Porsche 911 Oil Cooling System Rebuild
After sanitizing the oil cooling system components, it was time to put it back together.
Clean Oil Vessels
Got my brass cooler and oil tank back from Pacific Oil coolers. They are both painted satin black.
Look at that! Squeaky clean inside. This is a job I don’t regret missing out on.
External Thermostat Rebuild
I bought some external hex caps from a gentleman who makes race car parts named Jimmy Tidwell to replace my old buggered up ones.
After cleaning the thermostat housing I boil-tested the thermostat element to verify it expands.
Then I re-assembled, torqued, and safety wired the caps because racecar. This should be much easier to service in the future.
Oil Cooling System Re-installation
I re-installed my oil tank.
After spending way too much time cleaning it of decades of grease and dirt,
I found my old tank filler gasket was in surprisingly good condition so I reused it.
Hooked up these new rear oil lines finger tight.
After scrubbing and flushing my hard lines, I installed those finger tight as well so they could slide around while I tightened the thermostat connections.
After breaking my head for a while trying to figure out how to torque all 4 of these oil line nuts in place, someone on the forums kindly pointed out to me that I should tighten the inner ones first, then install the outer ones and tighten those last. A bit of anti-sieze on each threaded connection should help me break those apart more easily in the future.
In retrospect it seems really silly and obvious but at the time I seriously had no idea how I was going to do that! Sometimes you need to walk away and ask for help before you break something.
Then I went back and tightened the hard line clamps and oil tank line. I am missing photos but I bought and installed the hard line clamps and rubber cushions that go under the rocker as they were previously missing.
Oil Tank Level Sender Refurbishment
Last bit of the oil cooling system rebuild was the old tank sender. It cleaned up pretty nicely.
I hooked it up to the multimeter real quick and it still works! The resistance varies steadily as you rotate the arm through its range of motion.
Back in the hole it goes. I decided to use a rubber gasket instead of a cork one hoping that it lasts longer. The old cork gasket disintegrated and made a big mess of the tank and rear right fender well.
A little sensor gymnastics were needed to get it back in.
Done.
The oil cooler install was quite a process in itself. It wasn’t quite a straight bolt-in.
We will go over that in detail next time.