Sucess!! No more leaks!

Last night I tried my luck at solving the major oil leak coming from somewhere on the passenger side of the motor. If anyone has worked on a 914, there is not much room to diagnose problems especially when that large v8 is stuffed in there.

The one benefit is that they do not make a more simple engine than a Chevy 350. Any shade tree mechanic can fix most problems, and I had seen similar leaking problem from that side of the motor coming from the fuel pump area. If this was sitting in the front of a pickup truck, or a large 60's sedan then I would not need the miracle of "Tracer UV oil dye"! Thank god for modern technology!



I simple added a little less than an ounce of this dye into the motor and fired up the engine with the car on jack stands. I let it run for 5 minutes until I saw a pool of oil dripping on the drip pan.

Next I put a black light bulb in my shop light and climbed under that car. POW! The dye glows a neon yellow color where fresh oil is leaking. From under the engine I saw the glowing yellow dye dripping from the bottom of the timing chain cover. I followed this yellow line up one side of the cover, up past the water pump outlets and out of sight.

Using my "mirror on a pole" tool, I followed the yellow line (struggling with the little space the whole time) up to the top of the motor where I saw a brilliant splash of yellow sitting right below the intake manifold.

Next I climbed out from under that car and used a bright work light to spot that yellow area and found the location of the oil pressure gauge sending unit!!

How easy!! What a relief!!

After dropping the car back on the ground, I pulled the sending unit out, applied new thread tape, installed and tightened down all connectors.

FIXED!!

Let it begin, or should I say continue

This being the first post of the blog, I thought I would say hello to the world.

My main focus (right now) for this blog is the new Porsche 914 sitting in my garage. My hope is to track what I have done, and my struggle, pain, success etc during this process. As I write this first entry, the Porsche has been tinkered on already since December 09'.

As the car was purchased:



The car ran, stopped (sorta), shifted (poorly), had no headlights and lost of wiring rats nests. We will get into all that later.

Who am I to want such a "hassle"?

My name is Matt and I have been a lifetime car fanatic. I can remember as a child visiting friends houses and walking around their room looking at the posters on their walls or WWF "wrestlers" and their favorite baseball player. They were dreaming of sports stardom and I was dreaming of tire melting performance and traveling above that mythical 88MPH to make time travel possible.

I had nothing but posters of cars on my walls. Porsche 959, Ferrari f40, Lamborghini Countach and any classic muscle car. From the time my father popped the hood of the family Volvo and pointed out the various components, I was hooked.

By the age of 13 I had stacks of Car & Driver magazines piled high in my closet, learning the various motor options and performance statistics from the super-car to the corvette down the street.

Now that I think of it, cars are in the family blood. My father in his younger years appreciated driving sports cars. Porsche 356, Austin Healey 3000, 67 Cougar XR-7 GT with the 390 the last hearing a story of blowing the engine on a spirited drive to the mountains. As a kid, he restored a 72 chevy pickup laboring in the front yard to replace the oak bed.

My good friend and neighbor at the time shared in my car obsession, and we dragged our fathers to car shows. My friends Dad purchased a 1992 Mitsubishi 3000 GT-VR4 Twin Turbo that we were obsessed over. At that time, the car was technologically advanced! 4 wheel steering, automated spoiler and front valence at higher speeds. When we were lucky he would take us out in the empty business parks and toss us around the corners. In our minds we held that car high in the air. The car had such a sentimental value to it, that today my good friend 18 years later has the same car sitting in his garage with maybe 30K miles on the odometer.

The car obsession carried through high school, with hot rods. Friends and I worked on and spent most weekend nights in an old car. Many night spent till late hours at the illegal drag races (before fast & the furious existed and the import revolution was just warming up). Going to college in the central coast CA peaked our interest in 4x4 trucks, with the sand dunes at our door step.

Here I am today at 30, starting a new adventure with this Porsche. It is a renegade hybrid Porsche with 10 years on the conversion. It has a 5.7L Chevrolet engine, with a modified Porsche 901 transmission (1st gear block out) and taller gears to handle the torque. It is running heavy duty bus CV's & axles with offroad boots. The body has been strengthened with weld in plates & steel tubing to handle the extra power. The trailing arms have been boxed as well.

Now the engine is tired and leaking, the interior has been stripped and wiring cut up. The conversion was done in a cheesy 90's early styling. As an example they removed the stock headlight to convert to ugly Camaro fixed halogen lamps! Blehhh!!


More to come..