Porsche 924 HGF done and it starts hurrah!

[mercedade]

20 hours ago, inconsistant said:

 

The XJS is YouTube famous (it's a great little channel so far)

 

 

[inconsistant]

Out again for another couple of hours. I always struggle to get the sparkle plugs in and I hate changing plugs on these as the recess is really deep so I can’t hold the tip of the plug with my fingers, and if I put the plug in the sparkle plug spanner from the tool kit it’s hard to get it to thread properly as it wobbles a bit in the recess and I really really don’t want to cross thread the head!

I was thinking what I could do and wondered if I could push a bit of hosepipe over the plug to help locate it and get it finger tight. At work I noticed an offcut of orange bunsen burner flexi gas tube so I tried that and it worked brilliantly. It was suggested by someone that I put a bit of oil on the thread to help.

Really happy, plugs all went in first time and after a little nip up with the spanner all four took about 5mins.

Next I cleaned up the ends of the Warm Up Regulator and 5th Injector fuel lines, and fitted new copper washers to the banjo bolts.

Set both cam & crank to Top Dead Centre and fitted a new timing belt and tensioned it up. Obvs tightened the tensioner the wrong way, then had doubts, checked my previous HGF thread on the 924oc forum and realised I did the same last time!

So re did it, tightening the tensioner anti clockwise this time.

With the timing belt (£25) on a new alternator belt (£10) was then fitted and tensioned. At those prices there's no point refitting the old ones.

Fitted the Cold Start Valve, earth straps and air hose that bypasses the throttle body for cold starts.

Fitted the metal clamps for the fuel lines and reconnected the throttle cable including the really expensive (£25) tiny metal clip that holds it on.

I had a weird little grey/beige cable clip in the same bag and it took me ages to work out where it went, then spotted a hole in the inner wing and popped it in to hold the throttle cable in position.

A few small steps towards getting it finished. The engine looks more like an engine and the pile of engine bits on the bench in the shed is gradually getting smaller. Doing it in small manageable unpressured 2 hour chunks is working well!

[inconsistant]

I noticed a bit of new looking thread poking through the exhaust manifold, and had a sudden moment of clarity. The mechanic had obvs anticipated that the top exhaust down-pipe stud wouldn’t tighten (see March 5th post on previous page) so he had already drilled and threaded a hole through the manifold flange, it’s just I couldn’t see it from below and hadn’t noticed it from above. I popped an aerolite nut on it, tightened it up and felt very pleased with myself. (centre of photo below)

 

I popped the cam cover off one last time (hopefully, fingers crossed!) to clean up the top surface and fit a new gasket and a bit of gasket sealer in the corners, then refitted the cam cover with some sexy stainless dome nuts I’d been saving for this occasion.

Paranoid I’d get to the fluid filling up stage and forget to do this, I fitted the oil sump plug and radiator drain plug.

Next I fitted several coolant pipes and the alternator cooling hose in the gap between the block and the rad, fitted 2 of the 3 big air inlet hoses and then gave up for the day as it was dark.

[inconsistant]

A couple of the rubber bobbins holding the airbox on had split where the rubber joins the metal domed bit so I needed to replace them. They proved a bit tricky to shift.

 

I undid the bracket and got one side off in the shed with the help of my metal vice but the side in the air-box proved more troublesome because of poor access and the airbox flange being plastic so I couldn’t be too brutal. I also didn’t want to have to remove the airbox as it would mean disconnecting all the fuel lines to the fuel distributor that sits on top. It took a bit of swearing and manoeuvring but finally convinced them to move.

I got a bag of 10 bobbins for about £15, not bad as the Porsche ones are about £10 each. I replace all the ones I could see as they don’t seem to last forever. All done and looking lovely, but I wish I’d taken that bracket off and cleaned it up and repainted it with the other stuff. Same for the bracket the coolant bottle sits on.

Air filter (old one as it hadn’t been in the car long) and air intake box were then clipped back into place as was the remaining air intake pipe thingy.

All good so far and nearly done,  just fitting the distributor and filling with oil and coolant. I’ve had 5 months to buy oil at my leisure but obvs I didn’t and just realised now I didn't have any oil so I had to do a dash to shitty Tescos for some of their Taste The Value 10W40. £22 for 4 litres and I need 7 litres. I’ll get it running and do a couple of hundred miles on that then swap for some lovely Mobil 2000 semi synth, my oil of choice for the 924 which I’ll hopefully find on sale before then.

I had to read up about positioning the distributor as I messed it up at least twice last time I did the head gasket on the white 924. My old thread write up and all the advice I got from other 924oc members has proved really useful several times while doing it again.

So with engine at TDC the distributor needs to locate with the little line/mark on the edge lining up with the centre of the rotor arm. Then cap goes on, HT leads fit on the distributor clockwise with cyl 1 lead lining up with the rotor arm at TDC. I think. Please let me know if I’ve got that wrong, it’s probably quite important to get that right I reckon.

I clipped the HT leads into position and pushed them onto the sparkle plugs. I filled the engine with coolant.

All done.

Ready to attempt a start. 

I suppose I wasn't really expecting the engine to fire up first go since it hasn't run since August last year.

It didn't disappoint me.

I turned it over a few times, it just turned on the starter, getting gradually slower each go so I stopped.

Unfortunately I only had about 15 minutes until we had to go out and I just wanted to get it to the point where it was done and I had turned it over. I've set aside this coming Saturday to do some troubleshooting and hopefully get it running. Fingers crossed!

 

 

[inconsistant]

Spend some time over the weekend attempting to get it to start but no luck so far. Here's what I did.

I checked the timing in the window on the flywheel, and I’d set it up 180degs out, because the crankshaft turns twice for every one revolution of the cam shaft so I undid the cam belt, turned the crankshaft one revolution so crank & cam were TDC, checked the flywheel and set it to +10 degs, and tightened everything up again.

 

I used the magic little wire to bypass the fuel pump relay so the pump runs with just the key in the ignition, thought I’d make sure fuel getting to engine that way.

 

 

Didn’t start.

Readjusted it to 0 degs just to see if it made a difference.

 

 

Still didn’t start.

 

Tried again with jump leads from other car to make sure it was turning over quickly enough.

Still didn’t start.

 

Re checked all air intake tubes in case of leak, noticed when I refitted it that the solid centre plastic section had been a bit crushed (top one). Luckily I had a spare in the parts box in the shed so swapped over, and badly glued the yellow sticker on the new one.

 

Still didn’t start.

Took a sparkle plug out and it smelled of fuel, which is good.

Decided to take the distributor top off to re do the timing & check ht leads. They were on tight, 3 came off ok but obvs 4th one broke. It left it’s tip wedged in the distributor cap. Fortunately I am in the habit of keeping stuff I take off the car if it’s not broken, so I found a spare dist top and HT lead and swapped them over.

While hunting for parts I found a much nicer older metal oil filler cap so cleaned it up and swapped it over. I wasn’t expecting that to make it start, and it didn’t but at least it looks nice while I’m scratching my head.

It still didn't start.

 

It sounds worse than before, previously it turned over freely, this last time it felt like it was even struggling to turn over. Maybe that's good, I don't know, I've run out of ideas and talent. 

I spent the rest of the day washing because it’s absolutely filthy. Fortunately it was fairly clean when it was parked up in August, but it’s amazing how mucky a car can get just left parked up over winter. There was moss on all the window rubbers, mould on the (leather?) steering wheel and gear knob & seatbelts, a small pond in the rear left boot bin, etc.

You can see how cars can quickly deteriorate over a few years if just left. I was getting flashbacks to owning the white 924, where each spring it needed a weekend of cleaning just to get the paint to reflect light again and for the interior to not be a health hazard.

It makes such a massive difference having this one garaged over the winter, can’t wait to get it back into a garage and out of the weather. I just need it to start…

Any help/advice/suggestions/ridicule appreciated! 

 

 

[wesacosa]

that does sound very lazy turning over. Did it turn freely by hand, does it still?

 

[juular]

This sounds really similar to cars that I've had the ignition timing too far advanced on, and the combustion actually fights the starter.  Did you have the distributor out, and could it have been put back in one tooth advanced?

Also check that the engine block has low resistance ( a few ohms) to the negative terminal on the battery.  If it's high, the starter will be lazy as it gets its ground through the block.  A simple check is to connect a jump lead between the engine block somewhere clean, and the negative terminal. 

[EyesWeldedShut]

My wife had a 2.0 924 on an X reg that I managed to unfix the ignition timing on by incorrectly fitting a recon dizzy. Bert from Berlyn Services talked me through a fix using that old fashioned telephone thing - Googlefoo suggests he's well retired now but I think the fix here is the same one:
https://www.924board.org/viewtopic.php?p=413727&sid=0a98f9e1733c1ee60990d2d11134b8e8#:~:text=Posted%3A Fri Jan 12%2C 2024 9%3A48 pm    Post subject%3A

[2316cc]

Have you tried the ‘wiggling the loosened distributor while turning the ignition key through the open driver’s window’ technique? I can confirm it’s possible for a person with normal length arms. 
 

Still great progress to have it all back together again, even if it is being a bit of a twat about starting. 

[Zelandeth]

Check the basics first.

Have you actually got a strong spark at the plugs?  If so, give it a sniff of Easy Start or similar and see if you get anything.  Injection engines usually seem to be more tolerant of less than stellar fuel, but it does seem to go off really quickly sometimes these days - so getting something that you know is properly flammable in there should help give you an indication of whether you're looking at a fuel or ignition issue.

Confirm that the rotor in the distributor is actually pointing at cylinder 1 when the marks are lined up - I managed somehow to totally mess that up on one engine once (I still don't know how) and it had me chasing my tail for hours.  It was resolutely dead for a long period of time until a backfire loud enough to set off my housemate's car alarm informed me that something was far amiss with the timing.  Once I emerged from hiding and my ears had stopped ringing, it took me about ten minutes to sort it.

If it is at or around 10 degrees BTDC, you have spark, you have air and you have fuel it will run - so one of these things is missing.  Spark is easy to check, timing is easy enough to check, then throw something flammable into the intake (or syringe a little two stroke fuel straight into the cylinders - I know getting aerosol starting agents into a K-Jet car isn't always the easiest thing to do), then hopefully by then you'll have had at least some signs of life or an obvious failure which should point you in the right direction.

[MrBig]

What @Zelandeth said covers the basics. It's been many years since I had a 924, but I have a vague memory of being in this situation and having to hold the air meter plate open whilst spraying easy start into the intake and having a mate crank it over.

Also, do you have a strobe light? I've had some success troubleshooting in the past by trying it on each HT lead in turn to verify that I had  all 4 sparks.

[inconsistant]

Thanks v much all for the advice so far, that’s given me a list of stuff to check.

I did this and have a spark, also sparkle plug smells of petrol do I think I have fuel & spark. 

I’ve been messaging a 924 owning chum and he’s sent me links to threads with similar symptoms  to mine where the issue was the timing belt was one tooth out. So will double check that too.

 

[N Dentressangle]

You need to swap it for a nice blue Rover P6.

That would do it 😉

[2316cc]

38 minutes ago, N Dentressangle said:

You need to swap it for a nice blue Rover P6.

That would do it 😉

He can’t give up now when he’s got the rocker cover looking so good! Puts mine to shame, that does. 
 

Still, Rover P6…

[Zelandeth]

It's not just flooded is it?

[inconsistant]

I don’t think so, I’ve been trying to start it over several days so assume it wouldn’t stay flooded. But will take plugs out before trying again and let it all dry out to check. Thanks for all the suggestions above!

This time of year is a bit frustrating for car stuff as I’m not at home in daylight Mon to Fri, so compiling a to do list for a session on fixing session on Saturday is ideal.

[comfortablynumb]

I've had a situation before when I replaced a distributor cap and arm, and the car refused totally to run with the new parts, still don't know why. Replaced new with old, and off we went! 🤔

[inconsistant]

I tried and failed to get the bit of ht lead out of the dist cap. This was a new cap I bought a couple of years ago. Suspecting I had an old one in the parts box I had a rummage and to my delight found the old one that was on when I bought the car. which meant I wouldn’t have to wait for a replacement to arrive before cracking on. I also found a spare distributor with a rotor arm and cap and a spare set of HT leads so swapped the broken lead over too.

 Still didn’t start

I put a multimeter across battery, check voltage before cranking 12.6v and during cranking 10.4v. 

I then put a jump lead between battery earth and lifting bracket on the engine block and try again.

Before 12.5v, during 10.1v. I don’t really know why I was doing this other than it was suggested, but thinking about it if there’s no difference in the voltages with or without a jump lead to earth the block then I guess there isn’t an earthing problem?

I removed all four plugs and let them dry out to make sure they weren’t flooded. Re fitted them

 Still didn’t start

I took the air filter out and checked the air metering flap moved freely and then moved when cranking, it did.

 But it didn’t start

I re checked timing, made sure  cam, crank and flywheel were all at tdc and rotor arm was lined up with ht lead to cyl 1. And the leads were in the correct order 1342 clockwise. It was all good, no sign of  being a tooth out. 

I cleaned up the connectors on the mystery but important green wire that plugs into the dist, and also while I was at it cleaned up the AAV, CSV and WUR connectors

I took the vacuum advance (I think that’s what it’s called) off the dist and blocked both ends, because it was suggested. 

Still didn’t start.

 

It had been suggested (above and elsewhere) to loosen the dist and gently turn while cranking to advance the timing a little until it fires. While I was loosening it I noticed the sharpie mark I made on the dist base and the clamping bracket before I took it off. 

I checked my ‘before’ photo to see how the dist was located before I took it out and it tallied with the mark so having run out of ideas I re set the dist to my mark, even though this meant cyl 1 ht lead would no longer line up rotor arm at tdc.

 

 

This is the rotor arm at TDC, it's supposed to align with the tiny mark circled in red, so it's quite a way out. this is how it's been running since I bought it.

Unless I'm being particularly daft and missing something obvious.  Anyway, worth a try. I jumped it off the other car for a bit of extra juice and cranked it. 

 

It didn’t start.

 

 

But it did feel much more like it was going to, almost stuttering into life a couple of times. So I slightly loosened the clamp and slightly moved the dist as I cranked it, while also trying to video what was happening. 

On the 3rd or 4th go, (the one I didn’t video, obvs) it started and ran for a few seconds, so I turned it off to tighten the dist, then it wouldn’t start again. I was confused as it was about 45degs out from where it should be set for tdc/rotor at cyl 1.

I R  many confuse.

 I had a feeling it wasn’t starting because of a timing issue so this was encouraging, although also really frustrating because I didn’t understand what was happening.

 

I gave up for the day and decided to start spraying the interior with antibacterial cleaner to get rid of the lingering mouse whiffs as well as cleaning out the dirt,  grime and mould from a winter of not being used. 

[inconsistant]

I did some overnight pondering to try to work out what might be up. I suddenly remembered the spare distributor in the shed. I figured I could swap it over and set timing to tdc etc and give it a go to see if the same happens with that one so I can cross a faulty distributor off the list of possible causes. I don’t know how they work inside but they must wear out over time? 

 

With the spare distributor, rotor arm and cap fitted I timed it up, and after a few seconds of cranking it fired up without even being jumped from the other car. I ran it for a few seconds, turned it off, then tried again and it started. It then started almost every time I tried. 

 

Excellent news. it starts and runs. Hurrah! I celebrated with a cup of tea and a mint viscount.

So the issue was something distributor based. I was curious to know what the problem was. Comparing the two I noticed the rotor arm that was on when it didn’t start had a metal internal bit missing but not sure whether this is important or not.

I also noticed the middle bit the rotor arm pushes onto was a bit rusty on the distributor it wouldn't start on compared to the one it did start with.

I decided I would swap one thing at a time to try to work out which bit was causing it to not start, so swapped the cap, then rotor arm, then the distributor body. I couldn't get it to not start, whichever combination I tried.

My suspicion was that the missing bit of metal on the side of the rotor creates a bit of friction to hold the rotor onto the spinning centre bit. The one with it missing was a bit loose so I suspect it was moving about or something. 

So, it runs. 

I toped up the coolant, and confidently put the refurbished timing belt cover on. It feels like months ago that I sandblasted and resprayed it. Because it was.

So, unless I'm being too optimistic, I think that's the Head Gasket Failure work done!

Before: September 2024

After: March 2025.

All that work and it looks like I've just replaced the oil filler cap and rotated the distributor a bit. Pfff.

 

[inconsistant]

I continued the thorough mouse piss smell eradication of the interior. I removed the seats so I could get all the smells and the mouse poohs out. 

I'd rolled it back down the drive about half a car length so it was next to the other car for jump starting, so I decided I'd drive it back up the drive to where it normally parks what with the engine running and everything, why wouldn't I? It wouldn't go into gear. 

It won't go into gear with the engine running. The gear knob wiggles left to right in neutral but won't push back or forth into any gear. Going into reverse makes grinding noises.

With the engine off it engages all gears and moves freely as expected. The clutch pedal feels completely normal. 

Given I haven't driven it since August 2024 is this likely to be the clutch stuck? I'm thinking start it in gear and see if I can free it with some back and forth driving?

[N Dentressangle]

The metal contact in the rotor arm and rusty distributor shaft will have been your problems. Any corrosion or poor contacts around the the distributor will cause major running issues, sometimes starting, sometimes under load, sometimes at revs. Always worth getting everything clean around there before doing anything else.

Your clutch pressure plate has probably rusted stuck. You can try driving it with the clutch pressed down, then brake sharply and see if it frees. Sometimes the same trick with the back axle securely up on stands will do the trick. Either way it's probably possible to free it off without taking anything apart.

Actually, ignore that. I'll give you 100 quid for the car. It's basically scrap. I'm doing you a favour.

[inconsistant]

14 hours ago, N Dentressangle said:

Actually, ignore that. I'll give you 100 quid for the car. It's basically scrap. I'm doing you a favour.

Oh thanks mate for helping me out! Remember to deduct your petrol money off that £100 if you don’t live close and have to travel to collect it. 

[N Dentressangle]

28 minutes ago, inconsistant said:

Oh thanks mate for helping me out! Remember to deduct your petrol money off that £100 if you don’t live close and have to travel to collect it. 

A mate of mine actually had someone try to do that when he sold his old Mk3 Golf 🙄