I certainly learned a lot working on this car and would encourage you to buy one and restore it.

So I bought new cylinders and put them in. The slave was no problem other than having to pull the starter again. The master was another story. the tiny bolts holding it on were a royal pain to get to, much less get on and off. Then you have to bleed everything again, including the brakes, which are on the same hydraulic system.

This time I decided to bleed the clutch the old fashioned way, with someone pumping the pedal while I was under the car working the bleed screw on the slave cylinder.

Put everything back together and did a road test and everything seemed happy.

That’s our cat, Ross Perot, in the lower left.

Still have to figure out where the extra vibration is coming from.

The big part labelled 3 is the arm in question. This is from a document titled 924S_USA_KATALOG.pdf.

Unfortunately you can’t see the opposite side bolt hole, which is the one in question. But I’m still pretty certain it is broken. Now I have to track down a replacement…

So when I was under the car to bleed the brakes I took a look at the exhaust side motor mount. I thought maybe a bolt could have worked loose and need tightening.

Here is what I found:

I suspect that slice shouldn’t be gone from the motor arm support, but I am posting it on 924board.org to see if they agree.

Using this blue fluid has the advantage that when flushing out the old crap it will be perfectly clear when the new fluid is in the line, because the old fluid is dirty brown.

To flush the system is pretty straightforward. In my case it meant putting all 4 wheels up on jack stands to be able to get to the bleeder valves easily.

First I used a turkey baster (long pipette with a bulb) to siphon out excess brake fluid from the reservoir. Then I refilled with the new blue fluid.

The order I went in to drain from each bleeder valve was right (passenger) rear, left rear, right front, left front. I bought a MityVac MV8000 pressure bleeder system for about $39 so I could do this by myself. It is a hand pump with a reservoir and some tubing that connects to the bleeder screw. Instead of having to have a second person to pump the brakes to push fluid through the lines, this thing simply sucks it out. It worked pretty well for this application. (The photo below is from their web site.)

This job is moderately messy because the brake fluid gets on your hands, and you have to be careful not to get any on the car’s paint or it will eat right through it.

It didn’t take too long to bleed all 4 brakes. You basically siphon out fluid until it turns blue, when you know you have pulled all the bad old fluid out of that line. After each one you have to refill the master cylinder reservoir to make sure the fluid does not get too low and lets air bubbles into the system. If that happens you are starting all over.

The 924’s clutch cylinder is also connected to the same reservoir and uses the same brake fluid, so it really needed to be flushed also. The trouble with this is the bleed screw sits above the starter motor and there is almost no way to get to it without removing the starter.

Fortunately removing the starter is very easy except for the usual stuck bolts. A few squirts of my handy Kroil penetrating oil and the handy breaker bar did the job. The starter is held on by two longish 19mm bolts. It’s also important to disconnect the battery! Because you have to remove the three electrical leads going to the starter.

Here’s a fuzzy picture of the starter after removal.

With the starter out it is pretty easy to get to the bleed screw. It is wedged up against a bulkhead making it a little more challenging to get the hose fitting on there. From the looks of the rusty screw (which also required some penetrating oil) this thing had never been opened or serviced before.

Indeed once I started draining out the old fluid, I’m sure it had never been flushed from this exit point. The old fluid was very very dark brown and dirty looking. I had to drain at least two times the amount of old fluid out as from the brakes before I could see the dark blue new fluid flowing through.

I’m really glad I did the job right and didn’t skip the step of draining the clutch cylinder because it badly needed the attention.

Once that was done all that was left was to reconnect the starter and the battery, take it down off the jack stands, and fire it up. Then very gingerly test the brakes and the clutch to make sure nothing had gone wrong. Then it’s off around the block to make sure things are functioning as they should.

Also the Wagner pads have never stopped squealing, which makes me unhappy when I step on the brakes.

So I have been wanting to replace the front rotors and pads for months but since it wasn’t a necessity I have put it off.

A friend recommended some EBC Green Stuff pads before I did the job the first time but I didn’t try them, so I resolved to use them this time. They aren’t as easy to find as you might think, at least from the normal Porsche parts houses I tend to use. But I found a set of 4 for the fronts for about $100. The EBC part number is EBC-DP2345, and I got them from Summit Racing.

EBC makes three grades of brake pads, “Green Stuff” nominally for performance sedans, a “Yellow Stuff” for performance street cars and a “Red Stuff” for track use (if I remember that correctly).

They are organic material pads that are not supposed to squeak or squeal after the bedding-in period. We’ll see.

I attempted to order some Brembo rotors as replacement for the Zimmerman’s I originally installed. These weren’t available at my normal parts sources but I found some online for a good price, about $50 each, and ordered them. The web site said they were in stock.

Then a couple of days later I got a call saying gee we’re sorry but they are not in stock after all and we are issuing a refund. Bah.

So I found the same rotors at another parts depot and called them. Asked them to check and make sure they were really in stock, and they said yes, no worries. So I ordered them.

A couple of days later I got a phone call saying gee we’re sorry but they are not in stock after all and we are issuing a refund.

At this point I was pretty ticked, but it was obvious these Brembo’s didn’t really exist. So I ordered some of the Zimmerman’s from Pelican Parts and did in fact get those. These are the same vented rotors I got several months ago with an anti-corrosion coating.

So finally I have all the parts I need and was ready to begin. You should work on one wheel at a time so I started with the passenger side. Loosen the lug nuts, jack up the front end and place on jack stands. Then remove the wheel.

Here is a picture of the old pads, rotor and especially the 23-year old clips, slider pins and spring.

A few weeks ago I knew I was going to eventually change the brakes again so I started looking for new hardware to replace the pins, clips and spring since the current set are very probably the originals that came with the car.

This was harder to find than you might think. I ended up getting the front hardware kit from Pelican Parts, which I have ordered from before and liked.  They did not have a rear hardware kit, but I found that at AutoHausAZ for $58.92.

Below are pictures of the front kit.

So with the new hardware, pads and rotors I was able to get them all replaced in fairly short order. The experiences learned from the first go around with brakes several months ago were revisited to avoid the same mistakes, especially about how to use a star pattern to tighten the hub to rotor bolts and the correct torques to use.

Below is a picture of the new pads, rotor and hardware for the passenger side. The rotor looks rough because I have sprayed it with brake cleaner and wiped, which took off some of the anti-corrosion coating. This comes off the first time you use the brakes anyway, so no big deal.

Almost forgot to mention that I’m trying a new compound for brake quieting, Loctite Disc Brake Quiet. It comes in a package like a glue stick and is sort of a waxy paste. I hope this helps.

After receiving the kit I found a couple of spots on the driver’s side front fender I wanted to try. I can report very positive results using this kit on stone chip type problems. You put a dab of paint on the target spot and immediately wipe it smooth with a nitrile-gloved finger. Then you wait a few minutes and apply some of their special chemical to a cotton cloth and gently wipe the area.

What happens is that the excess paint outside the chipped area gets cleaned off, leaving the new paint in the chipped area intact. The results are actually pretty good. If you look closely you can still see the paint isn’t smooth, there is still the chipped-out area. But unless you are really looking for it you can’t see it.

I cleaned up probably at least a dozen spots with the kit and it worked very well.

What the kit doesn’t do very well is fix up scratches. It can help to a degree but isn’t nearly as good a result as with chips. I think this is because the chipped areas give a depression in the finish that their chemical cleaner doesn’t easily remove, whereas a scratched area is not as deep and the cleaner takes off too much of the touch up paint you just applied.

I went over a scratch about 3 times and it definitely looks better than it did.

I can recommend this system without hesitation.

I have an Android phone, a Motorola Droid, which also has a GPS with Google Maps built-in, as well as a decent music player. If I could create a mount for the phone, I could use it to play music, and if someone calls I could tap one button to answer and another to use the built-in speaker for hands-free ops. Not to mention using it as a navigation tool.

So I cut a new piece of 1” PVC to prep for the mount. I also bought on eBay a car mount specifically for the Droid. This mount would have to be taller to put the phone up a little higher, mostly because the phone itself is taller than the iPod, and the way the mount sits the bottom of the phone would have to sit on or above the top of the center console.

I then epoxied the phone clip onto the PVC. I did this like previous mounts, making it straight up and down inline with the PVC pipe. But when I mounted the unit to test the phone was tilted to the right and looked goofy.

So I had to chip the epoxy off and break the phone mount free of the PVC so I could re-mount it at an angle and try again, and this time it came up roses.

But the bottom clip that attaches to the carpet on the center console was so stressed with the extra weight of the phone it broke off the PVC pipe, where it was held on with epoxy. I had to drill two holes through the PVC and also into the binder clip and attach the clip with screws and nuts to the pipe. Now it was on there to stay.

The next problem was that the mount with the phone was so top-heavy it wanted to simply flip down from the position it needed to be in. The solution here was to use a smaller binder clip and thread a zip tie through its loops. Then drilled two holes in the PVC to thread the zip tie to secure it. Then this small clip is clipped to the edge of the dash cap where no one can see it. This keeps it upright and secure.

This may seem like a lot of bother but it’s pretty easy to make, it just takes some time and experimentation. It’s satisfying to make your world work just a little better every now and then.

The end result can be seen in the picture below.