The cause of my handling problem?

[Dezzmo]

I've had this car on the road for 2 years now and since then I could not figure out why it would handle so poorly. It always felt like the rear tires were going flat. I was almost positive the problem was at the back of the car.

I've had friends who own 911s drive my car and it would scare them! So I replaced all of the rear suspension bushing and torsion bars along with 2 sets of new tires and 3 alignments and corner balance but still no change.

So I went to the front end of the car and replaced the steering rack, ball joints, strut inserts, and turbo tie-rods and still no luck! So one day while I was under the car I noticed a perfect cut in the undercoating that was forming right around the left front A-arm control mount. So I took a screwdriver and tried to scrape away some of the undercoating and it went right through the metal!

As you can see from the pics the rust is evident mostly at the left front control arm mount on the suspension pan.

I'm going to replace the suspension pan and fuel tank support to take care of this problem. Would there be anything else that I need to replace "while I'm in there"?

[Chuck Miller]

Dezzmo,

This is a post we all will remember......... thanks for posting

[Dezzmo]

Hi Chuck,

thanks for replying. I'll post pics on the repair process.

And I just realized something, being my first 911, I still don't know what a Porsche really handles like!

Oh, the Humanity

[edmayo]

you will also need to replace the doublers that support the forward control arm mounting, they must be ordered separately, they don't come with either the pan or tank support. I did a presentation on this at http://webpages.charter.net/mayo Perhaps it help you to see what the job entails.

[boba]

Wow, 2 years of this, you should consider yourself lucky you found this before having a catastrophic failure at speed.

+1 on Ed's presentation.

Good luck on your repairs.

[Dezzmo]

This is great info guys!

Thanks so much

[Tom F.]

I would like to see what the front area looks like from the top, just to get a sense of whether appearances can be deceiving.

Excellent post! Thank you.

[Dezzmo]

Tom, this is what I found. There is nothing more than surface rust (I hope) on the inside. Chris Bennet helped me replace the fuel tank a couple of years ago because we found rust inside of it. And when we removed it the tank support area looked clean.

What do you think?

[Tom F.]

Wow. It's not pristine, but it was hardly a sight that would cause me to go digging deeper. You're lucky that you found it when you did.

[sithot]

"Id rather be lucky than good" is your new motto.

Keep us up to speed on the fix.

Best,

Tom