Preparing for Gretchen's first drive - to the titling office for plates.

Late Nov, 2019. With 33 year-old Gretchen safely tucked away in my garage, it was time to get her ready for the first drive - to the titling office.

   I have lived in places where the hoops you have to jump through to get a car plated make you question whether it's worth the hassle, but here, you basically buy the car, insure it, bring the old, signed title to the licensing  and titling offices, pay the tax and license fees and boom, you're ready to drive it away.

  Gretchen had to physically be there so they could verify the VIN, but that's the only inspection  she needed. However, a few checks/adjustments/repairs were in order before the first drive. 

 There were three rather important issues:

1. Timing belt failure on any Porsche 944 is catastrophic. Break a belt, loose a few teeth, or jump a tooth due to a loose belt, and internal engine damage is guaranteed. This belt was last replaced within the allowable time frame, but there was no history on belt tension, which must be checked regularly. Ignoring this was a risk I was not willing to take. So off came the belt covers so tension could be checked and adjusted if necessary. The tension was spot-on, but the belt had a bit of oil on it from a leaking seal. It was going to be replaced, but would be OK for this short trip.
   
2. The 944S engine has two camshafts,  one for the 8 exhaust valves and one for the 8 intake valves. They are synced together by a chain. The chain is tensioned to remove any slack as it rotates by a hydraulic tensioner with nylon wear pads that the chain slides on. When the nylon pads fail due to age by cracking and falling apart, more catastrophic damage ensues; the chain breaks and flies apart as it rotates against the steel tensioner, causing any or all of the following: bent valves, broken valve springs, broken camshaft gear teeth, broken chain tensioner mounts, steel and aluminum shavings in the oil system, etc. It's an expensive mess.
   

I had been given all the documented service history of this car, and there was no record of the timing chain tensioner pads ever being replaced. I knew that the car had been in the shop years ago for what was almost certainly a failed tensioner (the repair order simply said "repair cylinder head, replace camshaft, guides, etc etc") so I suspected the pads were not ancient, but I couldn't be 100% sure. Off came the cam cover for an inspection. They were clearly only a few years old, and so were left in place, although I had a new set on hand. I would install these later on.

3. The desire to check belt tension and inspect the tensioner pads were actually two other big reasons, besides the weather, why I had the car shipped home instead of driving it from St Louis. But while performing those checks, I discovered that the condition of the fuel lines had been a fire waiting to happen. Now I was really glad I shipped the car!

If you look carefully at the picture above, even though it's out of focus you can see misshapen fuel lines coming off the fuel rail where they curve in front of the intake manifold, in the upper right area of the shot. In the picture below, the main pressure line that feeds the fuel rail is shown. You can just see a bulge in the line at the connector on the right. The fuel is pressurized to around 60 psi, and would really spray around a lot if a hose failed. Add in a random spark or hot exhaust, and things get ugly very instantly.

 Once the engine was buttoned back up, fixing a leaking cam cover gasket in the process, and all of the engine bay fuel lines replaced, Gretchen fired right up and off we drove to the BMV to get her plates! That was a great day. The lady at the BMV said "Oh, what a cute little car!" 

I didn't say much to this.