Little and Big Things

When I acquired the PFKATBR, Lawrence told me that one of the projects that he hadn’t gotten to was repairing the windshield washer system.  Since I was looking for cheap, easy things to address, I undertook that project.

We first verified that we had power to the pump and that the pump actually ran. It had power and when 12v is applied, the pump makes running noises. We then pulled the hoses and tried for liquid transfer.  That was a partial success. Liquid came out of the output fitfully. Closer examination showed that the output spigot was fractured at the body of the pump.

A little superglue solved that problen and rendered the pump functional, but cynoacrylate adhesives have terrible mechanical properties, so we backed up the glue with a different glue that has better supporting properties.  Gorilla Glue to the rescue. After a couple days of drying time and we had a pump that will move washer fluids.

While waiting those couple days, we idly searched for the replacement pump.  It’s pretty common and does not command Porsche Parts Prices. The end result is that for twelve bucks, the repaired pump is on the shelf and the new pump is in the car.

Then we spent a couple hours cleaning the crap out of the hoses and squirters. Pulling the lever now results in a wet windshield.

That was the little thing. The bigger thing was the speedometer.

A few weeks ago I rebuilt the speedometer after resetting the trip odometer caused the odometer to cease to function. This is a common problem typically caused by 30 year old plastic gears. The rebuild worked fine right up to the moment I reset the trip odometer when again, the odometers both stopped recording. Curious.

The PFKATBR came with most of another instrument cluster, so rather than deal with the one in the car, I went to work on the spare.

The first problem was to find the missing speedo needle and the handful of missing screws. A new FB friend sent me that needed parts and since I had time waiting for parts to arrive, I decided to white-face the instruments. The end result is below:

Out with the old:

And in with the new:

944 Porsches have notoriously poor instrument lighting. Maybe the gauge color change will help.

Until next time.

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