Cayman Power Steering Lines Replace PART II

Bottom line up front: I finally FINISHED replacing two power steering hoses, and the car runs fine! Oh sure, that sounds easy, but like anything else I've never done before, it was a learning experience, and getting it done feels like winning the lottery. 

Total new tools bought: 2 

     -one special Porsche steering line disconnect tool 

     -some E-Torx sockets

New procedures performed: A LOT!

    -Remove air intake, remove intake resonance tube, remove Oil Separator, Install new serpentine belt, remove power steering lines, disconnect a bunch of clips/wires/etc, 

    -Removed one frog that hopped into the garage.

Total Cost: $636 for two new lines and two new tools. 

    -My guess is that just the labor would have cost that much. 

    -FREE LABOR!

    -FREE LABOR assists from Julie Nixon and Brian Nixon!

    -FREE use of a lift at school!

Total Savings compared to having a Porsche Dealer do the work: PRICELESS!

Besides getting to use a lot of tools and work all over the car, another really fun part of working in your garage (in South Carolina in the summer) is the heat.  Oooh, and don't forget the humidity. With my infrared thermometer I can state that it hit 90 degrees in the garage on one humid day, and I can confirm it felt a little warm. That explains the new garage fan. It also explains the new garage portable AC unit! This repair job mostly hit during some 99 and 100 degree days, so thanks to whoever invented air conditioning!

Just for fun I looked up how long the book answer is for labor on replacing power steering lines. I'm not sure if this includes all the work, but for the high pressure line my reference at school said it was a 2.5 hour job. Let's just say it took me a LOT more than that to do this job! However, now that I've done it, bought a special tool, and learned my way around the car some more, I'm sure I could do it a lot faster. on the other hand, I never want to do this one again!

There was some good luck involved, the 100 degree temperatures went away near the end of the job, and that made things much easier. We even had a bunch of rain, so maybe that explains the frog that hopped into the garage!

One mistake I made involves the bolt in the photo above. Near the end of this job I had put everything back together in the engine bay, and it was time to start the car up! I ran the engine for a minute or so, turned it off, and checked the power steering fluid. After doing this another time or two, the engine made an odd noise. I did a visual inspection of everything, and there was a bolt missing from the 3 that hold the power steering pulley on. Sure enough, the other 2 bolts were loose, and I knew that I'd forgotten to tighten them AFTER putting the new serpentine belt on. 

To put the pulley back on you can only tighten these bolts a little, and I SHOULD have gone back to tighten them AFTER putting the belt on, but managed to leave out that step. Well, ok, now I had to find the missing bolt. Ah yes, THE CASE OF THE MISSING BOLT, starring Sherlock Holmes the Do-It-Yourselfer mechanic! Luckily I had a flashlight and a telescoping magnet to retrieve it, but I didn't see it inside the car. 

This is where I knew that I also had removed the covers underneath, so JUST MAYBE it was down on the floor of my garage. Sure enough, there it was! Some luck involved there, guaranteeing that I will never win the lottery! After tightening all 3 bolts, the odd noise went away, and life was good again!

Underneath I disconnected one of the lines. This step was easy, really nothing in the way down here, so the exact OPPOSITE of working on the other end of the lines on top of the engine!

New line, ready to be inserted. 

Back to the engine bay: Upper left is the Air/Oil Separator that has to come out. Everything else here has to MOVE OUT OF THE WAY! I've already disconnected the black line that clips into the white part near the top. 

I learned that the main part of the intake here is called a "resonance tube." The air intake comes up from the lower right corner, into the resonance tube, which splits the air left and right (you can see one of the runners on the left with the word PORSCHE on it) to the 2 cylinder banks down below, where the 6 cylinder flat boxer engine lives. 

This is the Air/Oil Separator. Not visible on the far right is where the PCV hose comes in. The circular part catches the oil which drops down to the left where the green O rings are. This gets installed rotated up 90 degrees. Closest to the camera is one of the two bolt holes, very simple to attach. 

Looking towards the engine through the opening behind the 2 seats we see the Power Steering Pump pulley with three bolts removed. In the upper left is the high pressure hose coming down into the pump, so I'll get the pulley off and loosen the line there with a 16mm wrench. These steps were easy. 

With the pulley gone, you can see the pump with the line going straight up out of it. 

Line is removed, and I just stuck it in this empty bottle, but no more fluid came out at this end. 

One of the power steering lines. 

                                                

Porsche tool for disconnecting power steering lines. 
If my car was a year older, it wouldn't need this tool because you can use a regular wrench on them. Oh well, now I know!

Since I ordered a new Air/Oil Separator, this is the old one taken apart just to look at it. Pretty simple diaphragm that stops any oil in the air in the engine, oil then drips back down through those two tubes with O rings on the left. 

Looking into the engine from outside the car on the driver side, #1 is the air intake runner for three of the cylinders behind the driver, I've loosened 6 bolts that hold it just to get it out of the way of #2, which is the AC Condenser, now pulled back onto the engine, so that we could get to the steering line UNDERNEATH it. The 2 AC aluminum lines are still attached, so this is a great example of just moving parts out of your way without totally removing them. In the case of the AC system, sure, you could remove it, but that would require bleeding all the refrigerant and oil out of it first. 

 

One of the old lines is hanging down. I think we removed one by pulling it up and out, and the other pulling to down and out. Upper right you can see the gold connections where the loose line connected, and the other line is still connected. I wanted to get one line totally free before loosening the 2nd line and risk confusing which was which!

TIP OF THE DAY: When you remove bolts that you want to put back in an exact order and not get them mixed up, just punch some holes in cardboard and label it. This is handy for head gaskets, or in this case, the bolts on the air intake runner. 

Here's a funny FUSE BOX story and YES I made a mistake! At some point I unhooked the battery and then closed the lid on it, forgetting that this car has electronic hood openers. In other words, I now had NO WAY to open the lid and reconnect the battery! Although, Porsche solves this issue by providing a hand EXTRA Positive Battery Connection in the fuse box under the driver side dash! You can't jump start the car here, but you can energize the battery enough to use your key or the car switch to open the hood. 

The upper right red battery connection is pulled out. Just connect a jumper cable to it (hopefully the positive one) then ground the negative, and hit the button to open your front trunk (frunk.) 

Switches to the front trunk and rear hatch on the driver sill. TIP: They don't work when the battery is disconnected. ASK ME HOW I KNOW!

Nearing the end, everything is connected and the car runs, so I've replaced the aluminum rear wall engine cover. Next up is the thickly padded carpet piece that goes over this. Need to remove that piece of trim up on top of the wall. Even when you drive and your seat is almost up against this, the engine noise isn't too loud, and the heat doesn't come into the cabin. 

Not a big deal, but the trim piece is removed. Never had to do that before, even though I know I've take the carpet off. 

                                         

Above is the carpet in place, and the top trim. Behind that is the aluminum engine cover, so just missing the carpet piece for back there next. 

More finishing up is to replace the plastic covers over most of the bottom. Here I'm standing under the front of the car looking towards the rear. The biggest metal pipes are for coolant, since the two radiators are above my head, and they cross while heading back to the engine. 

Covers installed. FUN FACT: German engineering results in all these panels being attached with two different kinds of fasteners. Some are Torx and some are 10mm nuts. I'm not sure why they couldn't make them all the same, so I had two power tools underneath to deal with both kinds, instead of having  to swap sockets every two seconds.