My replacement clutch cable arrived in the mail yesterday1 so I spent nearly all day pulling out and replacing the clutch cable, accelerator cable, and all of the bushings in the shifter linkage. This is the clutch cable that I removed from the car. Of the four big strands of...
The interesting thing about a stretching clutch cable is that as it stretches, it becomes increasingly difficult to shift, as the clutch is dragging on the driven side of the transmission. This is fine when it stretches slowly and can be adjusted back into position at the end of the...
In celebration of the first day driving the Porsche without a dragging clutch, here is a photo of the clutch assembly, found right around where the passenger-side axle bolts into the transmission. For those of you who don't follow the minutiae of the 914, that's all under the trunk. This...
Apparently a mechanic who serviced the 914 long ago thought that a nylon-backed nut would be a sufficient means of securing the adjustment of the clutch on the threaded end of the clutch cable. Wrong. So to fix this, I had to search all over the eastern Puget Sound to...
I'll spare you the story of how I figured this out: I had an additional vacuum leak and a maladjusted idle on the 914. The two were counteracting each other. When I fixed the leak, the idle made the car run like crap. More Jenga complimentary failure modes....
Raven recommended I just tuck the sensor pigtail inside a deep-well socket instead of working around it in solving my sensor removal conundrum, but apparently deep-well sockets in his part of the world are deeper than they are here. I couldn't get the line folded into the socket at all...
Old automobiles are wonderful things. Among the grime and rust are decades-old examples of engineering and craftsmanship, and even though they've got a gizillion little parts, odds are pretty good that nearly everything on the car still largely functions, to some degree. Sure, the window regulators may be a little...
I'm pleased the plates finally came in. And yes, the state of Washington issues vanity plates without raised letters. They're simply printed on the blank....
One of the items I should probably replace in getting the 914 running again is a small temperature sensor wired into the cylinder head. Said sensor has a ~6" pigtail connector hanging off of it, much like an O2 sensor. The thing is that even if I had a slotted...
At least it's not a 1980s Subaru. In actuality, it's actually pretty damned sparse in there. But, I'm annoyed that I couldn't find anyone local who carried 12mm ID hose so I could clean up those big lines that should be connected to the currently-removed air cleaner housing....
After all, where the hell else could you find an 8" radiator hose pick for $2.99? And one with colored plastic in the shape of a spork on the side, to boot? I ran across this earlier today at the local Harbor Freight while looking for a timing light to...
While refreshing some components of the electrical system earlier, I apparently neglected to firmly seat all of the spark plug wires fully into the distributor cap. The net effect was that the engine ran a little rough and died once or twice while driving around. One of these times I...
Even though the engine on the Porsche is covered by a mere sliver of a hood, it's actually pretty easy to work on. The flat engine layout makes it really easy to get at practically everything on top of the cylinders, and the low and long trunk does wonders for...
Part of my office move involves taking home a bunch of crap that I'd rather not have the moving people mess with. So, laptop, poster, and a smallish box full of framed stuff. The box and the poster filled most of the front trunk. The laptop bag filled at least...
The 914 has a set of 165/??R15s mounted on it. Probably 70- or 75-series, since the tread is so narrow. The thing is that with so little weight (2200lbs ... dry?) and so little power (~95hp) I've only really spun a wheel once. Even when pushing the lateral traction to...
I mentioned earlier that I keep running across the same sets of broken items on old cars. This weekend's project involved fixing the door latches on the 914. The excitement involved:Ripping apart both door cards twice. Clearly I missed the part about reassembling them properly the first time. Removing and...
If you paid really close attention to the pedal post two weeks ago (closer than I, certainly), you would have noticed the placement of the fuse panel inside the 914. As you can see in the photo above, it's positioned just below the dash to the left of the wheel....
Today is the first day I've been home during daylight in a while. So, pictures I'm not too hot on the rocker panels. Everything else rules....
...right where it belongs....
Manuel had his Miata over the other day and happened to park it next to the 914. What's surprising is that they're almost identically sized. At least, they are according to my eyeballs and Wikipedia. So that's practically no guarantee at all....
This is weird. The Porsche has some weird combination of the problems of the last two old cars I bought. Here's what was wrong with the truck:The brake lights didn't work It had a burnt-out headlamp Here's what was wrong with the Mercedes:The door latch was busted The antenna was...
Having one brakelamp inexplicably come on while repairing my brake lamp switch led me to the conclusion that I either royally screwed something up, or had a huge wiring disaster awaiting me under the dash board. As you can see in the photo, the right tail lamp is sitting there...
The Porsche has pedals mounted to the floor, which stick upward into the passenger compartment. This is neither new nor novel—the VW bug I baja'd in college had the same arrangement. What is new and dumb is that the Porsche engineers put this weird floorboard between the pedal assembly and...
Yesterday I fixed my headlights but today my hood ceased to open reliably. I actually expect it's a gummed-up release mechanism....
The headlights on the 914 were in terrible shape when I got it. Two days ago. The driver's side headlamp didn't work at all (turns out a fuse was missing?) but even with the fuse replaced, I figured I should replace the big sealed beam units anyway since they were...
4-cylinder Porsche 914s all featured 901 transmissions from the factory. The interesting thing about the 901 in the 914 is that it's got a dog-leg shift pattern, meaning that reverse is where 1st is on most transmissions, and 1st is where 2nd usually is (and so forth). You can see...
Lightweight and mid-engined (Porsche 914 2.0)...
