I ran the car in two races the first weekend in Oct. The car ran strong and I had no problems, except in impound after the second race the car vented a lot of water after I shut it off. It was not running hot during the race.

When I started it up to drive it off of the trailer at my house there was a loud clattering sound coming from the front of the cam tower/timing gear housing area that increased and decreased with rpms. Dave Hauck and I used an automotive stethoscope to listen to each cylinder and the noise definitely is not coming from the valves or cylinders. We pulled the distributor cap and the rotor, which is one of the black enamel units, was worn below the metal contact to the point that all of the paint was gone and some of the underlying material is worn away. It also looked like there was a groove in two of the contacts in the distributor cap. We then pulled off the timing belt and timing gear and didn't find any play in the shaft. When we put it back together there was no change and if anything the noise was worse.

It seems like there is a wobble in the cam shaft, so how do we verify that or further identify the problem and/or fix? The cam tower is relatively new (6 months). Is pulling the cam the next step (groan)? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Steve, do you have the pet diagram? I think it might be the stub distributor drive is loose on the nose of the cam drive. There's a 10mm bolt behind the little cover inside the dizzy on the shaft. I'd check that before I got too serious... You'd be looking for #26 on page 1 group 9...

Pet diagram, stubs and dizzy's. Jim, what kind of deal are you running here???

Big Dog

Big Dog wrote:


Forshizzle big dog...

I seem to be having a issue with the spellchecker on my new software I just installed: http://944spec.org/944SPEC/images/fbfiles/images/werd2.jpeg

Jim, if you don't have a copy of the PET files let me know I can email it to you...and no this is not porn...well sort of depending on how much you like porsches....

Thanks for the input guys. We got the cam tower off and there was a pretty good wobble in it, so we are just going to replace it. We also did a compression check and all of the exhaust valves were leaking, so we pulled the head and the valves were tapped pretty good. Fortunately I just bought a rebuilt head, so that's going on too.

By the way, speaking of PET files, you can download the complete 944 PET at pdftown.com/PDF-Porsche-944-Workshop-Manual.html The reproduction quality is excellent.

That link will take you to a download site that requires a password to log in. The password is pdftown.com (make sure to use the period). PDF Town is an excellent site for many different types of manuals so you might want to check it out.