Porsche Drive, Run & Ride!
I am a fanatical Porsche enthusiast. I love all things Porsche. This has led me to explore the depths of the automobile brand including some of the least known items the marque is known for. My latest journey - Porsche bicycles and running! When I was 11 years old, I fell in love with Porsche cars. Delivering the morning newspaper on my Schwinn ten-speed bike brought me face to bumper with a white 911T each morning and from there I was hooked. Some of my more prized Porsche possessions are my three Porsche bicycles. Yes, three. One is a 100% original 1996 Bike S. The other is a heavily modified 1998 Bike S I use for road and mountain riding. And the latest is a touring-style 2004 Porsche Bike X that I turned into a road bike. I have ridden these three bikes over 4,000 miles in the last two and a half years. In 2016, I rode many training miles in preparation for a 53-mile ride in the California Sierra foothills, a 72-mile ride around Lake Tahoe and the grand finale ride of 100 miles at the Sacramento Century. And this blog shared every mile! 2016 and 2017 were great years of riding. What could possibly follow that? My latest goal is to add running into the mix of Porsche bike riding. I bought a special pair of shoes for this effort - Porsche Design Endurance Boost running shoes.
Take a pen and mark the the edge of front and rear windows. Slide the template down along the gap to check consistency of the gap. Once you have the measurement, you can notch the template so that you have a simple "tool" to check the gap. More on that later. You need to remove the roof trim moulding that runs from the windshield back to the rear window. This is a single piece. 1. Pull rubber door seal from the areas indicated in the next picture. The rubber seal comes away from the frame very easily -- no adhesives or anything to worry about. You need to pull it down and out of the way, and completely off if you want to protect it. 2. Get a Torx tool with T-20 tip. Along the front section of the moulding that you just exposed by pulling the rubber door gasket down there are 8 small clamps that you need to turn 90 degrees to release the moulding.
Small plastic fasteners are easy to break -- gently turn them 90 degrees. After pulling rubber door gasket down, the moulding fasteners are along edge inside the gap. There are a total of 8 small plastic fasteners for just the front section of moulding. The moulding is stiff. 4. At the rear section of the trim, there are (3) three larger clamps. You need to release these to get the trim fully removed. They are like hangar-clips that the trim piece snaps down onto. Starting at the B-pillar, begin pulling the trim free of the clamps, at the same time sliding it forwards, away from the joint where the upper trim connects to the lower part. Circled the joint in the trim where front section separates from trim fixed to window. Be careful with the trim piece as you pull it away from the car entirely, as it is somewhat flimsy.
Find a safe, soft place to put it, and perhaps even cover it with a nice comfy blanket or something! The B-pillar interior trim panel must be removed to access the release / alignment bolts. 2. Pull the belt collar trim (the small plastic part with a slot where the belt disappears into the trim) away from the B-pillar trim. The belt "collar" comes off easily and you can slide it down to the floor out of the way. 3. Pulling from top and bottom (interior trim tools work best), pop the B-pillar trim / cover away from the pillar. There are 3 small pins that snap into the pillar - one at the top and two at the bottom. But in the middle, just above the opening for the belt collar, there is a clamp that must be released by poking it from "inside" the B-pillar. Porsche has a special tool for this, which is just a handle with a metal shaft bent at the end. I found a picture of the tool shown above.
4. With the clamp released, you can now pull the B-pillar trim away, and if you haven't released the seat belt, just let it slide down out of the way. Before we move on, just a few comments. First, if you've made it this far without breaking anything, you are doing awesome! The clips/clamps and moulding are fragile, and you might break them. But just keep in mind that the hardest part is now out of the way! You may also want to consider removing the C-pillar and rear side trim panel (directly below the window) but they are not mandatory. With the moulding and trim removal out of the way, you can now focus on removing the rear window assembly. There are only two (2) fasteners actually holding the window in place -- the rest are just guide tabs! 3. At the same time you are pulling the window towards you away from the car body, note there are a few guide pins (top / bottom of assembly). As you clear the pins from the body, begin carefully pulling the entire window assembly towards the front of the car.