My 03 C2 adventures (was: Intro and 996 Airbox questions)

[st3ve]

Hi Everyone,

First post here from a new owner of a 2003 C2, loving the machine so far.  After starting out in Mazdas (RX4 Coupe... don't I wish I still had THAT one!, 626 Coupe, MX5) I then degenerated into the Euro scene with an Alfa, followed by a Saab and a couple of Beemers.  I've come to really like the Beemers (e36 and 39), they're pleasing and dependable as long as you keep up the maintenance, easy to work on and when you do you can see the quality in everything down to the fasteners (okay, interior plastic sucks).  I appreciate nicely engineered cars but to be perfectly honest I can't afford them new, and am handy enough with spanners so prefer to spend a few bob throwing parts at a high quality but somewhat aged car than buying a new korean/whatever miserybox.

So anyhow, through some fortunate (time will tell...) circumstances I got into this daily driven example.  It's been well used with a few good stories to tell and just a bit over 200k on the clock, well looked after cosmetically and a reasonable service history.  I'd have liked to see more oil changes but what can you do.  It's had clutch and flywheel replaced around 130k, IMS done pre-emptively at 150, AOS, water pump and a few other things done as required.  It has a few oil leaks which seem to be a feature of the marque, growing up I was into motorcycles and it was always the pommy rubbish that leaked oil and the euro stuff generally held it's oil on the inside.  BMW's taught me that German cars are not necessarily oil tight and the Porker backs it up.  But I've gone in eyes wide open and expect to be pulling the engine/gearbox for a look-see.

The car looks great in midnight blue over a black interior with the alcantara headliner, factory 10mm lower ride height.  Genuine 997 19" wheels and what now appears to be non-original skirts and spoiler set it off.  For a comparatively cheap car she certainly is a looker!  It has a Gemballa exhaust and K&N air filter charger thingy.  The latter does not really meet my approval, seems like a hokey type of thing even though it sounds GREAT!  I pulled the S-pipe off and noticed some residue on the throttle butterfly suggesting it's not really filtering all that well.  Fortunately the original airbox came with it, I've sourced a Mahle air filter for it and pulled it apart to clean it up for installation today.  I found a K&N panel filter in there as well, but will go with the paper one for the moment.

A couple of questions; the foam in the bottom half is crumbling away, it doesn't seem to serve much purpose except perhaps noise emissions, I assume it's ok to simply pull it out?  And secondly, are the 'speed holes' in the bottom correct or have they been added?  I would have thought they want to pull air only from the cooler/cleaner deck lid rather than the hot and grimy engine bay?

Cheers
St3ve

[Harsh]

Still looking for my 'daily driver' so can't tell....some bargains around at the moment.How about some pics of your car?

[Steve996]

Started reading this and wondered if I’d posted while drunk. I’m Steve, once had an RX4 (although sedan) and also have an 03 996 C2. 

I came across this exact issue on mine just 2 days ago while doing the idler / tensioner pulleys, and came to the conclusion it’s better off gone. It’s covering a drainage hole at the bottom of the airbox, and given it’s on the unfiltered side (ie any air coming in still passes through the filter) I couldn’t see any risk in removing it.  

[st3ve]

On 16/04/2020 at 08:14, Steve996 said:

Started reading this and wondered if I’d posted while drunk.

that can happen... especially in lockdown.

Thanks for the input, I've already removed the foam and the frame. How about the multitude of small holes on the other side?  They look altogether too orderly to be anything other than factory now I look at it closer, so I think that's normal.  I stripped the box down and cleaned it up, stuck it back together for reinstallation this weekend.

I'm getting a hoist installed at home, should be in late next week.  That will hopefully make both minor and major jobs quite a bit easier.  I have leaks which need investigation, most likely an RMS, and also something on the LH cylinder bank.  I'm hoping it's just spark plug tubes, but might be cam bridge.  Fun times ahead. 

Will take a couple of pics next time it's out of the garage, I think I have a shopping run to do today in fact...

Cheers

[luzzo]

1 hour ago, st3ve said:

I'm getting a hoist installed at home, should be in late next week. 

Hi Steve,

Congrats on the Carrera, sounds like you will be well set up to take care of it. Even though I don't think I would be as proficient on the tools as you seem, having a hoist at home would be the dream garage. 

[st3ve]

7 hours ago, luzzo said:

Congrats on the Carrera, sounds like you will be well set up to take care of it. Even though I don't think I would be as proficient on the tools as you seem, having a hoist at home would be the dream garage.

In reality my shed is too small and too low for working on cars, it won't be ideal by any stretch but should be a good improvement on jack stands as I've used for the last decade or three.

Here's the Carerra.  The body kit parts seem to be Porsche Carerra Aerokit, my good mate the PO said they were original, but they're not on the build plate so might be either genuine ones fitted at the dealer or aftermarket.  Looks quite schmick anyhow.

New Stabilus gas struts arrived yesterday for the front and back, so yay I can now put things in the front without it trying to eat me. I didn't realise but they actually ordered me two gas struts for the engine cover where I only needed one.  If anyone in Canberra region wants it for $40 it's better than sitting in my spares cupboard for 15 years.  The ones on there were original and still working to a degree, so I won't need another one soon.  Not genuine Porsche but the same brand and fit etc.

Cheers

 

[luzzo]

Nice looking car Steve.

Love the wheels...  997 Carrera classic?

[st3ve]

On 17/04/2020 at 19:23, luzzo said:

Nice looking car Steve.

Love the wheels...  997 Carrera classic?

Thanks!  I don't know the exact model, only told they were from a 997.  I like them too, they are not dissimilar to the original 18's and are somewhat understated (and not too hard to clean!).

I didn't get around to fitting the airbox on the weekend but I have plenty of time...

[luzzo]

1 hour ago, st3ve said:

Thanks!  I don't know the exact model, only told they were from a 997.  I like them too, they are not dissimilar to the original 18's and are somewhat understated (and not too hard to clean!).

Yep, they look great on the 996, and I agree, similar to the original 996 18's.

1 hour ago, st3ve said:

I didn't get around to fitting the airbox on the weekend but I have plenty of time...

Unfortunately it seems I have too much of it...

Has become counter productive, and I'm finding a sad lack of motivation.  

[st3ve]

On 19/04/2020 at 20:17, luzzo said:

Has become counter productive, and I'm finding a sad lack of motivation.  

Just get out to the garage and do something... anything.  As James May would put it, brush the dust off the interior vents!
Even if it is ultimately no use for the car, it will be of a use to you!

I spent an iso weekend playing with the new toy on the new hoist, it's a long while I've been wanting one of these!

The first objective was just to get underneath and work out what I was dealing with, and to start to learn the car.  Obviously, it is a very different mechanical architecture to anything I've experienced before, so it required some looking and pondering.  I knew it had oil leaks, but was unprepared for the horrors under there - what a mess!

The front of the left hand bank, the bellhousing at left foreground... is there an engine under all that crud??

Front of the sump....

So as expected, rear main and/or IMS leaking badly for a long time.

I'd done some preliminary de-greasing earlier and narrowed the biggest leaks down to what seemed to be rear main area and left cylinder head area.  I wanted to see what the story was with the head, to work out the extent of what I need to do.  I will likely pull the entire engine/gearbox anyhow, but want and idea of what I'm dealing with.

On the left bank which was really dropping oil badly, there is evidence of blown oil from the rear main, and also a big buildup from the cam timing actuators and/or spark plug tubes.

Much the same on the right...  I'm being cautiously optimistic about this, it might not be the actual cam covers, just fairly easily serviced items on the outside.  With a bit of googling and youtubing it seems these spark plug tubes and solenoid flange seals are very common leak points.  Makes me wonder why the shop supposedly servicing it didn't suggest this (since it took me all of half an hour on the internet to learn) but there you go.

I spent most of Saturday under the car seemingly transferring all the crud from the car onto myself.  I was prepping for pebble beach, just wanted to get a baseline to examine new buildup and get an idea of what really needs doing.  I'll order the cylinder head parts and have a proper crack at those areas with the rear bar and mufflers off.  A bit of cleaning had photo #2 looking more like this which is a good start.

More to come...

Cheers Iso'ers
St3ve

[luzzo]

Great work St3ve,

The hoist is already paying itself off..! Love the effort on the degreasing, looks like the toothbrushes worked well. Hope you put your wife's one back in the bathroom when you were done  🛁

[st3ve]

Hi All,

Just trying to work out what I need to order...

Can anyone clarify whether the M96.03 3.6l has the same spark plug tubes as the 3.4?  I have what I believe is a factory parts book but they were too lazy to replace the cylinder head graphic for the 3.6 so it's a little confusing because it shows the 3.4 head without valvelift.  The graphic in the parts book does not show the tubes, just 2 seals per cylinder which appear to go between the head-to-tappet carrier and from tappet carrier-to-cam bridge/cover. 

This leads me to believe that the plug tubes are non-servicable in the 3.6l donk?  If they're leaking then it's an engine out job to remove the cam covers and tappet carrier?

Thanks!

 

[st3ve]

Okay, well I can answer my own question... yes the 3.6l does not have spark plug tubes they are integral to the head, basically the tappet carrier I guess.  Continuing on my new Porsche adventures - and figuring I'm in iso anyhow so why not pull it apart some more and see for myself - I took off the rear bar, mufflers and heat shields so I can better clean everything up and have a good look.  It looks like major surgery but is so so easy and quick to do!  The only annoying aspect is the muffler brackets remaining in the way of the heads and looking like being more or less impossible to remove in situ.

Here's the plug hole -aluminium so no tubes (I think!).  Seems like one thing they fixed in the update from the M96.2 to the M96.3.

I'll pull the others out tomorrow and see if there's any sign of oil inside but this one is dry and I'm thinking the oil is from elsewhere.

 

[st3ve]

So I've done a bit more on the old bus.  It seems like everyone and their dog on youtube pulls the radiators apart to clean them out... ok that will give me a sense of achievement and get to know a bit more about the car.  Once again, everything is really easy to pull apart.  As I had expected, loads of crap in there.

While I'm at it, clean up the wheel arches and suspension.  Bump stops are knackered and one of the sway bar links has a slightly split boot but otherwise the suspension looks good from the outside.  It will be getting a going over but not until after the engine is sorted.

Bad photo, but all nice and clean under there now.  It's coming up really well for a 200k daily driver.  In spite of the well-publicised engine shortcomings they really are a well built car. Fair enough we're an easy climate compared to many places, but everything's totally spot on.

Of course you can't see any of this work once it's back together and it will drive exactly the same as before (which is why it rarely if ever gets done by a shop) but the rads will hopefully live longer, my ocd was satisfied and when I do come to do some suspension work it will be less gross. 

PS: I still haven't swapped the airbox...

[st3ve]

I got all the engine, heat shields and so on cleaned up as best as possible.  Removed all the coils and sure enough no sign at all of any oil leakage from inner or outer seals which was great.  One coil had been replaced with the newer 997 type but the others were original.  There was some slight degredation of the rubber tips but the coils seem in good shape with no cracking etc.  Not sure whether to pre-emptively replace them in due course or not.

I had a crack at fitting the Gemballa tips which had come with the rest of the exhaust from new but never been used since they didn't fit.  It certainly didn't seem like they would fit a stock rear bumper.  Anyway, I did a bit of cut and shut with some 54mm tube and they're now on... not perfectly symmetric but it's a start.

Did a 100km social distancing drive including three lots of roadworks and the old girl looked like a WRC car... dirtied up those nice wheel arches nicely... yeah!  I put it back up in the air and checked out the areas around coils and solenoids as best I could without any disassembly and they look dead dry.  Put another 1000km on it and see how it looks. 

I'm wondering if all the mess can just be blown oil from the rear main seal??  Do people end up with oil all over cylinder heads and around the injectors etc just from a badly leaking RMS?

PS Still haven't fitted the airbox... 

[st3ve]

Since the last post I've done a couple of thousand k's and spent some quality time staring up at my "pork belly" while trying to remove several years of accumulated minor oil leaks.  Today was another run at it, I removed all the under trays other than the front one and got degreasing.  Gross, but satisfying.  I've got some Motul Gear 300 arriving early next week so started around the box to tidy that up prior to the oil change.  The gearshift isn't terrible but is not great either.  Looked at the cables underneath and there's no slop down there so after the oil change I'll attack the shifter console.

I then got going on the engine which is cleaning up nicely and the new AOS line seems to have cured all but my small RMS leak.  It seems to have been the AOS line which was causing the bulk of the mess.  On later cars this line is entirely convoluted plastic and mine had rubbed through in two places.  I don't think this is an issue on the 3.4's which has a mostly solid line.  Either way they're all getting on for 20 yrs old and prone to cracking though, so if you have a major leak over either cylinder head, that line is worth a look.

Harking back to the original thread title, I have been running the original airbox on it for a while now but I really miss the banshee induction howl.  I bought a nice new BMC 90mm cone filter to suit the K&N apparatus that I had removed some time back.  I'll swap over to that and see how it goes when the replacement belt arrives along with the gearbox oil.

[Merv]

Cleaning under cars is no fun Steve and as the Irish poet said (about house painting in his case), it is 'a dirty and dangerous job!' However one done and filthy clothes disposed of, it is satisfying and you can see what you have in front of you. Especially where the leaks are.  The Aero set up looks great and these are highly valued in the UK.

[michel]

Loving your work sir… Another one to add to the OCD kanbra Kollektiv 

[Carrera28]

 

On 08/05/2020 at 22:27, st3ve said:

I had a crack at fitting the Gemballa tips which had come with the rest of the exhaust from new but never been used since they didn't fit.  It certainly didn't seem like they would fit a stock rear bumper.  Anyway, I did a bit of cut and shut with some 54mm tube and they're now on... not perfectly symmetric but it's a start.

 

I have a Gemballa exhaust system including the tips fitted to my 996 with standard bumpers so it's definitely feasible.

[P-Kay]

^^ It's 996.1 v 996.2

The tips are different, hence the need for the xtension to make them 996.2  compatible  

[st3ve]

On 09/08/2020 at 11:28, Merv said:

Cleaning under cars is no fun Steve and as the Irish poet said (about house painting in his case), it is 'a dirty and dangerous job!' However one done and filthy clothes disposed of, it is satisfying and you can see what you have in front of you. Especially where the leaks are.  The Aero set up looks great and these are highly valued in the UK.

Cheers Merv(o)!  It's been good to track down what at first looked pretty bad, only to find it seems like it was basically just minor leaks over a long period which resulted in something that looked a lot worse than it was.  I think this is also exaggerated with a rear engine car since it's getting the dust from all 4 wheels landing on any slightly sticky surface. 

On 09/08/2020 at 12:36, michel said:

Loving your work sir… Another one to add to the OCD kanbra Kollektiv 

Me?  Never!

Sorry for the late reply, I was just re-indexing my toolbox by brand, title and middle name of the company's most senior engineer using the dewey decimal system...

13 hours ago, P-Kay said:

^^ It's 996.1 v 996.2

The tips are different, hence the need for the xtension to make them 996.2  compatible  

Aha!  That explains a few things then.  There was no way at all they were going to fit, and even the quad pipe type tips that were on there before had been (indelicately)  'adjusted' to make fit.  The bend of the tip would foul the entry pipe looping into the muffler from the cat if they were angled anywhere near downward enough to fit the rear bar.  I added 30mm above the bend and they're a lot better but still not ideal.  I think they need less length between the bend and the tip, or a slightly less acute angle of bend.  Anyhow, working for now and looking pretty good. 

The line in the photo below seems to have been the culprit for all the over-cylinder-head leaks.  It had rubbed through on inlet runner #5 on the right and the coolant level sensor on the left.  If you have a 3.6 check it's not rubbing in either of those spots or anywhere else.  Part # 996 107 147 59.

[luzzo]

4 hours ago, st3ve said:

The line in the photo below seems to have been the culprit for all the over-cylinder-head leaks.

Thats a great win Steve. You've done some great work cleaning up the mess in those first few pics, so it must feel great to have sourced the problem.

[st3ve]

Cheers all, yeah it'll be nice to not see those oil slicks under the car.  I'll still have what I think is a rear main seal weep, but that is pretty minor and easy enough to clean up every so often.  I'm up for a clutch soon, so that should get sorted then.  Next up will be some gearbox servicing and shift console enhancements.  But for the moment back to just driving and enjoying it.  Had a nice 35k run into work this morning in fact.

[Merv]

Love the hoist Steve.  I have had hoist since 2008 and it has been a godsend really.  Most leaks are minor and dust and road grime accumulates and makes to look worse than it is. When you get to the clutch, also check out the slave cylinder as they can also be suspect and are very difficult to get at otherwise.  See the Franny and Heidi video.  Love those as she never gets dirty and is always so well prepared! And the visor with bling ... She is good however.

Love the colour of your car - I should as mine is the same.

 

 

 

[michel]

27 minutes ago, Merv said:

Love the hoist Steve.  I have had hoist since 2008 and it has been a godsend really.  Most leaks are minor and dust and road grime accumulates and makes to look worse than it is. When you get to the clutch, also check out the slave cylinder as they can also be suspect and are very difficult to get at otherwise.  See the Franny and Heidi video.  Love those as she never gets dirty and is always so well prepared! And the visor with bling ... She is good however.

Love the colour of your car - I should as mine is the same.

 

 

 

They are good !