Well, it’s about time I updated the progress of the restoration a little. Both the front and rear suspensions are back on the car after being completely sripped, sandblasted, repainted, rebuilt w/new bearings, seals, hardware, etc-and torqued down with new high-strength (Grade 10.9) metric hardware. Work on rebuilding and modifying the original wiring harness continues as I await several parts orders (new brake hard lines, dual-circuit master cylinder, Turbo tie rod kit) to come in so I can finish up the chassis and make it a roller.
First, the suspension. The rear was pretty straightforward-no major adapting or fabrication had to be performed, as was the case with the front A-arm bushings (click here for the full story on that). Luckily, the basic design and dimensions of the 911/912’s rear suspension bushings stayed the same from ’65 up till ’89, so parts are plentiful and easy to find-I just ordered a set, did a little trimming here and there to fit my arms and spring plates, and torqued everything down after applying a healthy dose of Weltmeister’s special poly grease. I also drilled and tapped the banana arms for zerk fittings so I could hit ‘em with some lube when (not if) they start to squeak. The hardest part of the rear suspension rebuild was removing and replacing the inner and outer wheel bearings inside the banana arms-with no shop press handy, I employed a stout brass punch and a good size hammer (and I made DAMN sure I was only applying pressure to the outer races-have you seen what they want for new inner bearings?). A few minutes of careful tapping, and out they came with no damage (can’t say the same for my thumb, though).
After careful cleaning and a thorough inspection, I came to the conclusion that either they had all been replaced at some time in the car’s murky past, or had at least been cleaned and greased often, because they showed no wear that I could detect whatsoever-all were well within spec. When it came time to re-insert them into the arms, I put the greased bearings in a baggie and let them sit in the freezer overnight-then popped the arms into the oven and let them heat up to about 300 degrees or so (Tip-do NOT let the wife catch you doing this). With the arms nice and toasty and the bearings frozen, everything went together a lot easier than they came apart. New seals went on after the assembly normalized at room temp, then the stub axles and outer hubs (with the spacer in the middle) were torqued with the 36mm nut to 250+ ft lbs, and new stainless cotter pins finished things up.
The front suspension gave me a few problems (not counting the bushings and the bolt I stripped)-I had to do a little shimming of the mounts to get everything moving freely once all the bolts were torqued to spec-and I had to remove both torsion bars and clean the splines before the adjusters would slip over them-when I had painted them after sandblasting years ago, I had forgotten to mask off the splines and the paint prevented the adjusters from fitting over them. After removing the paint and greasing the splines everything fit fine. I had a similiar problem with the dust caps for the front hubs-they were too tight until I removed the layer of paint on the inside edge of the cap where it fit over the end of the hub. New front bearings and races went into the hubs using the same freezing/heating trick I employed on the rear bearings and control arms. I picked up a set of Koni strut inserts on Ebay for a good price, and they slipped into my bright yellow strut housings perfectly-but they didn’t come with any upper mounting bushings. Later cars have a metal mount with 3 bolts that thread into the inner fenderwell and allows some caster and camber adjustment, but early cars like my '66 just have a big round hole in the trunk wall the strut top goes through and is secured by rubber bushings-which, of course, nobody offers by themselves. After posting my plight on a few of the Porsche bulletin boards, a helpful soul offered to mail me a brand new set he just happened to have lying around. Heck of deal! They arrived a few days later (UPS stops more often at my house than the school bus does) and I had everything buttoned up that same night-(well, 1 a.m. the next morning, anyway-I tend to lose track of time once I get started on something concerning the car.).
