Alignment with Tires, Brake Bleeding, oil change ? DIY

I purchased an 04 C4S Cab in December with 50,000 miles. If you don�t want to read the background skip down to the section marked �Questions:��.. I don�t have the maintenance info except that the prior owner changed the oil every 5,000 and it was replaced a few months before at the same time that a new clutch was installed (the clutch feels amazing on this car). I�m mechanically minded but have only done minor maintenance on motorcycles through the years. My intention is to make this my DIY car�.. This week the car turned 55,000. I had a scare yesterday when I looked under the rear and saw that the rear tires had exposed steel belts and the far inside edges! Immediately order a new set from TireRack.com. I'm replacing all 4 with Sumitomo HTR Z III which is what were on the car. I made the mistake of driving the car a few miles down the road to run a quick errand and heard a �pop� followed by �hiss� (right rear tire). Luckily I was in second gear driving very slow in a parking lot so I just pulled it into an isolated parking area. I returned with my low profile floor jack and tire iron. My Porsche came with a deflated spare tire with cigarette lighter. I have to say that Porsche did a great job when they added these deflated spare kits! It worked like a charm and I had the spare installed/inflated in 10 minutes ready for the drive back to my garage. I now have the car in my garage up on four jack stands. I had read from this forum of a product called JackPost Jack stands and had them already purchased for future work (great product!)�. I have all four tires removed and am waiting for the new tires to show up later this week. While it�s up I plan to change the oil. I�m also considering a brake fluid flush/bleed since Porsche recommends every two years and the dealer recommended it during the inspection. Questions: 1. During the purchase inspection the mechanic (Qualified Indy) said it was out of alignment and I had him align it. Still the rear right wore quicker than the left and both rear tires are heavily worn on the inside (to the steel belt). The outside section on both tires have rubber still slightly above the wear bar (reason I hadn�t look at the inner edge recently ). Is this normal? Is this the negative camber that I�m reading should be done for performance handeling? Should I have the alignment done again? 2. Since I have it up on all four jack stands with the wheels off I�m considering bleeding/flushing the brake fluid. I have the C4S with PSM and ABS. I�ve never replaced brake fluids before but feel its something I might be able to accomplish. Any tips or good instructional posts recommended to help me decide If I should do this? should I bleed or flush? I don't have a vacuum. Thanks for your help and I have learned a lot of great things from this forum. To-date I have only done a few things DIY: 1. Air filter and cabin filter 2. LCD climate control panel replaced (ModuleMaster). 3. Trunk lid actuator replaced (Pelican Parts) 4. Turn signal switch replaced (Suncoast Porsche parts)

These cars eat rear tires. Some owners set the rear camber to 0 to prolong tire wear. Bleeding the air out of your brake system is trickier than you might think. Bone up on the procedure first.

1) Yes, they eat tires. My rears wear twice as fast as my fronts. Yes, it is normal for the rear tires to wear on the inner shoulder before the outer even with a less aggressive alignment. 2) bleeding the brakes and clutch is quite easy on the 996. Get yourself a Motive Power Bleeder (around $50) and do a bit of reading first. There are plenty of DIY threads here and on Renntech.org.

Well, my experience with my Boxster and 996 Turbo is inside edge rear tire wear is toe in related, not camber related. With a proper alignment rear tire life for both cars is very good. 20K or even more miles. Oh, the fronts last at least twice as many miles. So, in the case of your car either the alignment is off or the tech gave the car some agressive alignment intended to "sharpen" the car's handling. I had my Turbo aligned and the tech (at a dealer) gave it just the plain old factory alignment and the car felt transformed and handled like it was on rails. And tire life was exemplary. So I'm a bit leery of any special alignment settings intended to "sharpen" handling. Especially since they appear to cut tire life way down. The best alignments are the ones that come with a before and after printout of the settings and a print out that shows graphically what the adjustment ranges are and what are the acceptable settings and differences. The only places I've gotten this kind of info is from having the car aligned at a dealer. Now the right rear tire can wear faster than the left rear if one is very agressive with the throttle. This arises from the lack of LSD. During right hand turns the inside tire is lightly loaded while the outside tire is more heavily loaded so the inside tire will spin, can spin. This of course results in wear. Since right hand turns are sharper, more frequently made here in the USA USA cars can suffer from this uneven tire wear. For brake flush/bleed you can get a Motive Power Bleeder and use this. Do not overpressure the system. Suction out some of the old brake fluid first -- do not take so much out that you get air in the system! -- and then add in fresh fluid. This reduces the amount of fresh/new fluid you have to use. Go around the car doing each inner and outer bleed in turn. I can't recall the order now or even which inner or outer bleed screw to do first. There are plenty of DIY writeups that cover this. If you do the bleed the old fashioned way put something under the brake pedal so the pedal can't go all the way down. If it does this has the piston in an area of the cylinder where it has never been before and this can damage the piston and any seals. If the car is equipped with a manual transmission do the clutch fluid bleed after the brakes are done.

Thank you all for the information. I will have the tires mounted and balance next weekend then make an appointment with the Porsche dealer for an alignment. I do tend to drive a little spirited but I want to make sure it's setup to normal performance specifications. I also ordered a Motive European Power Bleeder Kit from Amazon.com. I will study the procedure for DIY and attempt the flush later this week. Today I completed my first Oil/filter change and replaced the drive belt (a few visible cracks). I plan to be wheels down and rolling next Sunday.....

Johnny.....the DIY is straight forward. The Motive purchase was a good idea. Pump the Motive to 15 -18 PSI and watch the pressure. The bleed sequence goes like this....RR, LR, RF then LF. The idea is start at the wheel that is farthest from the brake fluid resovuor. A couple tips are.... get a 11 mm metric flared nut box wrench, snug the bleeder screw but don't over tighten it because it can strip, You only need a few tablespoons of old fluid or until you see clean fluid and no air bubbles in the clear tubing connected to the catch bottle, inside bleeder screw 1st then outer. I like to add fluid to the resoviour (I can't spell that word to save my life) before I pressurize the Motive...I call it dry bleeding...less cleanup that way and your Motive stays nice and clean. If you it dry make damn sure to keep an eye on the fluid level. If it goes dry than you need to do a flush. Get a good fluid (I use Motul). Good Luck! And MOST IMPORTANT pump your brakes when you start the car because if you don't and put in reverse you won't have any brakes. Ask me how I know.

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If you are aggressive tire life will suffer. And tire wear might be uneven. No alignment can counter that. But at least the car starts out with a correct alignment. Cracks across the v-ribs of a serpentine belt are normal. Sections of any v-ribs missing is a sign the belt should be replaced. You did not mention it but FYI a belt with sharp edges is a sign the belt is not tracking properly and this can arise from an accessory drive with excessive bearing play. Water pump is the most common accessory drive to manifest excessive bearing play.

Thank you for the info on the belt. I think I replaced a good belt. There were a few cracks (very few) and no sharp edges or signs of wear. I didn't know the history of it and I had purchased a spare belt back when I ordered the oil filter. I just decided to replace it now and start things off new at 55,000. My guess is that the belt wasn't the original, but I don't know....

Thanks Pete..... I ordered ATE Type 200 DOT 4 when I ordered the Motive. I'll take your tip into account.

Here's another brake bleeding guide for you: Bleeding Porsche 911 Carrera Brakes Sounds like you have several great projects completed and planned on your 996!

Brake bleeding tip, alternate from blue to clear fluid each change, makes seeing you have flushed the system much easier. Agree with SP, that the dry bleeding is much less messy, any not that much more time consuming.

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The Federal Gov't., in its infinite wisdom, has banned the sale of blue brake fluid in the USA. Link to letter from Continental

So from what I read from Pelican Parts I can't DYI bleed brakes with the 996 C4S because it has Porsche Stability Management (PSM)?.... Is that correct? Any PSM DYIers out there?

The reason it says you need the PTS2 is you won't move any fluid out of the ABS unit without using a PTS2 to manually cycle it. If you're like me and activate ABS/PSM on a regular basis, that fluid gets circulated pretty well through the ABS unit. I wouldn't really worry about it.

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This is what I found from my shop manual. My car is a C4 so yes it has PSM like yours. The sequence is different than a C2. LR, RR, LF and RF. It also talks about a 2nd bleed for the booster pump. I have never done this and i track my car. I have a Durametric and need to see if I can access the booster pump. See the attached. I didn't read the Pelican article. I think you would be fine bleeding without doing step 2 regarding the booster pump.

Thanks for the help and clarification on PSM bleeding. It looks like a straight forward process from what I've read and seen on video. I think I've already done a hard step by getting it up on the jack stands and removing the wheels.... If anyone else is looking at the Jack Point jack stands - I highly recommend them. I have a low profile jack but I needed to first jack the rear and set the tire down on a 2X4 in order to make more clearance for the JackPoint disc. I had my car on all 4 in a few minutes by only jacking the rear of the car on the jack points to do it.

Brake bleeding is done! My Motive arrived today along with my rear tires (I guess the fronts will arrive tomorrow). since the car was up and the wheels off I went ahead and followed the procedure to bleed. It was very straight forward. My only concern was knowing when the old fluid ended and the new fluid started. I ended up spending 1/2 an hour and 1 liter of fluid on the rear.... After that the front were done in less than 10 minutes. Oh well - now I know it's all clean. There weren't many/any bubbles and the first Oz or two came out a little cloudy on each nipple. Other than that it was all gold. Thanks to everyone for the assistance! Now it's time to get the rubber mounted and drop it for an alignment. Brake pads looked good and are about 1/8" away from the warning post. I was surprised that they were warn about the same at all four corners. I think I'm done with my 55,000 mile DYI service. Next project.... -> plugs and coils..... I've read the posts and watched the videos.... I'm considering having an Indy do it. If I only had confidence that I could reach/change the rear plug/coil. Don't want to have it stuck in my garage and in need of help.... Plan to decide that by Christmas so I have time to think on it..... Thanks again!

I didn't do coils but plugs isn't bad as long as you remove the rear wheels and mufflers. I did it with the rear bumper still on but I had a lift

How do you get the old fluid out of the reservoir? Most of the instructions say to remove the screen and use a turkey baster to suck out the old fluid. I removed the screen but there is something else blocking the way. It looks like you couldn't use anything larger than 1/8 inch.

I found the same thing. I had the turkey baster in hand but couldn't get past the plastic top section after removing the screen. I just pumped the old out through the rear. That's why it took me 1/2 hour on the right rear. Good thing I bought the Motive to do the pushing (I used it dry). Just be careful not to let the reservoir drain completely. I also couldn't tell when I had completely drained all of the old fluid and started bleeding new since they were the same color. I don't know how to best judge that one...... Good Luck!

I found a small siphon hand-pump for 4 bucks at Pep Boys and was able to get most of it out with that, but it wasn't fast. I had the same issue with trying to figure out when to stop bleeding because it was hard to tell by color. I wasn't worried about using too much because I bought 2 liters. Next time I will use a different color (and buy less). There are a lot of different methods posted. I filled the reservoir and put the rest into the power-bleeder. I like your method better, seems like it would require less clean up. The waste-side tubing that came with the power bleeder was way too short. I bought a roll of tubing at Home Depot for $5. I drilled a hole in a bottle cap and fed the tube thru there. I put the cap on an empty 2-liter soda bottle. That worked very well. All in all, not a tough job. Edit: Oh yeah, it added 23.457 hp.

Glad you got that extra HP! I wasn't able to measure mine, but it sure seems faster... that tube they provided was small but I used a clear 10oz drink bottle with a drill top and it was able to "float" without pulling off with only a few oz in it. The only time it became heavy and I had to empty it was on the first bleed when I was draining the original from through the system. Yes, it's a very easy process. Have fun!

To drain the fluid from the reservoir I used an old pump from a large hand-soap bottle. I cleaned it and let it dry the day before. Having a larger tube/pump would be useful, but this did the job quite well. The tube is small enough to fit into the reservoir opening and the pump could remove enough of the fluid in a minute or two. It did help to remove the plastic cover surrounding the reservoir but I'm not sure I would do that next time. When I bled the brakes I added measurement lines (ie 100-500ml in 100ml increments) to my waste bottle so I knew how much fluid I was removing. I found the amount to remove for each corner on this forum. I ended using exactly 1L. My only problem was that the waste-side tubing kept slipping off the nipple so I'll look for a longer tube next time.

bump +1 thank you guys. I recently purchase an 04 C4S Cab and plan to do a lot of DIY projects as well. Reading through this thread has given me encouragement. Cheers!

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Pete, Isn't that instruction set for a UK (right hand drive) car? I think on a left hand drive (US) car I would do RR, LR, RF, LF (closest to the reservoir) last.