13Mar2012
Boxster Repair
Had this Boxster come in this afternoon for a mechanical top failure. Pretty common in the early boxsters, as the transmission and/or cables will fail, causing the top to not raise correctly or evenly. If you force it, you can cause serious damage to the mounting points of the top. It also had a check engine light and the low washer fluid light was on even though it was full. Curses….mice! To the right of the white tag you can …
13Mar2012
SLK PPI
Had this little 22k mile gem come in the other day for a quick pre purchase inspection. ok, this camera thing is going to drive me insane. Have another drink. Lin, add something to your coffee. One thing we noticed right away was the front corner had some paint work done. Nothing too bad, but you could see there was light damage at some point. We were so busy concentrating on the front corner, we almost skipped the rest of …
13Mar2012
Boxster Spark Plugs, Drive Belt
Had this little Boxster come in the other day to finish it’s 60k service which required changing the spark plugs and the accessory drive belt. Pretty straight forward repair. Opening the front up to get to the belt. Oil change with the obligatory magnetic drain plug installed. This will help us monitor the intermediate shaft bearing for debris. Pretty common issue with the 996/986/997/987 are the coilpack connector clip becoming brittle and breaking off. This one had a broken clip …
13Mar2012
944 S2 Work Finished
I last left this car waiting for a new oil pickup tube before being able to button it back together. The new one arrived and looked just like I expected it to…..together. New one came in from Porsche and I was able to start reassembly. The old one. A little hard to see, but the base is partially separated. Everything back together and nice and clean!
13Mar2012
911 SC No Start
Had this little 911SC come in on Saturday via Tommy the tow truck. Poor little guy wouldn’t start 🙁 So yesterday we got it on the rack and quickly found out the fuel pump was on it’s way out. It was creating so much resistance that it was blowing the fuse. When we go through a fuel system like this with a new pump, we also replace the accumulator and the fuel filter as they are common failure items. Getting …
13Mar2012
Blog Updates.
Ok, we have been so dang busy lately that I have been neglecting the blog. What use to be daily updates has turned into weekly ones. A good and bad problem to have I suppose. We have been making slow changes to the website (thanks Russ and Josen!), and hope to have a mobile theme up soon so the 1%ers can view the blog and website with their ipads 🙂 We also got our new logo designed and we are …
07Mar2012
944 S2 Rod Bearing Service
This little marshmellow came in today for preventative rod bearing maintenance. At about 140k miles on the clock, it is good idea to replace those bearings. The 944 series is prone to spun bearings which will wipe out the engine, so a little preventative maintenance goes a long way. Engine support bar back in action. The poor thing has been neglected for awhile and so we need to clean up some of these oil leaks while we are in there. …
07Mar2012
Mazda 3 Engine Mount
Had the little Mazda back in the other day for an engine mount replacement. Pretty common failure on this car, the passenger mount falls apart and causes vibration at idle. The dealer quoted over $400 for this repair! The part was about 125 bucks, and a half hour of labor only! Not sure how you get $400 out of that. Didn’t even need a lift….or jackstands…..or a jack. There it is bolted to the frame. 4 bolts. The coolant tank …
07Mar2012
951 SP3 work progresses
Last week we finally got some time to finish cutting and welding the roll bar in the 951. I didn’t get pictures, but we got it primed, painted, and most of the interior carpet back in.
07Mar2012
Suburban Knock Sensor
Did a little work on this Suburban the other day. It came in with a knock sensor code and a lean bank 2 code. The motors are prone to having water get into the rear knock sensor cavity and kill the sensor. I figured this probably was causing the lean code as well (turns out that is something else, likely a small vacuum leak somewhere). The old 5.3L v8. Top cover removed. The intake needs to be lifted up enough …