Chris_in_the_UK
New member
On a bit of a roll the last few days - following the 'mechanicals' which also included suspension arms, drop links and the front top shock absorber mountings, it was time to move onto the engine cooling and zircon.
Here is the scrap pile so far......
The car is knocking on the door of 10 years old and apart from service stuff, pretty much everything else is original. First job was to remove the front bumper so I could inspect the rads. Forgot to mention earlier that I had some GT3 barake ducts to fit, so they went on today as well.
You will probably spot the new Powerflex ARB bush lurking in there.
Onto the front bumper.
My trusty assistant was on hand to assist...
A close up of the clip release that holds the bumper to the corners of the wings.
Bumper off!
Not too bad...
Nearside is slightly worrying!
Let's have a look under the aircon rads......
Aircon rads off - they will be replaced, along with the dryer - with new O rings of course.
Radiator removal requires a few stuff to be disconnected (obviously!) and this is where the troubles begin.....
I had to cut the first one after the retaining clip was removed so I could get a proper grip of the metal sleeve - it took a while to persuade out of the socket and here is why....
Here is where it came from (Offside), you will notice that the lower socket is a plastic tee - the upper one is an aluminium tube which I suspected was going to be a whole lot more difficult!.
After liberal use of Plus Gas and ever increasing application of cunning/brute force it was obvious that the only thing that was happening was the distortion of the socket.
The nearside was in the same state and neither could be separated from the aluminium coolant pipes that run across the front of the car.
So all in all, a very frustrating day - new pipes are coming into my OPC tomorrow - when I rang to order them it became clear during the discussion that this is a common problem across the Cayman/Boxster/997. What appears to be a slight amount of corrosion around the hose/socket joint which will probably be communicated as an 'advisory' (like mine was) can in fact be hiding what I found. My OPC (Leeds) keeps the pipes in stock (which kind of confirms that it is a common problem IMO).
More to follow.......
Here is the scrap pile so far......
The car is knocking on the door of 10 years old and apart from service stuff, pretty much everything else is original. First job was to remove the front bumper so I could inspect the rads. Forgot to mention earlier that I had some GT3 barake ducts to fit, so they went on today as well.
You will probably spot the new Powerflex ARB bush lurking in there.
Onto the front bumper.
My trusty assistant was on hand to assist...
A close up of the clip release that holds the bumper to the corners of the wings.
Bumper off!
Not too bad...
Nearside is slightly worrying!
Let's have a look under the aircon rads......
Aircon rads off - they will be replaced, along with the dryer - with new O rings of course.
Radiator removal requires a few stuff to be disconnected (obviously!) and this is where the troubles begin.....
I had to cut the first one after the retaining clip was removed so I could get a proper grip of the metal sleeve - it took a while to persuade out of the socket and here is why....
Here is where it came from (Offside), you will notice that the lower socket is a plastic tee - the upper one is an aluminium tube which I suspected was going to be a whole lot more difficult!.
After liberal use of Plus Gas and ever increasing application of cunning/brute force it was obvious that the only thing that was happening was the distortion of the socket.
The nearside was in the same state and neither could be separated from the aluminium coolant pipes that run across the front of the car.
So all in all, a very frustrating day - new pipes are coming into my OPC tomorrow - when I rang to order them it became clear during the discussion that this is a common problem across the Cayman/Boxster/997. What appears to be a slight amount of corrosion around the hose/socket joint which will probably be communicated as an 'advisory' (like mine was) can in fact be hiding what I found. My OPC (Leeds) keeps the pipes in stock (which kind of confirms that it is a common problem IMO).
More to follow.......
