72 3.0 CS 2240344 Restoration

Curious to hear your experience with the parking cable. My parking brake doesn’t fully hold the car especially on a hill. I have adjusted the shoes when I installed new ones, wondering if I need to adjust the cable tension, since I suspect the first 60% of the pull isn’t doing anything.
 
e9Leveque said:
Curious to hear your experience with the parking cable. My parking brake doesn’t fully hold the car especially on a hill. I have adjusted the shoes when I installed new ones, wondering if I need to adjust the cable tension, since I suspect the first 60% of the pull isn’t doing anything.
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That gets adjusted up at the parking brake handle
 
OK, bunch of updates today...

De-molded the AC drains I cast a few days ago. This time I used a Shore A50 silicone. Seems to have done the trick. I think they could p[robably be Shore60 and still work, but these seem serviceable.
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Also finally got around to measuring my manifold flanges relative to the Karsundpartz units using my beautiful new hole caliper.. Mine were always just a bit tight on the engine studs. Turns out the lateral hole spacing between the flanges (one stud to the next stud over), was spot on (80 mm), but the hole to hole spacing was off by 0.5 mm, which was enough to make for a tight fit. I'll try one more run at the model and see how they fit once I have the engine in.

Here is the caliper. What a very nice piece of gear! Smooth as silk, and built to last 100 years.. The conical points make measuring holes super easy and accurate.

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And a bit more wire wheel stuff. I had been wondering how to get a nice clean finish on my very crusty wiper bars (the bars that create the parallelogram that moves the wipers). The wheel did a great job on these! I'll probably polish them and then zinc plate them. The long one has been brushed, and the other one is next...
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That caliper is a thing of beauty. Very nice. Not that you don’t have so much else to do, but any update on the Porsche gauge work? Very interested now that I will be installing AC this winter which sadly means removing the three-gauge panel I installed this summer. Well, it did its job while it needed to.
 
e9Leveque said:
That caliper is a thing of beauty. Very nice. Not that you don’t have so much else to do, but any update on the Porsche gauge work? Very interested now that I will be installing AC this winter which sadly means removing the three-gauge panel I installed this summer. Well, it did its job while it needed to.
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I'll wrap up the gauges in a bit. Currently getting the suspension renovated and re-assembled so I can put the wheels back on the car once it is out of paint. Should be home by the end of November.

Did you get a left side E9 gauge? That's where to start. The fuel gauge can be re-purposed to either oil or voltage. The temp gauge is weird, at least mine was.

Then buy an oil pressure gauge from an older 911. The meter movement in that gauge is physically the same as the BMW gauges, and it hooks up directly to a 10-180 ohm oil pressure sender.. so all you need for that is one of my free gauge stickers, which I'll send you for a modest $300 shipping and handling fee !! ;). Other than oil pressure, what are the other guages in your setup?
 
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Also got the rear wheel bearings installed and the trailing arms re-assembled (this time without the "oops"!).. Here are some pics of that. The Harbor Freight press worked really well (after I put one of my bottle jacks in it - the original has a leak and dripped oil everywhere)..

Pressing in the small inner bearing.

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Pressing on the inner hub flange.

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My handy spacers to raise the hub up so the lug nut studs are out of the way...

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And the finished product.
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That looks phenomenal as always. I did not touch rear suspension but between you and those e30 YouTube videos I’m feeling like I need to go back and clean up some of the work that I did earlier. I’ll add it to the list
I have an extra left E9 gauge and I bought one of the Porsche Vdo gauges so I’m good to go. My three-gauge was voltage, water temp and oil pressure. Now that I know my temp gauge is working well and correlates with the water temp VDO gauge that might be a little less critical, but I do like the granularity of 180 vs 190 and nice to see when the aux fan kicks in. Given our console discussions I’ve also had thoughts of putting some of that info in the well of the console, although probably only voltage makes sense there since the others are much more dynamic in their output.
 
e9Leveque said:
That looks phenomenal as always. I did not touch rear suspension but between you and those e30 YouTube videos I’m feeling like I need to go back and clean up some of the work that I did earlier. I’ll add it to the list
I have an extra left E9 gauge and I bought one of the Porsche Vdo gauges so I’m good to go. My three-gauge was voltage, water temp and oil pressure. Now that I know my temp gauge is working well and correlates with the water temp VDO gauge that might be a little less critical, but I do like the granularity of 180 vs 190 and nice to see when the aux fan kicks in. Given our console discussions I’ve also had thoughts of putting some of that info in the well of the console, although probably only voltage makes sense there since the others are much more dynamic in their output.
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You will be a bit limited by the "handedness" of the gauges. The Porsche oil pressure gauge is a right hand gauge. You could use it on the left, but the needle will read low oil pressure UP, and high oil pressure DOWN, which seems weird...

So oil on the right, and either temp or volts on the left.

The temp sensor is just a thermistor, so you can probably rig the fuel gauge meter (which is a left side meter) to read temp.

Per my previous posts, the fuel gauge and oil pressure gauges respond to a resistance between the G terminal and ground. You apply 12 volts to the + terminal, ground to the ground terminal and then some resistance to ground at the G terminal. So you could probably calibrate the temp sensor using different temperatures and a thermometer, and then make a new calibrated label for it.

Alternatively, you can use the fuel gauge for voltage.

I also found a Porsche ammeter, which I may consider for the left side. My only concern about that is how to properly wire it. Basically the entire current for the car (less the starter) needs to pass through that meter, so I'd need to run the main red wire from the battery to the fuse box through the meter.. Might be OK..

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e9Leveque said:
That looks phenomenal as always. I did not touch rear suspension but between you and those e30 YouTube videos I’m feeling like I need to go back and clean up some of the work that I did earlier. I’ll add it to the list
I have an extra left E9 gauge and I bought one of the Porsche Vdo gauges so I’m good to go. My three-gauge was voltage, water temp and oil pressure. Now that I know my temp gauge is working well and correlates with the water temp VDO gauge that might be a little less critical, but I do like the granularity of 180 vs 190 and nice to see when the aux fan kicks in. Given our console discussions I’ve also had thoughts of putting some of that info in the well of the console, although probably only voltage makes sense there since the others are much more dynamic in their output.
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On the suspension. I guess a lot depends on what you are trying to do.

On my car the brake backing plates were just awful. Rusty and bent. The sub frame and trailing arms were nearly as bad. So I opted to disassemble them entirely, clean them as best I could and have everything powder coated. This will result in all new suspension bushings, all new hardware and new bearings... so a big job, but basically a new suspension front and back. The total cost of the rehab was fairly modest. All the powder coating (front and rear sub frames, trailing arms, struts, etc was $1200. Bearings were about $50 per wheel, the rear backing plates were about $150 per wheel (I was able to refinish and reuse the fronts).

The real cost was in the other stuff. The rotors were about $700 total (front and rear cross drilled from Walloth). I am also replacing the parking brake mechanisms and cables.. so literally all new. . I am guessing the caliper rebuild will be about $500, and the full suspension upgrade (shocks, springs, control arms, steering linkages, camber plates, bushings, sway bars, etc. ) was about $5K from Carl Nelson.

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Scott, I have not studied the rear axle bearing installation technique, but I seem to recall that there was a very specific depth setting that needed to be achieved. Is that what you found? What challenges did you need to watch for?
 
ScottAndrews said:
I also found a Porsche ammeter, which I may consider for the left side. My only concern about that is how to properly wire it. Basically the entire current for the car (less the starter) needs to pass through that meter, so I'd need to run the main red wire from the battery to the fuse box through the meter.. Might be OK..
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Ammeters aren't complicated. As you suggested, the lead that formerly powered the fusebox should go to one leg of the ammeter, and then new a wire needs to connect the ammeter's other leg back to to the fusebox. As long as the connections are well insulated, there isn't a lot to go wrong.

Many people will argue that ammeters are obsolete and that voltmeters provide more information. Probably true. Both will tell you the health of your electrical system as long as you watch them. The charging light that glows when the alternator dies is crude, but is probably the most useful indicator, simply because it grabs your attention.
 
boonies said:
Scott, I have not studied the rear axle bearing installation technique, but I seem to recall that there was a very specific depth setting that needed to be achieved. Is that what you found? What challenges did you need to watch for?
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The depth of the smaller bearing is fixed by a spacer. It is important when disassembling them that you keep the spacer and re-use it on the same side. The large bearing goes in first and seats on a step in the trailing arm axle barrel. The conical sleeve goes in the other (smaller) end of the barrel and seats against the inner race of the large bearing. the spacer goes in next and seats on another step, and then the smaller bearing goes in. The spacer places the inner race of the small bearing pretty much exactly at the top of the conical sleeve.

Obviously you have to pack the bearings and goop up all the innards as this is going together (messy!!) .

The Blue Book shows how the spacer dimension is determined, but that thickness seems to be set by the distance between the two ridges in the trailing arm, and the conical sleeve, so if you use the same sleeve and the same trailing arm, then the old spacer is the right dimension.

I did manage to forget to put the brake backing plate on the first trailing arm, so I had to pull out the locking washer, undo the big nut, and then pull the hub out, put the plate on, and then re-assembled it, but the bearings were already in at that point, and everything was goopy with wheel bearing grease, so it all went to gather pretty easily. I will need to replace the locking plate though, since it gets crushed when you install it.
 
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jmackro said:
Ammeters aren't complicated. As you suggested, the lead that formerly powered the fusebox should go to one leg of the ammeter, and then new a wire needs to connect the ammeter's other leg back to to the fusebox. As long as the connections are well insulated, there isn't a lot to go wrong.

Many people will argue that ammeters are obsolete and that voltmeters provide more information. Probably true. Both will tell you the health of your electrical system as long as you watch them. The charging light that glows when the alternator dies is crude, but is probably the most useful indicator, simply because it grabs your attention.
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Hard to know which is more informative (amps or volts). The ammeter is really only going to provide meaningful info when the alternator dies, so in that regard is is more like the alternator light.. The volt mater may tell you when the alternator is charging and when it is not, and alsop lets you know the state of your battery, which may have some useful maintenance benefits.
 
That’s where I have found voltmeter useful. I was having a failing alternator which didn’t set off red light but which could be diagnosed by voltmeter. Also currently dealing with something that I have installed that has a slight parasitic drain, likewise noticeable by voltmeter. So that one is a necessity for me, given the notes above I’ll probably go for oil pressure and voltmeter to use that Porsche gauge, water temp has been solid at this point.
 
e9Leveque said:
That’s where I have found voltmeter useful. I was having a failing alternator which didn’t set off red light but which could be diagnosed by voltmeter. Also currently dealing with something that I have installed that has a slight parasitic drain, likewise noticeable by voltmeter. So that one is a necessity for me, given the notes above I’ll probably go for oil pressure and voltmeter to use that Porsche gauge, water temp has been solid at this point.
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OK, once I calibrate the gas gauge to read volts, I'll send you a new label for the meter face. I think it will be like this:

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Question of the hive mind...

The trailing arm bushings are very slightly different end-to-end.one end is slightly larger diameter, and has a dee[per cone on the end. The trailing arm bushing hole has a flare on one side and none on the other. AM I correct in assuming that the larger end sits at the flared end of the opening?
 
sfdon said:
Did you call Ed?
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I talked with him when I picked up the Diff Brace, but didn;t ask this question. I want to deliver to him a mostly assembled suspension that just needs to be put into the car, so he isn't trying to assemble bushings and stuff in Eugene's shop from a box-o-parts.
Can you PM me his number?

Headed back to AJ tomorrow to drop off my headlamp buckets, the steering arms, and the upper spring perches..forgot to do those last time..GRRR!
 
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