The 911SC Chronicles, Part III
January 6, 2004
Today has been a good day. Not because I was able to take the SC
on a memorable drive, or because I was able to fix something on
it. Today felt like a good project car day.
With a temperature of 20F (3F with the wind chill), I was not about to
go work outside on the car. And yet, bundled up with warm
clothes, I spent about 5-6 minutes at the engine compartment of the
car. The goal was to remove the heater motor that resides in the engine
compartment.
I had just received the heater hose that had been removed by one of the
car's previous owners and knowing that the heater motor was bad, I
wanted to remove the "squirrel cage" from the motor so that it would
not impede the hot air's flow from the engine fan to the passenger
compartment.
What I did not expect in removing the "squirrel cage" is how easily the
motor was disassembled. There was black dust of magnetic material
everywhere and soon I was able to find what had failed. The
motor's bearing(spherical bushing) located by the brushes had worn
enough to allow too much play and one of the brushes had popped off its
carrier.
Thankfully, the bushing came out of its socket with a lot less effort
than I had expected. It looks like a silver ball with a hole
drilled though it. Could the answer be that easy? Just replace
what looks like a $1.00 part? I will look into replacing this
bushing and possibly
the brushes.
January 8, 2004
Today, another milestone has been reached. The car has been
properly
titled and carries Missouri license plates.
Getting the car to pass the Missouri state inspection was not of great
concern. I was very apprehensive about the emissions inspection,
though. The car was registered as a historic vehicle in
Minnesota, thus it was exempt from emissions inspections. In
Missouri, the historic vehicle registeration places a annual limit of
1000 miles for personal use, which is not enough for my purposes. The
car would have to somehow pass the emissions test.
As such, I installed the belt that drives the air pump (had to purchase
it, there was none on the car when I bought it) and drove to the
emissions inspection station. To my surprise, only an idle test
was performed onthe car. No gas cap leakage or driving-on-rollers
tests were performed. The car passed easily, taking me past one
major hurdle towards getting the car registered in Missouri.
Seemed like a good way to start the day, all done before it was time to
get to work.
At the driver's license bureau, the clerk did not give me too hard of a
time for not having a bill of sale, thankfully. I installed the
license plates I received on the spot and drove off happily, a
well-spent lunch break!
This was like the icing on a tasty cake. I feel that the progress
made on the car has been very good. The list of items that have
already been fixed or addressed on the car is too large to recount
here. Some of the notable improvements have been:
New all-season Bridgestone tires. I have the same type on my
Audi, great steering response and fantastic wet handling.
Re-attached the rear lid's lifting shock, no need to prop up the hood
with a rod any more.
Fixed the windshield washer system. Numerous connections had
popped off when the system froze due to being filled with plain water.
Cleaned the interior light door switches so that they work reliably.
Restoring the heater is one of the major remaining projects as locating
the necessary part has not been easy. Still, everything is adding up to
making the car more and more usable. At the end of the day, I can
just hop in it and go for a drive without feeling I am stepping into a
totally primitive machine. Not bad for a 25yr old car!
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Last Updated Thu Jan 15 22:42:34 CST 2004