Just finished doing my 60,000 mi service.

[John Romano]

Just thought I'd post my impressions of a DIY 60K service..... Most of it is pretty straight forward as far as all the various inspections go. I did notice the tiniest drip of oil where the bell housing meets the motor. I always knew there was an RMS replacement in my future and that just confirmed it. I'm going to need a new clutch soon and had already planned on replacing it. Everything else was perfect. Bleeding the brakes is by far easier with a one man brake bleeder. It's 30 bucks well spent. The serpentine belt was a piece of cake - especially since I took a picture of the routing with my cell phone before I took the belt off. That came in VERY handy. While the air box was off I used some spray carb cleaner and a microfiber rag and cleaned out the throttle body - it was filthy and I'm sure contributing to poor performance. Oil and filter change were uneventful, as was the particle filter. Now for the rough part - the spark plugs and coil packs. OMG.... what a tedious job! A real knuckle scraper. I have a friend with a lift in his shop and I went over there today to do the job. I just cannot imagine crawling around on my back doing that job. I'm willing to bet anything that the P-techs lower the rear of the motor to get to the top two exhaust bracket bolts so they can remove the entire bracket. I did remove the rear wheels and the mufflers for better access, but that damn bracket made life under there hell for the rear two plugs. I took the triangular muffler bracket plate off, but the rest of that thing was totally in the way and there was no way of reaching the top bracket bolts without lowering the motor. So, make sure you have plenty of different length socket extensions and lots of time. It took me about three hours to remove the mufflers, brackets, and install the new plugs and coil packs. It would have taken much longer without having the car up in the air. The good news is the car started right up, the belt didn't fly off and do a bunch of damage, and no CEL which means that all the connectors snapped back in on the coil packs. The car runs noticeably better and I saved probably between $800 - $1000 by doing it myself and scouring the web for all the parts at a discount. The sense of satisfaction is well worth it if you're the kind of guy who likes turning his own wrenches. I ran out of time before i could hook up to his code reader and clear any fault codes. I'll do that tomorrow.

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[Banban]

What exactly was needed to be done for the 60K Mile service?
Where did you get your parts from and how much did they end up costing?
Did you use any of the DIY from Renntech?
I've always been intimidated by belt changes, but it sounds like it was pretty straightforward.
My car is due for same service by sometime next year but it'd be great to get some hints now.

[YZWILLY]

it is always nice to work on your own car it is truely a hobby

[JB Lifeguard]

do you have any links handy for the DIY protocols?

thanks

[John Romano]

Just search the Rentech maintenance forums. It's all there - protocols, to do list, etc. There is much debate about changing the coil packs. I STRONGLY recommend doing all of them at 60K. They are such a pain in the ass to install that you're not going to want to do this again for another 60K. I can't imagine going through al that again if I don't have to. At least not for another 60K!

[Banban]

Originally Posted by JB Lifeguard

do you have any links handy for the DIY protocols?

thanks

http://www.renntech.org/forums/index.php?showforum=114

[deckman]

Congrats. Nice to have that friend with a lift, huh?

I love doing my own maintenance but have heard enough stories about the plugs and coil packs that I will probably bite the bullet and pay to have that part done. I'll be gritting my teeth the whole time though.

[John Romano]

Originally Posted by deckman

Congrats. Nice to have that friend with a lift, huh?

I love doing my own maintenance but have heard enough stories about the plugs and coil packs that I will probably bite the bullet and pay to have that part done. I'll be gritting my teeth the whole time though.

It was definitely a challenge, but not impossible - especially with a lift. I would love to know what Porsche's procedure is for gaining access to the plugs and coil packs. I'm convinced they lower the rear of the motor to get that bracket off. Does anyone know?

[scubadawg]

I did my 60K myself, and I did the plugs and coils in about 3 hours, ended up replacing 2 coil packs, but it is really not that hard, I didn't have a lift, jacked up 1 side, put support jacks, I used a long screwdriver to pop the coil packs off, you have to be a contorsonist to get to the 5mm bolts off holding the coil packs in (on number 1 and 6), to get the plugs out, lots of swivals and wobble extensions. Then did the other side the same way.

Didn't have to replace belt, There was a CPO done on the car at 45K, so they replaced the complete clutch, belt and RMS at that time

Had to replace my coolant tank also, remove everything that's attached to the tank, place a small floor jack with a 2X4 piece of wood under the oil pan, used an impact to remove both engine mounting bolts, lower the engine, wiggled the tank out, then wiggled the new tank in. raised the engine back up, put the 2 nuts back on, and done. Did the tank in about 1.5 hours.

Porsche's are not really that hard to work on

[kristian813]

I did the coil packs myself. It I just moved the tires and the aluminum plate that was in front of the coils. Two of the coils were tought, but I managed to get them out after a bit more work than the other ones. It saved me a lot of money by buying the coils online and doing the job myself.
KL