Living with a Porsche 944

Spring has sprung and so has some more refurb work on TheHoff. I'd noticed on a few jaunts after the MOT in April that the left rear wheel was rather hot after a drive, even around town so I figured it was time to sort the rear brakes and give them some of the treatment the fronts had got a couple of winters ago... After 30 years the original ATE callipers were looking a little mangy and in desperate need of attention so I whipped them off and relocated them to the work bench...   ...where a few knocks with a hammer separated the caliper into three parts:   I also noticed that each of the piston seals were hole - which made me wonder how they'd been able to actually work properly!    With the seals removed I discovered much manginess lurking beneath...    I can assure you that you do not want your piston looking like this!    First step was to clean them up and remove all the loose rust etc - I used a drill and...

    In trying to locate the source of a little knock I noticed that the NS drive shaft was 'freer' than the OS. I had suspected the Spax damper not fitting snugly enough in the top mounting point so those will be swapped around too.     The driveshaft has a cv joint each end, and having read that low grease may mean they knock, I pulled the left shaft and set about cleaning the joints and repacking them. I bought a pair of CV joint grease tubs from Amazon and tackled them - if the bearings come out its a real work of patience to get them seated in the race again... It's a bit fiddly getting all six 12 point bolts off each CB joint - marking the joint and stub exile end helps enormously when lining up for reassembly. Now to road test on Drive it Day. Incidentally I saved another 4kgs fitting a new Bosch battery compared to the old brick. That brings the lightweight project to a total of 70kgs saved so far.

That's a ticket to drive with abandon dear Sirs. To celebrate I've booked a spot on the Retro Cars Brands Hatch track evening. The funny thing is after getting the MOT and taking TheHoff on a celebratory B-road blast - I retired to the garage and promptly started taking the rear end apart to trace an annoying rattle...

Longtime no update... Over the summer I've been refining TheHoff. After a couple of outings to Brands Hatch I decided that I wanted to add lightness as per Colin Chapman. I wanted to retain the period features of the interior and most of the niceties but make it more of a lightweight than a racecar - which it is not. The goal was simply to remove about the average weight of a modest passenger that I'd take to a track day - as that is what was happening. I began by stripping out the interior and pulling the thick rubber & felt matting out. The glue they used back in the 80's to stick this stuff down was - let's say... very effective. The rear seat back went... I found that DW40 was the most suucessful glue residue remover after buying various specialist products that promised the world but just didn't work...after many long hours lots & lots of kilograms were being shed simply by removing rubber, felt and some sound deadening in the areas that I wan...

As I fitted an S2 intake onto an S engine using an S fuel rail - the fuel damper has never fitted nicely to the intake as it should. It wasn't an issue per se but I wanted a neater factory install. The solution was to drill out the one mounting plate hole so the damper could be attached using the throttle body linkage attachment bolt. Not a very complicated procedure but a much tidier and more secure solution.

In order to maximise the airflow through the intake I've been meaning to replace the intake j-boot that fits between the throttle body and air flow meter - it's had a nasty crimp in it since I installed it and it really wasn't the best solution. A 45º elbow 80mm to 70mm reducing silicon intake hose was purchased from Demon Tweeks as well as a 19mm O.D. Revotec self-sealing take hose off from eBay. The silicon hose comes with enough length on either end to trim it to fit. I then fitted the hose and mocked it up in the engine bay so I could figure out where to fit the take off for the hose that runs to the ICV. After I was happy with that fit and had marked the point at where the hose should connect, I removed the j-boot and got ready to make the hole for the take off fitting. The kit comes with a neat punch that makes the hole for the take off. A quick smack of the rubber mallet and voila! Then insert the barb connector and tighten up the lock ...