Center console removal and replacement

The previous owner having lived in Florida apparently left the top off the car in the sun since my center console is a little more faded than I can stand.

Since I now have nicer center console parts I need to swap them out.  The front center console includes the air conditioner temp control, fan, hazards, door locks and rear defroster. 

I found some information on how to remove the center console but then in the Bosche manual it stops at "don't remove the climate control from this panel or you may damage it".  No... this is how you remove it safely, etc.  Nothing.  I googled it and found others asking on forums on how to remove it. Dead end.

Where to go now?  Michael Rose of 9 Elf Motorsports of course.  If it's on a Porsche he likely knows how to fix it, replace it, etc.  We drove the car over and asked him about it.  Because I saw others on rennlist.com asking I decided to post what he told me so others can find the information.

On to the removal process.  

You will need to pull up the carpet around the console.  It's just snapped on there so it's easy to remove.  On the passenger side remove the wood plate with the single bolt at the bottom.  Then remove the screws securing the back of the center console to the front.  Remove the screws securing the console to the floor of the car, etc.

Under the floor mats and the carpet you will see four connectors you need to unplug.  This unplugs the hazards (your turn signals will not work while this is disconnected because they share a relay).  The door lock button, rear defroster and climate fan.  Unplug these; while mine were not brittle I would be careful not to break off any clips if possible.  The cords for these are color coded; just check that they are color coded to match before disconnecting or you will need to label the three smaller connections.

Remove the back of the plugs from the buttons in the console by sliding the console center panels out of the front and carefully pulling them apart.  If you pop the buttons of their panel be careful with the fragile clips holding them in as most of them are brittle and will break off easily.  If you bust them off you will need to figure out how to put them back with a removable product (no glue!).  Remember they are 20+ years old.

Anyway the rear connectors require you pull a bit.  Remove all three from the hazard, rear defrost and climate fan.

Just so you know what you're disconnecting here is a photo of it out of the console but together.  White arrows show you the clips that are broken on my own.  I plan to order new buttons at some point but for now these will still work for me.

This is where we took it to Michael for advice regarding the climate control unit.

Disconnect the two green wires but not the white one. The white 'wire' you see in the climate control area is actually a capillary/tube in a protective sleeve. He said to be careful as you do not want to kink it badly as you will ruin it.

I had to remove our amp in the trunk as it was mounted where we had to get to disconnect the other end of this cable. I removed (sorry about terminology as I am new to this) the carpet from the wall inside of the trunk area. Under that was a plate of some sort of plastic that was bolted on in four places. I pulled up the carpet more and under there is a door that flips up. Inside of there you will see the white capilary that is connected in your console.

He said the end of the tube would be inserted into another 'tube'.

Never did get a photo of that tube.  Sorry.

He said that before you remove the tube you have to mark it with a sharpy so you know how far to insert it when you replace it. He said it must be inserted a certain amount/length and so to mark it before pulling it. Then you can fish the wire back through the main compartment and remove the climate control through the front of the console.

We attached a line to ours with duct tape and carefully pulled it through.  This is the end of the line with the capilary attached.  It feeds under the black part and back into the cab of the car.  This is the view from the front trunk.

It took one of us pushing it through while the other pulled as it's in a grommet with a small hole.  The grommet can be seen from the inside of the car as well.  See the white capilary going up into the trunk from under the front dash?  This feeds up inside of that space in the trunk. 

 

We left our string in there and then reattached it to the new one to pull it back through.  It worked like a charm!

While we had the center console out we sent it to a car upholstery place to have it recovered in German material and have some red stitching put in it.  We plan to do the seats, doors, etc all black with red stitching.

It turned out very nicely! The red stitching looks crooked but once it's mounted that tab won't show.  The tab is offset but the stitching will actually look centered.  Love the red thread!

 

Since we already have the shift boot and knob out we will be replacing those as well.  We chose the Quark MOMO shift boot to match the steering wheel we've ordered.  We chose another style shift knob also made by MOMO.

The shift boot...

 

Now once you get that climate control capilary out and have unhooked all your wires you can remove your console. For our project we actually have a newer, better condition one of these so we are putting in a different one than we pulled out.  Cleaning up the white lettering on these makes a heck of a difference though so try it.

When you're ready to put it back together it goes back the way it came out; in reverse of course!

Just some tips from my experience that will make your life easier when doing this project.

• Put a string on that capilary.  While not necessary it makes it MUCH easier to get back in there.
• Be careful with the grommet when pulling through the capilary.  It's in a small hole in the side part of the grommet and you can rip it if you're not careful
• Per the manual do not remove the temp control knob or you can damage the unit
• Buy new buttons ahead of time if you want to have them on hand... All four of my clips were fragile and broken; it's about $130 to replace them both but they will look like new and clip in to the console cleanly.
• Don't worry as much about making sure the boot is perfect.  We connected the boot to the foam and then put in the console and tucked the boot in around the edges and it worked like a charm.

The new euro plate....

I ordered a matching euro German plate to match the California one we ordered for the back.  Hopefully I won't get harassed for it since it's technically supposed to be a CA plate on the front but at least it matches.  I have seen quite a few others of these on foreign cars.

We bought our plate on ebay and it came with a mounting kit.  It was much less expensive than the plate services that advertise in the various Porsche magazines that I read.  Plate turned out amazing, looks great.  I have gotten tons of comments on it.  

Update 9/12 - Someone asked me about this so...  I have been driving the care for almost 1.5 years and have never had any problems with the police or the state.   I also have my windows tinted much darker than the law allows but since I usually drive it with the top off and windows down I have never had an issue with that either.

More power, more power, more power, new exhaust!

We were fortunate to get a really great deal on a new chromed stainless steel Dansk Sports Single Inlet/Dual Tips exhaust.

Jodi looks excited. :)

The stock exhaust system is a source of great flow restriction. By replacing the exhaust system, we will see gains in horsepower; apparently a significant boost according to our Porsche RUF factory trained mechanic, Michael Rose.

The stainless exhaust is much more durable than Aluminized steel so it will last longer.  The Dansk muffler sounds just awesome and it looks awesome.

We currently have a single tip exhaust so that means that we must remove part of the rear bumper to make room for the other exhaust tip.

Michael's awesome future business partner Forest is helping with the bumper modification.  In this photo he is prepping the bumper before cutting by placing tape on the bumper; this allows for more clean cut.  You can also still see the old muffler in this photo.

 

Old one out!

 New one in!

 

Muffler awesomeness...

 

And finally a video of how it sounds after installation.

 

Fixing the broken stuff... broken power window switches on the 911

It's interesting after owning another 1988 911 for a few years to see the same things not working correctly on both cars, parts wearing similarly or sometimes completely different.

We are in the beginning phase of going through the car and have already made quite an extensive list of things we want to restore, change or upgrade on this car.

Yesterday we took both cars to our car audio guy and had him move our stereo and speakers from our 'old' car to our 'new' car. We also had to have our Porsche mechanic fix our non-working brake lights, adjust our muffler that was touching the frame and we had him go through the entire car and make a list of things we need to do to the car over time.

Some of the first things we are working on now are the broken things. 

Given the car is over 20 years old there are lots of little things that need to be repaired or replaced.

Lots of common problems!

First thing that we noticed was that the switch for the passenger side electric window didn't work. We had the same problem in our last car.  Luckily the drivers side has a switch to control the passenger window and given this switch worked it means that the only thing broken we my switch.  Other common problems are apparently regulators and motors which are more expensive than a switch.

The switches are very easy to replace once you get the door panel off.  As you can see here (driver's side) someone has already replaced one of the two switches because one is matte (after market) and one is shiny (OEM).  We are replacing all three of them so that they all match and to avoid ripping the door panels off for each switch failure.

 

As you can see below the switch is easy to swap. Just simply pull off the connectors one by one and reconnect them.

 

Here is the old and new switch side by side.

 Next thing I am tackling is a lock issue with the passenger door as well as getting a very good alarm installed in the car.

The car has arrived!

The car arrived at 12:30 today; only 1.5 hours later than the estimated time.  I highly recommend using Montway Auto Transport. The driver was great.  The shipping happened fast as promised and it arrived in a reasonable amount of time and better yet the car wasn't damaged while shipping.  

The car looks pretty great on the outside but with some definite issues that we will have to fix. 

I couldn't resist and while I was just on a long lunch we jumped in to take it for a spin.  I LOVE THE SOUND OF THIS CAR!  I'm not sure what is different other than the high performance air filter system and the new upgraded muffler but man the car has a beautiful throaty Porsche sound to it.  It just rumbles.  For a car that is over 20 years old this thing can get up and go.  I took it out on a back road and really pushed it and it drove great.  The sway bar they installed in the front made a huge difference in cornering.  Wow.  

Rather than do the smart thing and test all the lights BEFORE the test drive we decided we should do this afterwards since our other 88' 911 has had several issues with brake lights, headlights, etc. The brake lights didn't work.  I followed Jodi over to our Porsche engineer Michael Rose at 9 Elf Motorsports (formally Tillman's Engineering) in Santa Rosa.  Micheal is a great Porsche engineer and immediately noticed that the rear bushings were shot.  We had a pre-purchase inspection done by German Vehicle Service down in Hollywood, FL and they failed to spot or mention this issue.  Ouch.  Anyway the good news was he fixed our lights in a couple of minutes. 

If you're looking for an amazing mechanic for your Porsche go and see Michael.  He's trained at the Porsche factory and he can fix anything and make your car run just amazing.  He's honest and he always does an amazing job.  Once he fixes it... it's fixed.

Anyway we knew we were buying a classic car that would very likely need a lot of TLC to be perfect.

Overall I am happy!  That being said... Jodi was the one that spent the day with our mechanic with him going through it and listing out everything he would recommend fixing or replacing on the car to reach the condition we want it in.  She has the estimate and list and I haven't seen it yet so I could very well not be quite so happy.  lol

Now for the best part... photos.  Of course it started pouring rain as soon as he unloaded it!

Parts and more parts and more parts

As I mentioned before we already have a 1988 911 Targa that has over 230,000 miles on it but it's in very nice condition and has already had some TLC from us.  Some of that TLC was expensive and easily moved to our new car.

I've contacted a local shop called Get it Darker and got quotes for them to swap the newer stereo and speakers all moved from our current car to the new one. 

Our current car just had a new high performance distributor cap and wires put on it and we are moving those as well.  Our high performance air filter never got installed and so that is going with our new car as well.

We will leave some of our upgrades as we plan to choose different upgrades for the new car so we aren't planning to strip it of all of our work.  :)

Porsche shipping progress

We purchased this car from someone near Miami, Florida and thus have to have the car shipped.  I have never shipped a car myself previous to this and it's been a learning experience.

Originally we'd hired a company called Stateway Auto Shipping.  I read reviews about them on transporationreviews.com. Overall they have great reviews.  I called and spoke to them and was happy about what I heard.  I booked it online and they said they would pick up the car and probably have it here in 4-8 days.  They didn't pick up on the promised date and when I called them they said that they were sorry but it's 'snowbird' season.  This is apparently from March-June and is a problem with getting cars out of Florida during this time.  This is due to the huge influx of seasonal residents who move back to their summer homes and have their cars shipped home as well as a large amount of buyers who simply want Florida cars.  I did some research and found they were telling the truth.  The problem was most other companies planned for this by raising the rates a little so that they can offer more to the drivers. 

I'll explain how it seems like it works to me for those of you that have no idea how auto shipping works.  I had no idea until I started this journey and so I figured I'll blog about it.

When you hire an auto shipper you're likely hiring a broker.  Stateway is 100% a broker shipping company.  This is common but you also need to be wary.  This means if they quote you $1000 to ship and they take a $150 deposit upon the order being placed they are saving back $850 of it for the driver.  They then put out what seems to be a 'contract' in a shipping system that drivers use to find jobs or shipments.  They list the price of the shipping to be $850.  If there are 2000 cars in Florida waiting to be shipped and you're shipping a small car for $850 and someone else is shipping a small car for $1000 which contract do you think will be chosen first?  It's very unlikely it's being shipped in a truck owned by the company you hired but it can happen.  You may be able to request it but I would assume it may cost more and would likely take longer.

So once I figured this out and got quotes from other shippers I called back Stateway and asked that they increase my quote by $200 to make it more attractive.  They do this and said they would call me in the morning with an update and that it should get picked up fast at that price. 

I don't hear from them the next day.  I called them and they don't answer the phones but they return my call two days later and leave a message on my phone. I call them immediately back and they don't answer it again.

I started looking on the review site again and realize that there are SEVERAL reviews from people that are negative that point out that this company asks that users remove the negative reviews in exchange for the deposit back and thus they are skewing their reviews.  I read through all the negatives and there are some real horror stories and I start to see my beautiful new Porsche flash before my eyes.  One story actually involved a driver showing up high on meth and then dropping the persons car on it's side and of course the guy didn't pay his insurance premium.  The owner of the car was stuck with a large repair bill and Stateway apparently didn't do anything to fix the issue.  I know this is an extreme example but wow what happened to vetting your drivers?

Well I admit to a sort of panic when I read so many bad stories and I couldn't reach them and we were one week past the original promised pickup date.  BTW I should mention I scheduled this pickup two weeks prior to the actual date because we had a bodyshop do some work on the car while in FL due to the lower hourly rates there.

So I started looking for another company. I used Uship.com to create a shipping contract for companies to bid on and then I can just choose one.  I received several bids and read all the reviews for each company.  I rejected any shipper without 50 positive feedsbacks.  I finally settled on Montway Auto Shipping.  This was due to their 100% positive ratings online and a good standing with the Better Business Bureau.  They had three complaints and resolved all to the satisfaction of the complainant. 

The shipping quote ended up being about $250 more because I had them upgrade the contract to urgent.  They took the order on Friday and my car was on a truck on Monday, April 11.  Nice! 

Just a tip:  I created a used car agreement from a document I found online. I actually added a clause for the seller to photograph the car and take a video of it before being loaded on the truck and while being loaded.  I did this after some research and a recommendation of a shipper.  The car stays with the same driver from pickup to dropoff.  The photographing and video taking of the loading serves two purposes.  1. It documents the before condition of your car in case they do damage to it while loading/unloading/shipping.  2. The driver is aware of the documentation with photographs and therefore knows if s/he damages it that there is proof that it wasn't like that original and therefore hopefully will be more careful.

I called Montway yesterday and they called the driver.  The estimated delivery date is Wed, April 20.  They provided us with the drivers phone number so we can call for updates if needed.

I will of course update as I have more information or as we receive the car!