Quote:
Originally Posted by tennjed
I have owned my 78 sc (Euro) for about 4 years now. As far as I am able to determine the car is all original with about 150,000 miles on it. Since buying the car I have been in the throes of raising teenage twin daughters and the car has seen infrequent use; basically I have started it and driven it about 15 miles or so several times a year.
The girls are requiring less of my attention these days and I plan to spend some time with the car. My objective is to end up with a daily driver I can enjoy, drive and polish. I am not interested in increasing performance, just maintaining it in drivable condition and enjoying the luxury of driving the dream car of my youth.
I do intend to remove engine and transmission this spring for the purpose of replacing seals and repairing a couple of small nuisance oil leaks, e.g. oil pressure sensor leak, and clean it up; additionally, as it has the "chain tension-er checks" rather than the Carrera tension-er, I plan to do that upgrade. transmission is 15000 miles off of a professional rebuild.
Presently, the car runs fine with no start-up, idle, or running problems.
After reading through many posts on the board, I have one major issue in mind and it has to do with the stock CIS system. Primarrily, I am concerned about availability of parts such as replacement fuel lines. I figure that, if I am going to go with a different fuel system, the best time to make the change will be this spring when I do the other small things to the engine. My questions are:
1. Is it still possible to obtain everything you need to service the CIS system and keep it running properly?
2. Does the CIS system, aside from the fact that it is ugly, represent the simplest and most reliable fuel injection option for 911sc? I note that in many posts, folks state it is the most intuitive system to diagnose when problems do surface.
3. If not the CIS system, which available system would be the best bet for the mundane 911sc owner who wants to avoid unnecessary complication in installing a new system and wants to avoid unnecessary unreliability once the new system is installed.
4. If I keep the CIS system should I replace the fuel injector lines as a matter or principle or is it worth waiting till they fail?
5. When stock CIS fuel injector lines do fail, what is the usual mode of failure; catastrophically, or small leaks?
I have searched the board but have had some difficulty finding posts that address my specific concerns.
I have heard there are examples of 911sc cars that have logged several hundred thousand miles of operation without major failure, I want to do everything in my power to make my car one of these examples.
Thanks for any help.
Wayne
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Wayne,
Your concerns are all valid. And I'll try to give or share my personal experience about your concern. I also own a '78SC and '77S (with '78SC motor) which I intent to give to my grandchildren.
1). There are still abundant cheap used and new parts available. If you intent to keep your car/s for as long as you like, look forward (many years from now) and ask yourself; What CIS components would likely fail or would like to have as spares?
I'm a shop-a-holic and don't recommend going over board like what I did because this was also my concern when I bought the car 20 years ago. And have never used any of these spares yet. Name it and I'll probably have one or two of them.
2.
CIS is very simple and easy to maintain provided you know what to look for. A lot of DIY'er
CIS troubleshooters do a lot of guess work (intuition) and get frustrated to a point where they finally give up and switch to another system. I don't blame them. It is difficult to over come ignorance if people are not willing to learn and use better troubleshooting techniques. Every single CIS components could be bench tested by DIY'ers using simple test procedures.
3). If you are thinking of EFI, my choice would be a 3.2 motronic if that's an option.
4). The CIS fuel lines are very durable and dependable. But if yours are showing sign or wear and tear, there's no reason not to replace them. You could find replacement fuel lines from many sources.
5). The early sign of fuel line failure is seeping out at the fitting/s or poorly installed micro clamp. Stay away from using micro clamps. Due to high fuel pressures in fuel injection systems using the right fittings and fuel lines are very critical.
If you plan to get 200K miles from your car you better find some one who knows about CIS or learn yourself how to trouble shoot the system. Your '78 SC in an improve version of the VW Beetle. Lastly, what's your worry about the fuel lines? If replacing them with metal fuel lines ("81-'83 SC) would give you some peace of mind, go ahead and do it. BTW, I got 3 sets of metal fuel lines collecting dusts in my garage. My flexible fuel lines are still in excellent condition. HTH.
Tony