Cars and Coffee: COFFEE REPORT!

Highlight of the day, this Lamborghini racecar. 

On Saturday I attended two Cars and Coffee events in Charlotte, and figured I should be serious about this. Sure, there were cool cars there. Yes, many of them were more expensive than 4 new Corvettes! So, Let's get down to the real nitty gritty and report on the COFFEE at both locations!

Highlight #2: Porsche GT3 RS with Weissach/Manthey package. 

First up, Hendrick Porsche of Charlotte held their monthly Stuttgart Saturday, which believe it or not happens on a Saturday! Stuttgart is the city in Germany where the Porsche cars HQ is located, but what about their coffee? In a major upgrade, this was the first event there that I noticed a shiny new Nespresso machine for coffee. After someone explained to me how to use it, I enjoyed a delicious cup of coffee. Yes, it was free. Yes, they also had doughnuts from a local bakery. Overall, I'd rate the experience as Excellent, but what about up the road at Lamborghini?

At Lamborghini Charlotte, they provided the guests with boxes of Dunkin' Donuts coffee, and I imagine Dunkin' Donuts donuts. Since I like Dunkin', and the goodies were also free, I would rate them as Very Good, so maybe just one small step below the Porsche coffee experience. Oh, there were some cars too!

50th Anniversary of the 911 Targa model. 

SPOILER ALERT! Porsche with the Weissach package. 

2025 Porsche Macan Electric Turbo. The electric Macan is new this year, and even though it does NOT have a turbo, Porsche still uses the Turbo badge to show it has more horsepower than the base model. Sure, that makes sense!

I liked this dark green on the Lamborghini.

License plate time: Create Value. Must be an investment advisor. 

Hey, nice car! Thanks I Know.

Lamborghini Countach. 

The Countach was built from 1974-1990, and was one of the cars that really put Lambo on the map! That map would be the "Map of Awesome Cars."

Big crowd inside the Lamborghini dealer also. Must be the free coffee and donuts!
Or the cool cars. 

Very nice Aston Martin outside. 

1st edition Lotus Emira. 

Lamborghini Huracan Evo with all wheel drive. 

Rear wing on the Lambo racecar.
To be honest I thought Roger Dubuis was the driver, but that's the name of a watch company that sponsors the racecar!

Some serious aerodynamic goodies on this thing. 

Speaking of aerodynamics on a fast car, here's some more details on the Porsche GT3 RS. Sure, it was over $300,000, but I get the idea that it's fast. 

Big rear wing for down force and better cornering. 

Vents and airfoils in the front hood to get the air moving where it will make the car faster. 

Vents over the front wheels

Large wheel covers on the rear wheels for better air flow. You can read the tire size, 335 (that's WIDE) on 21 inch wheels. 

More aerodynamic goodness behind the front wheel to shape the air flow over the rest of the car. Right behind the top vents is the oval gas cap cover. 

Lamborghini COFFEE (via Dunkin)

I think this was a Lambo Urus (SUV) interior. Along with the GREEN trim, you still get the red cover (by the cup holders) over the start button, so you can always pretend you're launching missiles when you start it up. 

An Audi R8 pulled up too. I saw a kid with a "Lord of the Rings" T-shirt, and of course it also had the Audi 4 rings logo!

Back at the Porsche dealer, I saw this row of 2025 electric Macans that are being sold as used cars. The ones I looked at had 3,000-5,000 miles, so maybe they were demonstrators, or used for VIPS at the local pro golf tournament or something. Could be a good price, who knows?

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 doing it the first time, 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. On the final day of reassembly, Brian and I didn't even have to turn on the AC. 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. By using technical terms like "black line" and "white part" you can really sound like you know what you're doing!

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. As you might guess, this is specifically made for this car, and luckily most of the hose is flexible enough to get it removed or installed. 

                                                

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 the green 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 Compressor, 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 gasket bolts, 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! However, Porsche solves this issue by providing a handy 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 so you can 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 are 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 engine 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. 

Cayman Power Steering Lines Replacement

Somewhere in this car is a leaking hose. Let's find it and fix it!

Last week I wrote about an easy job of oil+filter change and tire rotation, so let's get into a more challenging job! About five years ago I bought a mid-engine 2009 year model car, and along the way it developed a power steering fluid leak. How do you diagnose this? Well, a few hints were that one day it made a groaning noise when I turned the steering wheel. Now what part of the car has anything to do with that? Several, but I eventually checked the power steering fluid level, and sure enough it was low! Easy solution, add fluid! No more noise! Hooray!

Two hoses, once covered in yuck. Here's the power steering line leak. 

Fast forward a few months, and the noise returned. AH HA! I'll check the fluid! Whoa, it's low AGAIN! Anyway, this process repeated itself, and sometimes there would be a SMALL drop of fluid on the floor under the car. Now, in a lot of cars, your power steering pump, reservoir, and all the steering lines are up front! EASY RIGHT? Probably. BUT, on a mid-engine car, oh no, it's not all located in one place, that would be too EASY! In this case the pump and reservoir are in the middle of the car behind the driver, the lines snake their way down, and then forward to the steering rack by the front axle. One line sends the high pressure fluid from the pump up to the rack, and then another line returns the fluid back to the reservoir. 

The green cap is where the PS fluid goes. It's a little tiny dipstick located behind the passenger seat and above the engine. 

Anyway, fast forward to this year, and one day when I pulled out of the garage there was a NOT SO SMALL puddle of fluid, so I figured it was time to find the leak, fix it, and live a happy life! At school I was able to research where all the lines were, and it was time to put the car up on the lift and get to work diagnosing where the leak was located. After removing a bunch of panels underneath (oh, here's a fun bit of trivia, Porsche uses two different TYPES of fasteners on all the panels under the car, both Torx and regular 10mm.) So, with the help of my instructors, one in the driver seat (up on the lift) turning the wheel with the car running, and two of us below looking for leaks, we found the spot where one of the lines had split and was spilling fluid. 

Power steering fluid

This was good to know, because there are several sections of lines. Pro Tip: This car has GREEN power steering fluid, so while usually if you saw green fluid under your car you might think it's coolant, or Slimer from Ghostbusters, or one of those aliens from Men in Black. In this case, green fluid is just power steering fluid. OK, finding the problem was still a beginner step, so I had to order new lines and then start learning how to remove and replace them. 

Screenshot from my online manual. 

This is where Google and You Tube also come in handy, although for the life of me I could not find a GREAT video showing all the steps of what I was about to do, with my specific model car. This became clear when I eventually downloaded a full repair manual, and saw that up to 2008 the Cayman had one kind of lines underneath that used normal 14mm or so wrenches to take apart, BUT, of course starting in 2009 with my car's year, oh man you needed a special Porsche Tool! That's another story, but I bought the special tool, still thinking I can do this way cheaper than at a dealership. 

Stay tuned for part two!

Just for fun I wanted to show this new dual drive socket set. From 6mm to 24mm with no skips, the sockets work on a regular square ratchet, or on this long 17mm ratchet. They were at a special student price, so I splurged and bought the MATCO version.