I've wanted to establish an oil analysis program for Gretchen for a while now. Her engine is quite worn and is due for a rebuild in the near future, but in the meantime I want to run the car as much as I can, while not going past the point of doing irreversible damage to the internals. An effective oil analysis program can help me with this.
In part one, I discussed ways to make connections to the 944 engine for troubleshooting and diagnostics. This time I will go over some of the other tools and equipment I've found helpful when diagnosing issues and performing service on Gretchen.
This is going to be a really short one, just to introduce you to a great product that will make your life way easier if you're concerned about messy and toxic coolant spills when draining/servicing your cooling system.
In order to effectively troubleshoot an issue, you not only have to take a logical and methodical approach, you also have to be able to physically connect test equipment to discover what is and what isn't working. And if you can't do that, correctly finding the fault is made way more difficult that it has to be. So with that in mind, I'd like to show you some of the special test leads, equipment and other tools I've built, adapted, or otherwise found to be useful while troubleshooting and working on Gretchen.
One of the first things I did when I bought Gretchen was inspect the timing chain and wear pads on the tensioner. The car's documentation told me the pads were only a few years old, and upon inspection they showed very little wear.
