Sunday, July 28, 2019

Pre-Nationals Maintenance

There's only one event left that works for me before Nationals so I wanted to take the opportunity to get some maintenance out of the way and double-check the alignment before that to make sure everything is as expected. I also wanted to get the car on the lift to inspect everything that's been done to the car this year so I took Kay to SJF Performance.

Fresh Motul Competition Gear FF 75W140 - 7-28-19
First up was to flush out the old transmission fluid. I haven't changed the fluid since the OSGiken diff was installed in early February of this year. That was about 3000 miles ago and the diff was starting to whine a little bit more than usual. The old fluid came out pretty clean so that's always a good sign and 3 quarts of fresh Motul Competition Gear FF 75W140 went in. The diff is now back to being quiet and the transmission feels really smooth.

Sampling the old engine oil - 7-28-19
Sample of used oil for SPEEDiagnostix - 7-28-19
The engine oil is also only about 3000 miles / 7 months old but I plan to drive Kay to Nebraska for Nationals and not tow so I want to make that trip on fresh fluids. I've also put enough miles now to get a valid used oil sample. I've used Blackstone Labs a few times now for Bumblestook but this time I opted to give SPEEDiagnosix a try. Their work with LN Engineering and specifically Porsche engines are particularly interesting and I'm hoping they can give me much more insight than a more generic UOA (used oil analysis) lab can provide. We also put in a fresh 8.5 quarts of Driven DT-40 oil.

SPEEDiagnostix

I wanted Steve to double-check the sways bars to make sure there's no binding or preload and he noticed something odd on my driver side rear lower control arm. The swaybar end link seems to have been hitting it and left several gashes. Upon further inspection, the swaybar wasn't centered properly (off by well over an inch). He recentered it and re-greased the mounts and we're now back in business.

Rear bar endlink hitting LCA
Rear swaybar re-centered
Next up was to verify the alignment. The front was actually really good despite Speedsport Tuning doing string alignments. The camber was spot on but the toe had drifted a little. The rear on the other handed needed a bit more tweaking. The camber had slipped a bit and the toe was uneven. SJF easily took care of this and we were back to the specs I wanted with a bit of toe-in in the rear and a smidge of toe-out in the front for better turn in. The sheet also shows the secret to why Porsches turn so well despite having a Macpherson strut up front, look at all that caster from the factory!

Ready for Alignment - SJF Performance - 7-28-19
Perfect alignment once again
Now that everything is well sorted, we'll test everything out with one final local shakedown and then get ready for the big event.

Oh, I also picked up a ScanGuage to help me see what my true coolant temps are from the OBD2 port. The factory gauge just shows 175F when "warmed up" at all times and I wanted something more accurate. I'm not sure I'm going to leave the gauge at this location but it's very useful. Interesting, in 93F weather and cruising around, coolant temps are already around 210-215F.

Scangauge E
Maintenance Updates:

Mileage: 36,515
- Oil change - 8.5 quarts DRIVEN DT-40, Napa Gold oil filter
- Trans Fluid Change - 3 quarts Motul Competition Gear FF 75W140
- Re-greased rear sway bar mounts