A Blast From The Past! 911SC

We have had this car in the shop for a few weeks going through some age related maintenance.

This is a very interesting car. Normally we see 911SC’s come in with a lot of miles on the cars and in typical 30 year old condition. This car is not one of them. This is a one owner, 6k mile 911SC. No, that isn’t a typo. Unfortunately, this throws a bit of a wrench in my plans on how to handle a car like this. A Dilemma. The owner brought in a list of age related things to do, such as draining the years old gas from the tank, changing brake lines, hood and hatch struts, installing updated Carrera chain tensioners, etc. But how do you put a wrench on a car that really hasn’t had this stuff done to it? It is a really cool car, manual windows, no sunroof, an original AM/FM radio. Everything is very original, down to the factory fubar’d paintjob on the doors. Should this car be sitting in someone’s collection somewhere? Should it be gotten roadworthy and driven? I kind of lean towards the first one at this point. I think the car has a premium value at this point, and putting miles on it will only cause that value to go down, but at the same time, it is a shame to hide this car away as it is such an incredible example. It isn’t an easy decision to make that is for sure!

A few oil leaks which the owner says it has had since new!

All the factory cosmoline covering everything. It is hard to put a wrench on the 30 year old brake lines and not feel bad about rubbing off the cosmoline.

Clean.

Even has the smog pump installed.

We got the brake lines replaced, hood and hatch struts, filters, fuel drained etc and got the car all ready in that aspect. Then it was time to update the tensioners. The original tensioners were spring loaded and prone to failure. The updated Carrera tensioners are not only spring loaded, but they are also hydraulically fed from the oil system, allowing them to be less prone to collapsing and failing. With the factory smog pump and AC installed, it takes a while to get everything removed to get to the tensioners, but here they are.

And old spring tensioner. The tensioner keeps pressure on the timing chain so that it can not jump position and lose timing.

And the new hydraulic tensioner. A quick pre-oiling in a bath of oil to help pump them up before installing.

And installed on the driver side. I also updated the idler roller arms as recommended.

After doing both sides and installing the new oil lines to feed the tensioners, I put the car back together and fired it up. Purrs like a kitten. Now time for some fresh tires!