1987 3.2 Carrera Backdate project - Sladeys hotrod

[sladey]

Interesting.
Will you do a bump steer check or relay on the old position of the track rod ends?

I've just installed them as they were supplied - these looked pretty similar to the position of the existing arms to be honest. In any event it is booked into Centre Gravity on Monday the 18th May so they will no doubt correct it if it's wrong

[911hillclimber]

Ok, they certainly will dial the lot in to good effect!
Will be good to read your thoughts on them.

[sladey]

This will be probably the 5th or 6th time I’ve used them. They are expensive but you always feel like you are getting good value for money as they are obsessive about getting everything right


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[jtparr]

Mark

…..top marks….this is clearly not straightforward…and we all have a date in a couple of weeks which puts the pressure on….brilliant effort….looking forward to hearing all the details on the ferry soon….

[sladey]

Thanks JP - hoping to make good progress this weekend

[sladey]

OK so work started early on Saturday morning as I wanted to make sure I’d got everything together by Monday night.

Before I went on to install the second front strut I thought I’d pop a wheel on there and check all was good - after all this is a completely new strut setup.

I popped the wheel on and gave it a spin. Not good! There was a grinding sound as the wheel turned. I immediately assumed I’d messed up assembling the hubs, but also couldn’t understand how I could have done that.

I raised it on the lift and saw that nothing was binding on the wheel

I took the wheel off and had a good look around. There’s that stud sticking out of the caliper towards the disc. The gap between it and the disc looks quite large doesn’t it?


Here’s the other side - bit darker so harder to see but if you look carefully you can see that on this side it’s actually touching the disc


So I’ve got Boxster front calipers fitted with the aid of conversion brackets. I’ve gone to these swanky new ones so I checked that they were the same size as my old ones - identical. I measured the gap on the non-touching side and it was about 3mm. The bracket just needed to be spaced back by 1.5mm and all should be good.

I looked around and found some washers that were 2mm thick but M8 - so I drilled them out to M12 and tried them. It almost did the trick but one side was a bit tight to get the brake pads in. Also the drilled out washers looked a bit rough

Looked on amazon and found a pack of M12 washers that were 1.5mm thick. Perfect! Ordered them and started fitting the other front shock.

this was the photo I forgot to take on the other side of compressing the shock

It didn’t need to compress it much and this worked a treat.

For some reason on this side I had a lot of trouble getting the strut onto the ball joint - it wouldn’t seem to go onto the stud far enough for me to get the pin in to hold it. After a cup of coffee and some chocolate I tried again and it went on easily. I think I hadn’t got it quite lined up properly - don’t know if the hole is slightly oval or something. Anyway this side all went together well.



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[sladey]

Next I needed to get the signal wire from the strut into the body. The wire is used to send the signal that it needs to stiffen or loosen that damper.

Now about 20 years ago when I fitted the boxster calipers, I stopped using the factory brake wear indicators. I tied back the cable so it was out of the way and thought nothing more about it.

The route this cable takes seem ideal for the signal cable. Here I’ve unwound the cable and pulled through the rubber grommet


The grommet looks really good

And I wanted to re-use it but in the end the hole was just to small to get the wire through - there is a plug on the end that needs to go through and I didn’t want to put it under any strain.

Eventually i found what I needed in this box of delights


Punched a hole through one of these Grommets and all sorted.

Very happy with that.

Did the same on the other side, which was a bit more fiddly as you’re coming through behind the battery - but i got there in the end.

Here’s the other end of the wire in the frunk



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[sladey]

Then I had to work out how I was going to get the wire from the interior of the car through to the frunk. This’ll be easy I thought - there’ll be loads of existing holes.

Well there were a few holes but they are all being used.

I spent ages trying to find a route through - frequently lying on my back looking up at blocked holes and then banging my hard on the steering column on the way out. It was not a joyful process.

Eventually I gave in and decided to drill a new hole
The blue is the masking tape applied underneath before painting the bare metal around the hole edge.

I popped a grommet in and the wires for both sides came into the frunk and I was able to connect them up. In the frunk they are just held down by some tape at the moment which doesn’t look great but a cover/carpet for this area is on the cards so that should tidy it up.

Then I had to do the same at the rear. Pulled out the rear parcel shelf and ran the cables up to the middle. Drilled a fresh hole through the middle of the rear bulkhead and the wires popped through and connected up. Glued all the carpets back down and it all looks pretty neat.

Next was the electrical side of things - never a strong point of mine. However there were 3 electrical cables coming. Off the unit and were clearly labelled battery, ignition, and ground. Now just the other side of the centre tunnel I had all 3 of these as I’d needed the same for the amp I fitted some years ago.

So, carpets up, wires routed and I connected each one into the amp’s connections

I was pleased with that.

Then it was the moment of truth - powering the car up and seeing what happened. I’d had the battery on charge all night to make sure it had enough juice.

Turned the key and after a few seconds I got



The screen came on! I was over the moon and did my happy dance all round the barn.

After that it was a matter of putting everything back together


Putting the dash panels back in



Before going out for a test drive I fitted the orange bar badge i bought recently - seen here alongside the cheap rep I bought 15 odd years ago



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[sladey]

Next it was time for a test drive. I just need it to be drivable so I can get it down to Center Gravity on the 18th.

I was a bit concerned about my toe-in (out)


And

Both of those shots were taken with the steering wheel pointing straight ahead!

So, first drive.

It was hard initially to judge what the dampers were doing as the toe-out was so back - I was getting squealing on every corner as the inner wheel was being dragged sideways!

I didn’t want to go through all the proper adjustment malarkey but I knew it was massively out so I came back, clamped the steering wheel straight and wound the passenger side rod end out 5 full turns.

Then out again. Miraculously the steering felt pretty good. However I couldn’t focus on that as now the tractiv screen wasn’t coming on. I assumed I’d somehow managed to blow a fuse or something. I was literally getting no damping at all - it was like riding along on a bouncy castle.

I pulled back into the drive and stopped the car outside the barn to put some wood against the step (it was grinding the gearbox/engine on the step as I’d backed out).

When I started the car up again the tractiv screen came on fine! The adjustment knob was loose so I tightened that.

Went out for another test drive. The car is still way too low - a bit gangsta


I drove out through the village which has really bad roads and it handled those really well. As I got onto windy roads I was able to play with the settings a bit

You’ve got 5 presets which you can customise but they come out of the factory with settings already applied so I had a go at changing them and seeing the difference.

It was pretty impressive. With settings already applied 1 chosen I could feel it moving about in corners - fairly normally really - not excessive.

When I turned it up to 5 it felt really really sure-footed. It was just going round the corners with very little roll. Now all the suspension settings are out and I don’t know how the tractive has actually been set up but this was a promising start


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[sladey]

The next night I thought I’d have a go at adjusting that rear Gangsta ride height.

this is really easy to do

With it up in the air there is one grub screw on each shock. Surprisingly they were both loose! Good job I’d checked it before driving down to centre gravity. After finding them loose I checked the fronts but they were tight.

Anyway I reckoned it needed to go up by 20-25mm at the rear and maybe a bit at the front too. I measured the threads and they seemed to be about 1.25mm each.

I wound it up 15 turns. this was really easy and I was able to do it by hand. Tightened up the grub screws and went out for another test drive.

For the limited drive I went on it was feeling really good - changing modes made a clear difference to how it drove. I’m looking forward to driving it in anger once all the suspension is set up properly and I’ll then be able to give proper feedback.


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[Ian Comerford]

Great work Mark, it will be interesting to hear what is is like after set up at CG. I assume that in all of your excitement you didn’t miss the split boot on your cv joint…….

[rhd racer]

Great work Mark


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[sladey]

Great work Mark, it will be interesting to hear what is is like after set up at CG. I assume that in all of your excitement you didn’t miss the split boot on your cv joint…….

Yes I know about that but it’s one for the summer - not got time to sort it before the next trip. I might cable tie an adjustable one around it for this trip


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[yoda]

Very nice work!

[sladey]

Thanks Feroz, I’m excited about the effect on the handling