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Gear Change and steering feel

Yes, think you are right but kind of want to get a feel for it, will see whether its viable, first step is to ensure I can undo the nuts, found this, doesnt look that difficult.

Might just book it into the fast fit place round the corner for a starter for ten and then shop around for a full job, cant stomach potentially £500 at Hartech just at the moment.

http://www.oz951.com/public/alignment.htm
 
Mark
I understand many of the remarks you make, I would rather walk than drive a car with stiff linkages and shopping trolley wheel alignment, (or short shift kits, or juddering wipers) but I'd have to steer - no pun intended - you back to Oli's advice, Hartech will leave the car right for you and there are loads of subtle settings on these cars.
I am a DIY fan, and allergic to paying £30 / hr for someone to fill a washer bottle with water or free up seized bolts, so perhaps you should free up every bolt in sight one at a time to avoid any movement, and then roll up at Hartech to get the alignment done at a fixed cost, £300 is OK as the local tracking shop who drop the kit on the floor every fortnight will want £100 or so to make it worse.
You mentioned Golfs - the 944 is very similar (the first 924s had VW Mk1 struts) so thats easy - track-rod ends & 2 strut bolts each side.
At the rear we have a development of a 1303 Beetle IRS beam. There are some more complex track & camber adjustments involved, but not a great number of bolts.
The benefit of someone like Hartech is they understand these cars, the Quick fit fitter may dance better, but he won't track your 44 better.
You will likely hear of a few work rubber bushes (front ARB especially) but better you learn these than get fobbed off. That education is what the good Indie will provide you.

I'd say 80% of your gear linkage improvement will come from the cross bored bush above the n/s inner rear cv joint. the circlips will be goosed and the spindle corroded, but its worth taking an afternoon to get it free'd up.

Good luck with the car, they are so much nicer than the modern cable change, hewn from plastic and monkey metal alternatives.
I don't know Hartech, but if you read up about them, you won't be disappointed IMO.

George
944t

 
Cheers George, will crack the Plus Gas out this weekend and get it up on stands, the gear linkage looks a lot worse to get at than it does in the pictures on the web, there appears to be an exhaust, bodyshell and floor in the way by comparison, I want to do the linkage myself but interested if anyone else has done it and whether once the car is in the air there is enough access ?
 

ORIGINAL: robwright
It cost me 50 quid and transformed the handling and the tyre wear.  To be fair to the garage did shear one of the camber bolts but asked me to get a replacement, knocked the price off the bill. fitted it and realligned it for me again when it arrived.

Rob,

That's all very good advice, but you have found a seriously cheap alignment place if they did all the adjustments on the front for £50!

Mark, I have heard that it is possible to change the gear change mechanism without removing the 'box but access is very limited. Taking the 'box off would be the ideal, but that involves removing the drive shafts, gear change rod and exhaust, and then unbolting and lowering the 'box (and the mounts are very tricky to get to.) In short, it's all a pig to get to.

(This is one of the reasons why I haven't done anything about the change mechanism on my car!)


Oli.
 
It is possible but like Oli says it is very tricky. You will have to remove the exhaust rear box heat shield in order to do it. This is the point that you will probably find that the heat shield is like a tea bag also [:D] Perservere and it can be done. Using shims fashioned from some quality beer can material can dial out a lot of the side to side slop. Adjusting the nut at the back of the fore to aft linkage can alter the position of the gearstick in the gate. Believe me you don't want to drop the transaxle if you have no specific reason to do so [:eek:]
 
Rob,

You are making me keen to get in there and have a go now! Can you get the heat shield off with the exhaust still in place? The other point to make is that the gear change is all sitting on top of the 'box, and you are working from underneath.

Had to be a boddingtons beer can, didn't it? Just checking ... [;)]


Oli.
 
Oli yes the heat shield can be removed with the exhaust in place. Again it is tricky but all doable. At least on a Turbo anyway but don't see any reason why not on an S2 or any other for that matter. My choice of beer can was Carlsberg. This was an informed engineering decision as the thinner aluminium can construction allowed me to shim with greater accuracy. Thinner material allowed for more shims with greater accuracy [;)]
 
So the gear linkage looks like an utter pain, might make sure I have all the bits I may need before taking the exahust off, though it doesnt look ard, the heat shield looked fine when I had a root round up there.

Oli, when you say "All the adjustments on the front, if it is "like a Golf", isnt it just the Track Rod ends for toe in and toe out and the Eccentric bolt for the camber ? am thinking potentially that the front is fairly easily dealt with viat standard tracking tools and the correct settings but the rear sounds more complex as it adds it has caster, camber, toe and ride height adjustments ?

What I am getting at is, if the front is set up correctly then potentially I only need the back doing by Hartech or does it all need to be done at the same time, I had read £150 for a four wheel alignment so £300 plus vat, plus if it takes longer, potentially £500, is a hell of a lot of money on a cheap car to get the tracking set up, especially when potentially, I wouldnt want to fit the camber blocks at the front and adjust the settings again or at some point in the future, I might do other stuff so really I need to find a more cost effective way of doing it, this is a skill but it isnt Brain surgery, I design computer databases for a living so I can understand the concepts and can learn how to do this stuff, it would really irk me to pay out that much money and then be scared to touch anything as I will have to pay it out again, need to check the condition of the bushes, ball joints, dampers etc as it would really annoy me to spend all that money setting up tired parts.

Will take a decision after this weekends activities.


Edit, realised there is a Caster adjustment on the front as well.
 

ORIGINAL: robwright

IIRC the rear requires a special tool to set up properly

http://www.etoolcart.com/porschetoe-inadjusterp221.aspx

$31.95, I was expecting some massive complicated thing.
 
Mark,

Yes, your description of the front is correct with tracking and camber. However there are also adjusters on the rear wishbone mountings that (I think) give you caster as well, which a Golf doesn't have. However most 'tracking' places will only be able to do the toe-in and toe-out, and not the camber. Also bear in mind that the toe-in and out is relative to the rear, so you need a four-wheel alignment system to get that correct relative to the rest of the car.

Not quite sure that I follow this logic:

"I had read £150 for a four wheel alignment so £300 plus vat"

Essentially, you need to call some local tracking places and see what pricing they offer. Most will charge per adjustment done. Some will simply charge by the time they spend on it. The place I posted the data sheet from (Wheels in Motion) used to offer a flat rate of £80 for all checks and adjustments as necessary, regardless of how long it took - and the guy running it was apparently true to his word, telling me about some cars that had taken literally all day to do. (However they have now changed to some other, more complex model, and it is now very expensive.)

This is a skill and not brain surgery, but you need to have some understanding of the effects of the different settings. This isn't hard to gain at all, and makes interesting reading. However you also need the facilities to set the car up correctly; a full alignment machine costs tens of thousands of pounds, and you need a dead level surface to operate it on (or - better - a four-post lift). Bear in mind that the adjustments you are making are down to fractions of a degree, so the precision is significant. And, yes, you do pay a lot for it, but it is worth it in terms of the end result. Or, putting it another way, there is little point in owning a car that has a very strong reputation for handling finesse and then driving it with cock-eyed alignment. It just doesn't make sense.

Your comment about changing suspension parts and alignment is spot on; you need to do the alignment after changing any parts.

My suggestion, given that you say it drives OK at the moment, would be to keep it as it is. When and if you get a suspension refresh done (new bushes or maybe new shock absorbers and springs as well) then get the alignment fully done as soon as possible afterwards.


Oli.

ETA: Rob, thanks. If I drink beer from bottles, can they be used as well?
 
Yes, not surprised you dont follow my logic, I got distracted, what I was trying to say is that I heard £150 for alignment which has turned into £300 upwards, was expecting to bit the bullet and get it done but not potentially a £300 - £500 bullet, but I guess at Hartech a 944 cost wise for labour is the same as a brand new 911 GT3 RS and gets the same treatment.

 
£300 + vat is way too high a price.Specialist Porsche people in my area who have experience of setting up Porsche cars for all types of needs , inc full race , charge £165 + vat and use latest Bisbarth system.

Nick
 
Just looked through the sheaf of bills and Hartech charged me £180 plus VAT to do mine two years ago, but that was part of a full suspension rebuild with all the bushes changed so everything was coming apart anyway. £300 plus VAT does sound like a lot. It may be that they are swamped out with other work and not really looking for new 944 projects, so quoted high, it may also be that most of the 20 year old cars that they see for the first time are absolute horrors where everything is completely original, completely worn out and every adjuster seized solid, so they are trying to ensure that if you do go into them, you don;t end up with an unexpectedly large bill. It may simply be that they can charge that because they are known to be good, and it's still cheaper than Chris Franklin (anyone know what he's charging these days?). As Nick suggests, it may well be that being prepared to travel a bit will get you good quality setup at a better price.

I guess at Hartech a 944 cost wise for labour is the same as a brand new 911 GT3 RS and gets the same treatment.

It does get the same treatment as any other car they work on, and that's why I've gone there in the past, and to Promax, and there are some other places which I haven't tried but where I believe the same is also true. I struggle to see why it should cost any less. It is usually harder to do a given job on a 22 year old car than on a new one. Old age and condition can make the job harder, but apart from that the basic complexity of the work, the value of the equipment used, and the skill required to do it all is the same, whether it's a 944 or a 997. Even amongst 911s why would it cost any less on a £8K 3.0 911SC than on a new £150K GT3 4.0RS?

£300 plus vat, plus if it takes longer, potentially £500, is a hell of a lot of money on a cheap car

Well, yes, I know how that feels. But it's not a cheap car. It's an expensive car which has gone through a lot of depreciation. With age the capital value generally goes down but the running costs go up. This is just one of the realities of old Porsche ownership, I'm afraid.

I'm not saying everyone has to expect to spend thousands on their car every year, by any means. Of course there are lots of jobs where a competent and well-equipped home mechanic can save a lot of money over top-notch indy rates on a 20 year old Porsche, including routine servicing of many items and quite a lot of more involved projects, depending on ability and the facilities available. There's been some great work done by forum members far more competent than I, done to world class standards. Another big source of savings on a 20 to 30 year old Porsche car can be getting parts off scrappers, especially things that don't really wear in normal use, or corrode. But suspension set up on a car where everything is adjustable is very much in the specialist arena, both for equipment and expertise.



 
Mark
for an absolute top of the market alignment, try Centre-Gravity in Atherstone (near Coventry).
let us know the numbers if you do not mind.
(I realise this does not help the logic that you want a car-value relative alignment cost which I understand but don't think it will work like that)
I did neglect to say the front wishbones have a caster adjustment at the rear mounting

I did the gear linkage in situ, but would not recommend it. (also the ISV under the inlet manifold) there are some great dexterity tests on a 951 [8|]

Gear selection wise, you should not need to do more than the cast splinded arm which is fitted to the selector shaft. If you can get that off and the associated spindles cleaned and greased, which run in the plastic Bush with holes in 2 axis, it will make a huge difference. Thats my experience. There is a further arm on top of the gearbox with a plastic ball joint at each end. My suggestion is there is less than 5% potential improvement there.

good luck with it
George
944t
 

ORIGINAL: A9XXC
Oli - Pity you're so far away - I have one <a gearbox> sitting in my garage
Mike,

Any chance you could take some clear photos of the gearshift mechanism on top of that spare gearbox of yours and post them up here? I am getting an itch to improve my linkage and really don't want to have to drop the transaxle. Some photos (from various different angles) so I can see precisely what the arrangement is up there would be very helpful - thanks.


Oli.
 
Oli,
I don't think you would have any major difficulty.
There are 3 main components

1. the shaft connecting to the Lever in the car
(this operates in 2 axis - fore/aft, and clockwise/anticlockwise)

2. the splinded arm mounted on the shaft which enters the g/box
(this goes; fully in/1st & 2nd, mid position 3rd & 4th, fully out 5th & Rev)

3. The "impossible" to remove arm, which is simply a flexi pivot.
(this pivot acts with the clockwise/anti clockwise lever movement to generate the lateral movement to slide the shaft entering the g/box to its IN, MID & OUT positions.)

Among all that, the only part to wear is the Plastic Bush / Splinded arm bit where all the movement happens.

The difficult bit is getting the arm off, I power file the end clean, and made a small puller. difficult to describe.

talk of taking exhaust pipes off and dropping gearboxes, - only if you are bored. There again some garage probably said it to justify a £1000 in labour

good luck

George
944t
 

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