A final word on Porsche coolant pipes
April 3, 2018
After some correspondence with a contributor on Rennlist.com, I decide to satisfy myself that I can tell if a Cayenne has had its coolant plastic coolant pipes replaced with the aluminum upgrade by looking from outside. I take the scope and snake its camera into the back of Ruby’s engine compartment with only a vague idea of what evidence I am looking for, but convinced of the outcome because we have already lifted the manifold and looked at the array of aluminum below.
Eventually I tell myself I see a satisfying flash of aluminum casting just below the elaborate black plastic casting of the intake manifold. The next step is to take this methodology into the engine bay of my son Charlie’s nearly identical car to determine if it has also had the upgrade.
This proves daunting. There is an aluminum casting in the correct location, but things generally look different. After much fussing Charlie and I conclude that on Ruby the tech left out a black plastic component which sits above the pipes running toward the back of the engine. Anyway, the upshot of it is that the gray Cayenne has also had the coolant pipe upgrade, we think.
I find it hard to believe that my surgeon can replace heart valves with a variation on this scope. My hat is off to him. I can hardly find the back end of an engine with mine.
BTW: I have an unused coolant-pipes-kit in the shop with shipping and Canadian sales tax already paid, if anyone in Eastern Ontario would like to take it off my hands at a bargain price.
Coolant pipes diary: Day 2
April 1, 2018
NOTE: The passenger side is right, the driver’s side is left for the purposes of this article.
8:00 a.m. Restless and anxious to get at the project, but must wait for son to arrive. Make work. Build fire in auto shop. Brush the dog. Clean car mats.
Enough of this. I want to wrench. I decide to pull a spark plug to see their condition. The easiest access is the second cylinder from the front on the left. The coil has a 3″ split in the plastic tube, so I pick a new one out of the box and install it, but of course I can’t test it yet.
12:00 p.m. Charlie, Roz and Ada arrive.
1:00 p.m. We start in on Ruby. Charlie scopes and photographs, and we eventually agree there’s little point of further disassembly.
Charlie spends an hour trying to get the rear right screw into the fuel rail.
2:10 p.m. We partially remove the manifold to allow the installation of that damned screw. Now I understand why techs leave the fuel rails on the manifold, and remove the whole unit. The right rear screw is otherwise impossible.
Things go back together well. Charlie understands the strange packages with air running through them on the top of the engine. I content myself with putting on covers and clipping on injectors. Back go the fuel pump fuses, and Ruby fires up. There’s a slight miss which we decide to deal with after Easter Dinner.
4:45 p.m. The OBD reader shows P0202. That means the injector on cylinder 2 is misfiring. That’s the second one from the front. I quickly tear in to the coil I had replaced this morning, second from the front. No amount of abuse of the coil and the injector on what turns out to be cylinder #6 helps the problem.
Eventually I call up a diagram, realize I have been working on the wrong side of the car, take off the right air pump, loosen the air pump holder, remove the motor mount shaft and the notoriously fragile beauty cover which fingers in among these obstructions, only to discover an injector wiring connector which is loose under the fuel rail and an awkward clump of wiring. Ten minutes later it clicks into place. Ruby fires up smooth and powerful. I put the car back together, vowing to post a diagram of Ruby’s engine on the shop wall so I will always know where cylinder #2 is.
6:00 p.m. All better. Test drive is a quick, one mile sprint, and home.
Coolant pipes diary: Day 1
March 31, 2018
8:00 a.m. Fired up Ruby for what may be her last drive for a while. It might as well be an enjoyable road, the trail to Landsdowne, the International Bridge, and Wellesley Island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River where the local Kinek parcel depot flourishes in the back of the Wellesley Island Building Supply.
8:35 a.m. U.S. customs agent took my passport and asked: “Where are you headed today, Wellesley Building Supply or Watertown? You don’t look as though you’re going far.” He was right. I was back through Canadian Customs inside 15 minutes.
8:40 a.m. The parcel with the aluminum coolant pies kit was in, as promised. It felt so light that I opened the box on the spot to make sure it wasn’t empty. All there: aluminum is light, I guess.
10:30 a.m. Home. Removed Ruby’s engine beauty panels and a motor mount. At that point I ran out of the things I’d had practise at doing. Then I realized I wasn’t sure about how to disable the fuel pumps. Read for a while, becoming more confused by the manual.
1:00 p.m. Decided upon the two-fuse method explained by Harkness on RennTech.org. Pulled 13 and 14 and Ruby (Harkness identifies 14 and 15 as the pump fuses but his is a newer model) obligingly refused to start. Released a small bit of fuel from the end of the fuel rails.
Removed the spark plug covers. Then the air handling stuff at the front of the engine. The car is well built, though Porsche plastics are a chore.
3:00 p.m. So far, so good. Ruby’s apart. I’m stuck at the removal of the fuel rail. Don’t know how injectors detach or come out. Must read. Going pretty well. One screw lost from rear right fuel rail. As predicted by Harkness. Apparently those screws are never seen again. I also broke the predicted pvc hose made of desicated fortune cookie dough, also predicted by Harkness. Electrical tape works well on it. The rest is pretty sensible, so far.
4:00 p.m. Back at it after sandwich. Decided to fasten rails back onto the manifold. Lost a second screw in a careless attempt at left rear corner.
Backed out the manifold screws without difficulty. Compared to changing 7 A/C servos from the floor in front of the driver’s seat, this stuff is a cinch!
4:45 p.m. Shifted the manifold forward and up. Peeked underneath… Nothing but gleaming ALUMINUM under there! Hooked up the scope, probed carefully below. Starter and solenoid connections show no evidence of corrosion. A small amount of grass seems to have blown in recently as if it has had one summer only in a leafy area. No evidence of nests and the gleaming aluminum coolant pipes suggest Ruby has had a pampered life in garages in downtown Vancouver before taking over Charlie’s shop at the farm.
5:00. Notify family and associates of bathetic end to the coolant pipes project. General bemusement.
Shall enlist son Charlie on the cleaning and re-assembly. A few years ago he spent a winter’s weekends resealing a 968 engine, and he did a great job on it. He’ll definitely want to have input tomorrow, as the engine in his ’04 Cayenne S is next in line, and the parts are already in stock.
Protests and pruning
March 16, 2018
Yesterday in the Globe and Mail I read profiles of seven protesters at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline construction site. Every one of them looked like someone I would willingly accept as a colleague and friend. So why are we on opposite sides over the expansion of a pipeline to tide water?
As a retired teacher in Leeds County, Ontario, I can do my bit for the environment at this time of year by pruning the many acres of young black walnut trees I grow on the property. But land is plentiful here.
Were I to find myself in Vancouver, I suppose I’d likely spend my days at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline Expansion site with the other well-meaning retirees.
There is so little flat ground out there.
In the Ontario countryside I’ll bet at least some of the protestors would be making maple syrup at this time of year and thoroughly enjoying the work.
Polaris Ranger TM part XXIV: wheel alignment
February 16, 2018
Online they say it’s a 20 minute job, so I planned to devote the entire afternoon in the shop to the task. My estimate was just about right.
I ran mason’s cord from the trailer hitch up both sides to jack stands at the front. Then I stretched the string across the leading and trailing edges of the rear tires to provide a straight line up each side at the hub. I measured the gap between the narrower front wheels and the string, usually between 1 1/2 and 2″.
When I locked the steering wheel with ratchet straps, I decided I needed to reduce the toe-out from over 1/4″ on either side to just under 1/8″ on either side.
I ran the Ranger up on the hoist a couple of times to get the adjustment right, and the job was done.
That’s the 20 minute version.
In reality the right wheel was toeing out to where the combined track at the front was just over an inch wider than at the back of the front wheels. Most of it was on the right hand side where I had replaced a tie rod end (I think they call it) by screwing it on as tightly as it would go.
It had broken off one day a couple of summers ago, so I ordered a pair of them online and replaced the broken one on a temporary basis so I could use the machine. It turns out when you twist those things onto the little metal rod which goes to the steering gear, you don’t make everything tight. Things are supposed to be sort of in the middle, to allow for adjustment with the grub nut. So I had to take the part off and re-install it. Then it was fine.
Ranger suspension components are much easier to work on than their Porsche equivalents, though there is a dearth of information about them. Old Porsches have likely the best documented repair procedures on earth, and that’s just You-Tube.
The Ranger now makes tight turns more easily, especially at full lock. With any luck the expensive new tires won’t wear off once I start daily runs to the mailbox over pavement.
The local municipality legalized UTV’s for the road last year (helmets mandatory), so it’s a political act to go the 4/10 mile to Forfar for the mail in the Ranger now.
Lever of power
February 2, 2018
The Jian Ghomeshi trial pitted a very popular CBC radio personality against a number of prominent women who claimed that Ghomeshi assaulted them. In the courtroom the complainants proved no match for the exceedingly focussed woman who defended her client. No one doubted the survivors of abuse in this case, but the law found otherwise.
The pendulum had swung too far. A correction was inevitable, and over the last year it has taken the form of the #MeToo whateveritis which has relied upon public shaming on social media, rather than the court of law, as a way of finding redress.
Over the last two weeks in Canada we have seen the #MeToo tsunami sweep over our political world, both at the federal and provincial levels.
The sexual assaults have proven relatively straightforward: an aggrieved survivor or two can bring down a target at long range, without the necessity to reveal proof or even her name. Hearsay evidence is fine in the court of public opinion and politics, because everyone agrees that power imbalances make for taboo sex.
Thus #MeToo provided a slick way to get rid of a couple of ineffectual leaders for the Ontario Provincial Conservative Party in the run-up to an election.
But when the complaint against a quadriplegic man for saying “You’re yummy” in an elevator is equated with attempted rape, there’s something wrong here, even if the guy is a creep.
And how about when a slammed door, or shouting in the presence of subordinates becomes grounds for an anonymous complaint? Or how about a rival for a committee position writing to the party leader that she would not feel comfortable alone in a room with the named MP?
Witch hunts have a long and ugly tradition. They never had to do with witchcraft, but with economic competition. For example, most of the accusers of witches in the medieval era were physicians, and the accused, midwives who competed with them.
In every era when there’s been widespread fear of a hidden enemy, character assassination has become a lever of power.
It appears to me that there’s no mechanism in place to protect the #MeToo complainants and their targets from trivialization. Because of the lack of evidence of even genuine complaints, trivial and false reports must necessarily receive equal status. The process of reductio ad absurdum can’t be avoided. There will always be venal adversaries and those pursuing trivial, personal beefs from behind the cloak of anonymity which social media provide — as long as they work.
First robin
January 21, 2018
There’s a lot of winter left, but a robin turned up outside our kitchen window this morning.
Syrian refugees give blood
January 2, 2018
The Calgary Syrian Refugee Community kicked off the new year by turning out for the first blood donor clinic. Blood Services appreciated the 80-unit contribution from the group, especially because supplies are low at this time of year.
Two Syrian refugees organized it and made it happen. That’s O.K. in my book.
Check Huffington Post for photos:
Blade Runner 2049 review
December 26, 2017
I just finished screening it on my laptop. There’s a problem with this movie and its audience. The demographic which will absolutely adore it (65-70 year-old males) have to make washroom visits a lot more frequently than every 2 1/2 hours. And nobody will want to miss a minute of the film.
Denys Arcand has done a terrific job on the scifi classic. So has Ryan Gosling.
I won’t say any more to spoil it: buy the CD if you are my age. If you are under 40, find the best movie screen showing it and prepare for a feast.
Bennett Lake Ice Fishing Casualty
December 18, 2017
Missing man located deceased after going through ice in Tay Valley Township Saturday
NEWS 05:47 PM Perth Courier
On Saturday, Dec. 16, 2017 at approximately 9 p.m., members of the Lanark County detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) responded to an overdue person call on Bennett Lake, Tay Valley Township.
Police responded after receiving information that a male had been ice fishing on the lake and did not return home on his ATV. His family observed a large hole on the ice surface and became concerned that he had fallen through the ice. Lanark County OPP members attended to search for the male with the assistance of the OPP Underwater Search and Recovery Unit (USRU).
Elmer Abercrombie, age 80 of Tay Valley Township, was located deceased by OPP USRU officers. It was determined that Abercrombie had been travelling on the lake ice earlier in the day with his ATV and fell through.
If any person has further information in regards to this matter they are asked to please call 1-888-310-1122.
the Walnut Diary 