. I should have just driven to Kent to pick these up myself! Tomorrow I'm going to tackle the wishbone replacement and book the 944 in for another MOT.