Porsche 924 Scheiße - the wonderful* everyday

[N Dentressangle]

22 minutes ago, captain_cal said:

Bit late now but I have a good one of these in my front room for some reason, £20 if you want it.

Ta - I'll see if it leaks / breaks and let you know!

[N Dentressangle]

6 hours ago, Asimo said:

The very earliest 924s had the rear torsion bar tube/subframe assembly mounted solidly to the body.  The road noise heard inside the car was severely criticised and the rubber isolation mount modification was hurriedly introduced. I can't see it getting an MOT with these suspension mounts missing. They do need to be there as they transfer the torsion spring torque to the body.

Given the lead time on the ones from Design911 is October, plus they're over £100 for the pair has given me thoughts. A chap on the 924 FB page actually made his own:

I reckon I could do that.

[tooSavvy]

Ooh.... Some *SparklyStick action required 😁

🚙💨

[N Dentressangle]

7 minutes ago, tooSavvy said:

Ooh.... Some *SparklyStick action required 😁

🚙💨

Too right, when this is the alternative 😨

[tooSavvy]

17 minutes ago, N Dentressangle said:

Too right, when this is the alternative 😨

Would the rubber be, sort of.... Boat rubbing bumper or those stop blocks, on the back of lorries 🤔

🚙💨

[jim89]

2 hours ago, N Dentressangle said:

Given the lead time on the ones from Design911 is October, plus they're over £100 for the pair has given me thoughts. A chap on the 924 FB page actually made his own:

I reckon I could do that.

Is that wot he made or wot he had to copy of?

[N Dentressangle]

I think the one on the right is the one he made. The rubber bit on the left is what remains of the original.

Obvs mine won't look anything like as nice 🤣

[inconsistant]

4 hours ago, garethj said:

I’m sure you know this, but run a jump lead from the battery to the earth points on the inner wing and see if anything works better.

Agree with the earlier post about ignition problems can look a lot like fuel problems, on mine there was a problem with the ignition coil that I could never entirely solve, where the correct part number for the car didn’t work but some Lucas coil did.

A really nice car to drive; feels old enough to be not modern, but easy enough so traveling isn’t an ordeal.  I did 75 miles a day in mine and it was very engaging.

I also had to swap out the fuel tank which meant dropping the transaxle so you might as well change the clutch… Barclaycard’s profits were up that year, and only me and the garage knew why.

Happy days

[N Dentressangle]

Can't really beat pop-up headlights, can you? 😎

[Pauly.22]

I had a pasedena yellow 924 about 6 years ago. 
 

never got it on the road, wiring had been  messed with and sold it a classic VW garage  

yours looks great. Wish pop up headlights were still a thing on new cars. 

[Alusilber]

VW/Porsche have a nice logical part numbering scheme which gives you a clue as to the origin of the part.

Anything starting with 477 was designed specifically for the 924

931 for 924 Turbo parts

937 for 924 Carrera parts

Anything else starting with a 9 was probably borrowed from another Porsche model

Anything starting 171 is a Golf Mk1 part (or 191 for Golf Mk2 parts)

Anything else starting with a 1 will probably be from a VW aircooled model

Anything starting with 0 is generic VW fasteners etc.

 

 

[N Dentressangle]

8 hours ago, Alusilber said:

VW/Porsche have a nice logical part numbering scheme which gives you a clue as to the origin of the part.

Anything starting with 477 was designed specifically for the 924

931 for 924 Turbo parts

937 for 924 Carrera parts

Anything else starting with a 9 was probably borrowed from another Porsche model

Anything starting 171 is a Golf Mk1 part (or 191 for Golf Mk2 parts)

Anything else starting with a 1 will probably be from a VW aircooled model

Anything starting with 0 is generic VW fasteners etc.

 

 

That's immensely helpful - thank you.

[N Dentressangle]

Progress today:

• Fitted the new battery clamp that arrived. Who knows where the old one went? Why do so many cars I buy have lost battery clamps FFS?
• Changed the air filter for a new Bosch one. Old one was grotty and didn't fit properly.
• Changed this manky ignition switch for a new Febi Bilstein one:

It was cheap because it fits loads of other VW stuff. The old one needed a wiggle to keep the car running after it was started, so definitely been an ignition switch for too long.

Tomorrow might bring a handbrake cable, and should deffo bring a decent used radiator. Baby steps...

[N Dentressangle]

On 24/08/2025 at 11:46, N Dentressangle said:

Ta - I've joined the owners' club, so will see what advice and discounts can be had.

On another note, it seems the guide tubes I need are a bit weird. It looks like they bolt on, rather than just being a slide-in tube. Here is what my backplate looks like:

and here's the backplate of another car someone's breaking in the US, showing the guide tube bolted in using the bolt you can see below the handbrake cable in my pic above:

Mystery solved - the missing parts are Beetle Handbrake Cable Support Brackets, p/n 113-609-637+638, available for a tenner the pair on Ebay:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/186330864381

Result!!!

[tooSavvy]

😮... Seems they're on Tyneside ^ ^ ^ , 'from Newcastle' 👍

GuddGudd

🚙💨

[N Dentressangle]

2 minutes ago, tooSavvy said:

😮... Seems they're on Tyneside ^ ^ ^ , 'from Newcastle' 👍

GuddGudd

🚙💨

they'll be reet canny, then

[tooSavvy]

56 minutes ago, N Dentressangle said:

they'll be reet canny, then

 

🚙💨

[auntiemaryscanary]

 

8 hours ago, N Dentressangle said:

Mystery solved - the missing parts are Beetle Handbrake Cable Support Brackets, p/n 113-609-637+638, available for a tenner the pair on Ebay:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/186330864381

Result!!!

I can't recall who it was up thread that gave the cross reference codes, well the start codes, but they must've saved you a fortune on parts or at the very least given leads on alternative sources.

[N Dentressangle]

I won't lie, the bit that worried me most about this car was the mis-fire. Mostly because of OMG K Jet

When we were diagnosing it, we removed the injector from the mis-firing #3 cylinder and moved it to #4 cylinder. The mis-fire moved with the injector. The PO bought and fitted a new injector, but #4 kept mis-firing. She was also idling very high, normally an indication of air leaks on a carb system. Hmmm.

I've done this shit for long enough now to know that a problem needs turning over in my head for a while, and eventually I realised that as well as the injector transferring to #4, so had its seal. The seals don't withstand pressure - they're in the inlet manifold - but they do need to stop air leaking into the manifold with the the fuel / air charge. It could only be the seal, so I ordered a set of new Viton seals for about 15 quid.

They arrived today. I pulled the injectors and removed the old seals:

Rock hard and brittle as you like. Look at them.

I cleaned the seats in the injector sockets with carb cleaner, as well as the injectors and seal grooves as I took them out. Tapped the injectors back into place firmly with a hardwood drift and refitted the injector lines:

Reassembled the whole intake system carefully, tightening all the clamps properly to make sure there were no air leaks. I also cleaned the plug up on #4 cylinder, which had had a 100 mile pasting of the wrong mixture and a bad mis-fire, if my theory was correct.

Turned the starter and NO MISFIRE!!!! SHE RUNS!!!!

Total result and I'm well pleased. Time to sort the fuel system out - leaky / dodgy pipes and knackered mounts - and fix the handbrake now I have all the bits. This Porsche will hit the road again 😎

[inconsistant]

Great result! I'm also impressed I guessed correctly, and that it was about the cheapest fix possible. For me it's usually the last and most expensive thing I replace.

[Matty]

I believe i called it early doors. About 7 days and on the road...

[Snipes]

On 26/08/2025 at 22:17, Pauly.22 said:

I had a pasedena yellow 924 about 6 years ago. 
 

never got it on the road, wiring had been  messed with and sold it a classic VW garage  

yours looks great. Wish pop up headlights were still a thing on new cars. 

I don't really like yellow (or 924s) but that looks fantastic. 

[N Dentressangle]

9 hours ago, inconsistant said:

Great result! I'm also impressed I guessed correctly, and that it was about the cheapest fix possible. For me it's usually the last and most expensive thing I replace.

Yes, sorry - meant to quote your earlier post where you suggested injector leaks.

[inconsistant]

Don’t worry I’m not trying to be a smart arse, I’m  just surprised and pleased that in 12 yrs of old car ownership I seem to have actually learned something useful!

[N Dentressangle]

OK, off to the other end of the fuel system next.

There's an in-tank fuel pump (doesn't do much and replaced by a gauze on later models) and the high pressure pump. All this set up was very shonky and dangerous, even by my standards:

That's the HP pump just hanging there. It fell out of its mountings because theyre knackered, and would only start after a tap with a hammer. New mountings ordered.

The PO had had an FTP with the car because of a ruptured high pressure hose from the pump to the accumulator, so the AA mechanic had rigged a jubilee clipped workaround. It had caught on the axle and begun to leak, plus it's really not ideal for a hose that's carrying 90-100psi of petrol. The connections to the pump were loose, with the possibility of sparks... 🔥🚒☠️

I used the dying minutes of the old HP pump to transfer the 10 gallons or so 🙄 of fuel into the BINI, as it tolerates crappy E10 fuel:

The replacement HP hose is waiting on the crawler, and I've ordered a new HP pump (not too bad at £55) which should get here Wednesday. When it arrives I'll get everything else cleaned up, replace all the rotten bobbin mountings and reduce the potential for nasty explosions.

[N Dentressangle]

Time to move to the other end of the car and sort a job there then. How about the leaking radiator?

Here's the patient:

Billy the Bodger has visited in the past, so I'll be sorting things out back to standard as I go. Like the expansion tank being wonky because some of its mountings and bolts are missing 🙄

Ended up using the grinder on the two lower mounting bolts because they were seized into their nuts, but otherwise an easy job. Here's the tired old rad, upside down to show the rust and coolant staining at the bottom of it:

A quick Google of new 924 rad prices will reveal why I was happy to pick this good used one up for £100ish a week or so ago:

Not perfect, but it doesn't leak and I'll clean it up before fitting.

[N Dentressangle]

Rubbed down and put some rust converter on the 'new' rad so it'll be ready for a coat of paint.

Filled the expansion tank up with citric acid mixture to get rid of the rusty insides:

Then set to on the thermostat. It was running cold on the way home, so obviously needed looking at. I was kind of suspecting not to find a thermostat at all, and that someone had deleted it for the usual bad reasons.

Before I got to that though, the housing had to come off. I had a bad feeling about this, so approached the bolts VERY carefully. First one came out OK, but #2 took only a very small amount of pressure with a small ring spanner before this happened:

Bugger. Well, at least there's a bit of a stub to work on. I gave it plenty of heat first off, shielding the fuel system with a plumber's asbestos mat. Some WD40 and gentle use of Mole grips and we had this:

Phew. Bullet dodged.

But what about the thermostat? Well, I think I found the problem:

Yeah, that'd do it 🤣

[N Dentressangle]

Quick question: do we think this super-cheap fuel pump will fit? Ebay think it will:

https://ebay.us/m/9meXxE

[Surface Rust]

1 hour ago, N Dentressangle said:

Quick question: do we think this super-cheap fuel pump will fit? Ebay think it will:

https://ebay.us/m/9meXxE

Probably would work, but what about this one, someone is actually happy to put their name on it!

https://ebay.us/m/mDOirX

 

[MrBig]

The Bosch number seems to be catalogued for the 944/968 but I can't see a listing for it for the 924.

Just a had quick look through the Porsche Classic Catalogue. I think you need 911 608 102 03 / 0 580 464 203

Not looked at the specs, they might basically be interchangeable, just going on the correct Porsche number for your car. HTH.