Porsche Built The Car I Dreamed Of At Sixteen. Then They Hid One Exhaust Nut Behind The Turbo.
Porsche Built The Car I Dreamed Of At Sixteen. Then They Hid One Exhaust Nut Behind The Turbo Where No Wrench Will Reach.
June 2026 · 9 min read
Thirty eight years with my hands on steel, and she is the reward. I do my own work on her, because I want to know the only man under her is the one who actually cares. (Placeholder photo, 930-specific image pending.)
There is a job on a 911 Turbo that the workshop manual treats as routine and that has made grown men hand the finest car they ever owned to a stranger. It is a leak at the right rear exhaust port flange, the one buried behind the turbo and heat shielding. The gasket and the nuts cost forty dollars. The reason men give up is not the parts. It is that you can see the nut, you can lay two fingers on it, and you cannot get a wrench of any shape known to man square onto it.
I am not a mechanic and I am not selling anything. My name is Dale. I ran a tool and die shop in Scottsdale for thirty eight years before I hung up the apron, and I have kept a 1986 911 Turbo, black, the whale tail, since I was sixty two. It is the car I taped to my bedroom wall at sixteen and never thought I would own. I do my own work on her, partly because I enjoy it, and mostly because the good air-cooled men out here are retiring one by one, and the few who are left will look at a Turbo, let out a low whistle, and quote you a number with a comma in it.
I am writing this for every owner who has knelt behind that flat six, found the soot trail at the flange, and felt the quiet anger of a capable man beaten by access. Because a retired turbo man named Manny put the answer in my hand at an air-cooled meet, and he told me to pass it on.
The part of the brochure they never wrote
Mine started with a sharp tick from the right side of the engine and a hot exhaust smell every time I came off boost. I found the soot trail at the right rear exhaust port flange, the one buried behind the turbo and heat shielding. The fix is a gasket and a couple of nuts that clamp the exhaust to the cylinder head. Simple on paper. Then you go looking for the nuts. Porsche packed the exhaust, the turbo and a stack of heat shielding into the same tight corner at the back of the engine. Those nuts sit down in a blind pocket behind the turbo housing, behind the shielding, where there is barely room for two fingers, never mind a swing.
And it gets worse than tight. Those studs are steel, threaded into an aluminum head, through forty years of heat cycles. Come at one crooked, side-load it hard enough, and it can shear off flush in the head. Now a forty dollar job means the turbo and the headers come off, a specialist drilling and tapping a broken stud out of an aluminum head, and a bill with four figures on it. Every Turbo man has read the thread where a fellow snapped one and ended up grinding it out to save the head. You do not want to be that thread.
Everything in my toolbox had a go. Here is how each one did.
- Standard ratchet. There is no arc between the turbo and the shielding. Two clicks and it stopped dead.
- Flex-head ratchet. Reached in beautifully, then folded at the joint the moment I leaned on it, because the flex joint is the weak point. Knuckles into hot shielding.
- Swivel socket and u-joint on a long extension. Walked off-axis under load and started rounding the nut. A rounding nut on a forty year old stud is how a bad afternoon becomes a bad month.
- A stubby box wrench, a flat at a time, working by feel with my cheek against the engine tin. Tedious, bloody, and the nut barely moved.
- The specialist. One hundred eighty five an hour, two hundred for the turbo man, booked six weeks out, and a low whistle before the estimate. The dealer will not even take a forty year old Turbo.
What the access actually costs a man over here
Put the real numbers on the table. A good air-cooled indie runs one hundred eighty five an hour, two hundred for a turbo specialist, and he is booked six weeks out, because every Turbo owner in the valley is on his list. A visit like this runs twelve hundred to eighteen hundred by the time you drive away, and that is if no stud breaks. If one breaks, the turbo and the headers come off and a specialist drills and taps it out of an aluminum head, and now you are into four figures over a forty dollar nut. The men who genuinely know these engines are retiring one by one, their waiting lists run to weeks, and every job with the word access in it gets the whistle, the head shake, and the number with the comma.
So the belief settles in, and you will have heard it at every cars and coffee in America. You only run a Turbo if you can pay another man to look after it. I nearly swallowed that one myself, sat on the garage floor with raw knuckles, the whale tail up, a gasket in my hand worth less than lunch and a nut six inches from my face I could not turn. For the first time since I was a kid staring at that poster I thought about calling a broker and letting her go before she beat me. My wife Linda came out with a coffee and did not say a word. She has been married to that car long enough to read my face.
You can get two fingers on it. You cannot get a wrench square on it. That gap is the whole story. (Placeholder photo, 930-specific image pending.)
Then an old turbo man put a bar in my hand
Manny is seventy one. He built and chased these motors for a living before his knees made him stop, thirty years setting up turbos and pulling exhausts on other men's cars. He works out of a home shop now, where the same cars he used to fix come find him on trailers. His rule has not changed since 1978. No comebacks. Do it right once. I met him at an air-cooled meet out past the city, told him about the exhaust nuts, the rounded corner, the quote with the comma. He did not laugh and he did not whistle. He walked me to his truck and came back with a flat blue steel bar, square drives on both ends, and a fixed bend set into the body.
He had me try to flex it the way you flex a flex-head ratchet. It would not give. Then he had me press the drive end with my thumb, and I could feel the roller chain move inside the sealed body. "The chain takes the bend for you," he said. "You feed it past the turbo, set your socket, and the pull lands dead square on the nut at the other end. It cannot fold, there is no hinge in it. It cannot walk off, the drive never lifts. The trick was never muscle. It was keeping the socket square so you do not side-load the stud. I pulled exhausts in that exact pocket for thirty years with a bar like this, engine in the car. Somebody finally builds a proper one. Buy the real article and leave the copies alone."
"The chain takes the bend for you."
A slim, dead straight bar, about half an inch thick, that slides flat into the pocket behind the turbo where nothing else fits. The sealed roller chain inside carries your pull round the offset and lands it square on the nut. It is called the Savary offset wrench, and it is the bar Manny spent half his life making by hand for the men in his bay.
The sealed chain is the trick
A roller chain inside the steel body carries the turn round the bend, so it never folds like a flex-head or walks like a universal joint.
Slides into the pocket
A slim half inch thick bar slips down behind the turbo and the heat shielding where no ratchet can swing.
Takes your own sockets
Square drive at both ends fits the sockets already in your box. Holds real torque, up to seventy newton meters, a hair past fifty foot pounds.
It reaches. It is honest.
This solves access to a fastener you cannot get a tool on, and it keeps the socket square so you do not side-load the stud. It is the right shape for the job, not a breaker bar and not a miracle for a stud already seized to nothing. Soak it, warm the area, work it steady.
It only comes from one place
You will not find it at the parts counter and you will not find it at the swap meet. The maker sells direct from their own site only. Eighty nine dollars, shipped to your door. That is half of one hour of any specialist who will still take the car, and a small fraction of the estimate with the comma in it, for the one tool that turns the job everyone dreads into a quiet Saturday morning with the radio on.
What happened next
Other owners who stopped paying for access
"Did the exhaust port flange behind the turbo in my own garage without pulling anything. Twelve years I have owned this car and paid a shop for that job twice. Never again."
"The book answer for those nuts is hours of fighting blind. This bar came at them flat from the side and sat square. My hands have not fit in that pocket in years. The bar does not care."
"Bought a cheap chain bar off Amazon first. It folded on the first real pull, exactly as warned. The real one from the maker does not give at all. Night and day."
Manny made his own years ago because the factory never had to undo what it built. Now there is a proper one, and he is passing it on.
Get yours before the driving season runs out
If you run a Turbo, or any air-cooled 911 where the nut you need sits an inch past the wrench you own, you already know exactly what this is worth. And if you have been telling yourself you are getting too old for that engine bay, it was never your hands. It was the shape of the tools.
The Air-Cooled Field Notes is a reader-supported publication. This is a first-person account from a private owner and reflects his personal experience. The Savary offset extension wrench is a hand tool designed to reach fasteners in tight, blind locations. It improves access; it is not represented as a remedy for fasteners that are corroded or seized beyond normal service. Always follow proper service procedures and torque specifications. Results vary by vehicle and condition. This publication is not affiliated with Porsche AG.
