As you may remember, Edvin al-Helsinki-i bought a 911 last year. He has shared some pictures and background of some recent work. Did a bit of preventive maintenance on the car. The car came with a one year warranty on the engine and drivetrain when I bought it. Since that was almost a year ago, I decided to tackle the infamous IMS (Intermediate shaft, if the bearing goes, then so does your engine) issue just for continued peace of mind. It made sense to also renew the clutch simultaneously. It also made sense to deal with the RMS (crankshaft Rear Main Seal) while I鈥檓 at it. Also, since I鈥檝e already renewed my engine mounts and replacing the transmission mount requires dropping the transmission from the car, now was a good time to do that as well. While waiting for some parts to arrive I also removed the Aerokit side skirts that had been retrofitted to my car. I prefer the cleaner original look.
Pics to come later as I get the proper OEM plastic bits to cover the holes left by the side skirts. I didn鈥檛 have access to a garage with a lift, so I chose to jack the car up on stands and crawl under the car, which wasn鈥檛 too bad really. I had intended to document the job better, but once I started working I was too impatient to constantly be removing my gloves to take pics. Removing the transmission was fairly straightforward and now that I鈥檝e done it once I could probably do it in a third of the time spent. Anyway, here are a few pics of the procedure. New clutch kit and clutch fork. Pelican Parts IMS upgrade kit. The new bearing has been assembled in the installation tool (the cylinder on the left). The transmission has descended. Old clutch in the car. Old clutch fork mechanism. New and improved clutch fork design.
Dual Mass Flywheel. Luckily this one was still in perfect shape. No scoring worth mentioning and it did not move more than the intended 15mm in both directions. I鈥檓 happy I didn鈥檛 have to replace it. Removing the flywheel revealed a surprisingly tidy sight. All the pics I had seen so far had the RMS leaking very badly, whereas mine was still in perfect nick. Old clutch assembly. These were actually still had some life left in them and didn鈥檛 really need replacing, but I did it anyway seeing as I had the parts. New IMS bearing installed. Old transmission mount. Not completely destroyed, but has noticeable cracks in the rubber. I鈥檝e heard that Porsche recommends all rubber bushings to be replaced every 6 years despite whether they look perished or not, because the dampening properties of the rubber has decreased noticeably at that point. Pressing out the old rubber mount. We had to fabricate a special tool for this job.
Not the prettiest one, but it worked. New bushing going in. If you鈥檙e gonna do this job, don鈥檛 forget to run the shift cables between the body and rear transmission mounting. NOT like in this picture, because then you鈥檙e gonna have to lower the transmission again. The clutch slave cylinder had been assembled incorrectly by the previous mechanic, which caused it to disassemble when I removed it from the car. This gave me the opportunity to overhaul the cylinder and bleed the clutch. Correctly assembled and cleaned cylinder in the pic. Was it worth it? Yes. The main point in this undertaking was to deal with the IMS issue. Peace of mind has been restored and the car will be easier to sell when the time comes (not any time soon, I think). To be honest the new clutch parts haven鈥檛 made much of a noticeable difference in clutch feel, but increased reliability is the keyword here too. The transmission mount had a noticeable positive effect, not huge, but clearly better. Now it鈥檚 just like the factory intended. So that鈥檚 a few big things ticked off the shrinking to-do-list. Next up, a set of new tyres, at least for the rear. And maybe a few refurbished control arms.