Bolts clean up

The 944 has a lot of large sized bolts and really thick bolt spacers, replacing them is expensive. So cleaning them up and reusing is the only cost effective way to go. After watching this video on hot Bolt Bluing I decided to try the bolt restoration process of soaking, buffing and bluing. 

After 30 years the bolts typically come out looking like these below: 

Cleaning the rust away was done by soaking the bolts in white vinegar. This did a great job of getting the majority of the rust off the bolts after a 48hr soak.

The wire wheel gets rid of any of the rust left over  and creates a nice smooth surface. Using the wire wheel on the desk buffing machine is tricky as if you get the angle wrong the wheel snatches the bolt and fires it out back at ya at some speed. It’s a good idea to press lightly on the wheel and use a nice clean angle. As some bolts are thin you cannot use the platform so wear some thick building site gloves to protect you fingers. 

I tried heating the parts individually but it took took too long, instead I would heat the bolts in a stainless steel bowl and then pour oil over them, drain the oil back into a containers, dab the oil off the bolts and reheat. The second reheat is the most effective one and because of the oil on the bolts you get that flambé effect which gets the bolts nice and hot for the final quench. 

Here are some of the blued bolts I did, on the longer bolts I only did end using the blowtorch and heated individually 

The front suspension eccentric strut bolts are identical to the Golf Mk1 bolts which can be cheaply purchased from Heritage Parts rather than Porsche as they are loads more because of the Porsche Wanker Tax (PWT)  the part number is 171407265 which matches the VW part number