The Resurrection of Foam Car - 63 T6B

[merbesfield]

How long will it take at Vic's shop?

[Phil Planck]

Sorry Mark. I don't understand your question.
The transaxle is back in my shop. Took 2 hours in Vic's shop yesterday to set pinion depth, preload, and check backlash. I hope to be able to install the new(used) carrier in my shop by sending my current spacers back to Vic if I need different ones.

Phil

[merbesfield]

Sorry Mark. I don't understand your question.
The transaxle is back in my shop. Took 2 hours in Vic's shop yesterday to set pinion depth, preload, and check backlash. I hope to be able to install the new(used) carrier in my shop by sending my current spacers back to Vic if I need different ones.

Phil

I was confused. I thought Vic was rebuilding it. I am debating whether or not to send him mine for a looksie before running it or just carry on and hope it is good. If not pull it out then. I was wondering how backed up he was?

[Phil Planck]

Mark
I think Vic said he had 4 trans in the shop. He is up to over 800 rebuilds. My transaxle seemed okay when I last drove Foamcar, and all I was going to do was check the ring gear bolts and replace with stronger ones if needed. But when I found that someone had been in there and did not assemble correctly I decided to take it to Vic to check the critical differential dimensions, which were not correct. He also discovered the crack in the carrier, which as I understand is pretty common. I am not doing a rebuild, as other parts would be replaced by Vic if you sent it to him for a rebuild. He said he would replace my bevel gears if he were doing a rebuild, for example.

[merbesfield]

Mark
I think Vic said he had 4 trans in the shop. He is up to over 800 rebuilds. My transaxle seemed okay when I last drove Foamcar, and all I was going to do was check the ring gear bolts and replace with stronger ones if needed. But when I found that someone had been in there and did not assemble correctly I decided to take it to Vic to check the critical differential dimensions, which were not correct. He also discovered the crack in the carrier, which as I understand is pretty common. I am not doing a rebuild, as other parts would be replaced by Vic if you sent it to him for a rebuild. He said he would replace my bevel gears if he were doing a rebuild, for example.

I think I am going to hope for the best but I'm sure it's not the smartest decision, but more based on budget concerns at this time. Who knows, by the time I actually get ready, it could be another story or another two years. Tho I hope not!

[Phil Planck]

The good news: I found the throttle bell crank. It was downhill from there. I had new bushings but could not get the old ones out. So I just drove them in further into the tube and installed the new bushings. As with the throwout bearing cross shaft bushings, they were too tight. The shaft is also very worn in the bushing areas. Rather than trying to hone/ream out the bushings I mounted the shaft in the drill press and used coarse emery paper to "turn" them down about .004". But, the shaft is not straight and will not go into the




second bushing. Tried to true it with no luck. Will order a new shaft.
The throttle rod attachment is very worn, so will order a repair kit and replace it and the ball end:





Am also trying to rig up a backlash gauge. Turns out there is a bearing race installer that is almost a perfect fit into the ends of the differential. I was able to borrow 2 at local old time auto parts shop to see if they fit. They did, so found two replacement parts and ordered. Bought an 8" bolt to lock the two parts together, but it is too short. Returned it today for a 10" bolt. Also bought a used, pretty high quality micro dial indicator on Ebay with a .25 inch stroke. Will make a bracket to attach to the 10" bolt and the indicator. This will be similar to the one Vic Skirmants made. That way, when I get the uncracked carrier I can set the backlash without taking the tranny on another 7 hour drive.

[bbspdstr]

Phil, I'm impressed. I had the tools (all) and still had trouble. Trying to balance too many balls in the air all the time with full restorations, I gave up on trans work and I'd take 6 at a time to Vic, he and Barb would put me up overnight, feed me breakfast and I'd drive back from Warren/Detroit to Philly that next day. 10 hours each way.

The thrill gone from that after a few trips, I had special crates for engines and transaxles I'd ship to Vic and Vic back to me, but he was busy more with racing back then and the effort became burdensome. We remained friends until the politics of the Registry drove a wedge into that friendship. I miss the long technical talks we'd have....BUT;

Enter a very qualified younger guy, Eric Wills, 3 hours away in Fairfax, VA. http://willswerks.com/

Eric and his brother Kevin caught the Porsche disease from their father Ray. Eric is next-gen expert on restoration, but also a master of the mechanical aspects.

He did full restos until he realized that the profit earned in the early stages of a full resto was usually given back during the trials of fit and finish details of assembly and was wise enough to stick with engines, transaxles and mechanical rebuilding and maintenance and eschew the problematic whole thing/full restorations. (I should be so wise.)

He can tear down and inspect and measure any unit in a day, write an estimate that is always very close to a final bill and move on whether it's palatable to a client or not. The only cost is the teardown if the cost is a factor but he tells me that is very rare. It's the parts that get unexpectedly expensive....but his labor cost is about the same regardless of the parts needed.

Next-gen guys also are into the 900-series, so Eric does a lot of SWB and LWB 911 work, and he has a nice S for himself. I recommend him highly....but like anyone really good.....he's usually booked.

-Bruce

[Phil Planck]

The rest of you guys are making some great progress. I have been distracted by 2 deer season opening days in 2 different states. The deer were safe with me there. I did manage to repair some rust damage on a late 1800s wood cook stove at our camp in NY and roasted a turkey in it's oven on Thanksgiving day. My hunting friends were impressed with the metal repair. It took 2 1/2 hours to get the oven up to roasting temp. Have finally got all of the parts to put together a backlash measuring setup. Found a good micro dial indicator on Ebay for 1/4 the price of a new one. Made a 1/8" bracket to link the gauge to the spindle and a 5/16 collar welded to the braket fit the dial indicator perfect. All that's left is to get the correct spacer length to line up the indicator with the stud to measure off of. Here are the parts:




The bearing race removers, collar and long bolt were about $3 each. dial indicator was $30.

Here it is mounted to the ring gear assembly:




Here's the turkey:





Phil

[Phil Planck]

Re-installed the differential with the old, cracked carrier to try to duplicate the backlash measurement number Vic Skirmants got.



While fine tuning the location of the indicator contact tip(actually the tip was missing from this Ebay indicator) with the stud I lost the set screw. Found a brass bolt(screw) that fit but did not have it tight when I took first set of measurements, so they were very erratic. Backlash on ring gear is .15mm. I think I got one good measurement with a tight set screw of .19mm. Will re-measure tomorrow.

Phil

[JTR70]

That Turkey looks delicious Phil and cooking it in that old traditional wood burning stove I'm sure added to the experience. Glad to hear you were able to apply your rust repair skills for yet another practical purpose. Impressed watching you set up the lash on your ring gear. Keep up all the great work!
Justin

[Phil Planck]

Located a dial indicator contact tip that fit and took 2 sets of measurements: one every 90 degrees and one every 60 degrees. All of the backlash measurements were very close to the .15mm spec so can now re-assemble the differential. Here is the measurement assembly:



The new, used carrier was only .001" narrower than the cracked one, so did not have to change the spacers to get correct backlash.

[Phil Planck]

With the pinion depth and backlash finally set correctly I could finally start re-assembly of the differential. First step was to install new(used) spider gears and roll pin to hold the shaft in place. Apparently the roll pin is less prone to causing the carrier to crack.



Then the new 12K bolts and locking plates are installed. Finally got to do a little metal bending forming the lock plate tabs over the bolt heads. The bolts were torqued to 65 ft-lbs after applying red locktite to the threads.



Next the nose was reinstalled with a refurbished selector rod from Vic Skirmants. He welds the break prone area and has the shaft refinished along the seal area.

Then it's time to install the axle tubes and check the play of the spherical surfaces. I had 2 .010" gaskets from Stoddard and Vic gave me 2 thinner ones, as I measured one old side gasket thickness at .014". Vic orders VW gasket kits as they come with a lot of them in varying thicknesses. I had to install and torque both sides several times until I was satisfied with the play.



Used Yamabond on the flanges as on the front cover and put it together for good. Installed rebuilt starter.




Here is what it looked like after removing from Foam Car 18 months ago:


Now it's on to the back plates and brakes:

[bbspdstr]

Phil, you are exposing your engineering background a couple of decimal points past mine. Good work!

In a machine shop far, far away....(from me, I'd guess Michigan), Vic had the selector (AKA "hockeystick") shaft turned and hard-chromed after welding the 'finger' at both sides of the shaft (beautiful TIG results and I'm guessing not Vic's work, but I could be wrong....but I never knew him as a welder) and then the shaft was ground back to original spec. The thought was that the chrome was less affected by the grit pulled into the seal by shifting.
That was a nice service and with a trade core, not that expensive as "insurance." However, in all my experience with all kinds of transaxle problems, I never encountered a broken selector, but LOTS of scored/grooved leaky ones in the B/C family.

Happy day after Merry,
-Bruce

[Phil Planck]

Bruce
Thanks, but don't think the engineering background played much of a role. More attributed to stuff I learned hanging around our shop at work and just being a car guy.

Glad you are back with us.

I have been media blasting backplates and brackets. My least favorite thing to do since I have a cheap cabinet and even with a good vacuum on it I can't see much after the first few seconds. Need to google in this problem. That and the cabinet is about 8" too low for me so I need to stoop over to get my hands in the gloves. What you see here took about 4 hours. Ugh.



Disassembled the wheel cylinders and lots of pitting in the center. May not affect the pistons but not going to chance it. I remember on my PreA these cylinders are a bear to hone. Pretty hard castings. I had new ones from Stoddard but put them on the PreA before our Santa Fe trip as I had them quite a while. Will order 2 more of the non-ATE versions.

[JOP]

Salvage the old ones....
There has been some success to salvage the old rusted brake housings and renovated them by inserting a stainless steel sleve/pipe to eliminate the rust problem for the rest of the Porsches life....
Just another way of recycling our old "waste" of parts.
I will try to get some more info and photos for you.
/ Per

( tip 4U, a buddy of mine put a larger airfilter plus a extra vaccum cleaner that he stole from his wife to his blasting cabinet to get a better view and not so much dust getting outside th cabinet...)