Restoration of a 1960 Porsche 356 Super 90 sunroof coupe.
Rings are meant to be installed ascending order from the top. 1 is closest to the crown of the piston, then 2, then 3, with oil control ring at bottom (i.e. skirt). It was handy that the set of rings that came on the AA pistons were marked with a number, and also “top”. With …
Rod Emory was kind enough to host an open house at Emory Motorsports HQ during Porsche LA Lit show weekend. Among the many cool things was a T5 Super 90 that appeared to be completely original. One of the few things Rod had yet to customize! I was able to open the engine lid and …
Got the flywheel on today. It is quite a bear to get the gland nut installed with the necessary force of 400-450 foot lbs of torque, per the box from Stoddard. An enormous breaker bar and a friends seems like the old school way to do it. Another case where the right tools make all …
For better or worse, I chose to paint the inside of our oil filter canister with Glyptal insulating enamel. They call it Glyptal red, but it’s really more of a Golden Gate orange to me. I bead blasted the outside of the canister, and took steps to prevent any media getting inside. I basically stuffed …
Made a few steps forward today. Most relating to the oil system. New aluminum oil cooler, oil pump checked for end play, oil pressure relief and bypass, superseded part numbers. The oil cooler found on the car was probably in salvageable shape, but like a lot of things not model correct for the engine. We …
After a few steps backwards, things finally came together (another intentional bad joke) with the mating of the 3rd piece to the case halves. Getting the oil distributor drive oriented correctly wasn’t very intuitive, but I have pretty good confidence that I got it in correctly. A Maestro video is worth a few thousand words. …
For reasons that escape me, my machinist left the oil pressure relief valve in the case. So this turned into a multi-hour ordeal of how to get it out. I made a few attempts to remove it with what I thought were pretty clever approaches. None worked. Ultimately it took: 9/16-inch tap, vice grips, hammer, …
After weeks of waiting to get a .80 mm flywheel shim I found, that while I could get it over the crank to test the endplay, it did not turn freely on the crank. Not good. After lots of measuring that led to no obvious issue, I sourced a shim from another vendor just to …
While preparing to mate the 3rd piece of the case, I was comparing the gasket to case halves. I noticed a threaded opening that the gasket would cover. I thought it was odd, and maybe I had the wrong gasket. Enter my education on oil galley plugs. Thanks to a poster on the 356 register …
Taking a run at checking out the oil pump endplay. This is the amount of movement the tang should be able to travel back and forth after the pump is mounted to the case. After putting the third piece in the vice, and mounting the oil pump to the face with gasket, I was getting …
