Mike's 1980 911 SC

[mikesarge]

Hey Pelicans-

Long time reader, first time owner. While I'm no stranger to rear-engine German vehicles (air or water cooled), I only just got myself into a Porsche after a couple years of serious searching, saving, and refining what exactly I wanted out of a car. Eventually all of those factors collided, and I bought this one sight-unseen (high risk, I know, oh well)



I'm not planning on making this too much of a "build," (we'll see I guess) but rather I intend to make this a comfortable, reliable driver. I commute on a bike, so this will eventually be my "daily" although I only drive a couple days a week. It's already quite a bit of the way there, and in the few weeks I've had it, it's been a great car and I've been looking for excuses to go for a drive for the first time in years.

I've only just started to tear into the car, but I've already repaired the heater system, got it to pass the required emissions test after a minor adjustment, and diagnosed a couple other minor problems thanks to the resources here.

I still want to take off the valve covers to check for broken head studs (there's a tinny-tinkly kind of noise on deceleration in gear, though it mostly goes away when at temperature), and do a valve adjustment. Given that it passed emissions (at idle) I think it's probably in pretty good shape, but never hurts to confirm.

I also need to get the windshield washer reservoir and squirters fixed. Reservoir leaks badly. It sounds like the headlight washers work via button but no action, and no noise from the pump by the battery with a pull on the stalk, and no action there either.

I do have a question to start- this relay appears to be aftermarket, and it looks like it goes to the fuse for the fuel pump. Notice the resistor jumping a couple pins there as well. Is this normal?



There's some pretty creative looking wiring under the dash, but while I'm disappointed, I'm not surprised. I've pretty much had to rewire my Vanagon front to back by now to get it where I want it. I think some owners just don't care how things look as long as they work for the moment.

I'd like to eventually do the following:
-revise the seating position (lower, I'm 6'1, and there's no way I'll fit in there with a helmet on)
- EFI
- shocks/bushings/mounts all around
- some kind of shifter solution
- Headlight upgrade (h4)
- update air conditioning
- continue to drive the crap out of it

[mikesarge]

Alright, so I came to post about my experience (so far) installing and tuning RHD ITBs on Megasquirt 2, v. 3.57 sourced from none other than Al at X-Faktory. However, when I got here, I noticed that I haven’t posted anything directly about my car since I first got it, so I thought I’d start from the beginning. I’ll try to break this up into a few posts.

After typing this up, I realize how much I appreciate this community. Basically any time I’ve encountered a challenge with this car, someone from this forum has stepped up to help get me back on the road. What an excellent group of folks we have here!

So, to the story of the car:

Shortly after I got the car home, I realized it was very much NOT as advertised. As I’ve posted about before, the seller has a big name in motorsports, but he’s a low life and a dead-beat as far as I’m concerned. He posted invoices claiming that the engine had been out and resealed recently, and that a valve adjustment had been done, and none of that was true, and not only that, but it was * missing * a head stud that had broken off, meaning someone had been in there, knew it was broken, and re-sealed it back up without addressing (or disclosing) it.

Well, after the seller refused to engage, I decided not to let it sour my experience with the car, and to put my energy towards fixing it, so I could get back to driving.

Just a few months into ownership, and I learned it’s not a ton harder to pull a 911 engine than a VW squareback engine.






November 2019, just before thanksgiving, I loaded up the engine in my Vanagon, and headed north to the X-Faktory for a top end refresh. Went with 3.1 displacement, 9.5:1 CR, and 964 cams to keep it mild. While it was apart, Al sent the heads for refreshment too.

Next, the day before I was due to head to X-Faktory for the refreshed engine, I pulled the nose cone off the transaxle, and realized the pile of dog teeth I saw were probably why I couldn’t reliably engage 1st gear. So, I called none other than John Walker, and he agreed to tear it down and fix what needed fixing. Perfect- he’s on the way to Al’s place, so I made another day out of it.



Got the engine back, but had a couple of weeks before the transaxle would be ready



So, my dog and I decided to take our time reinstalling the tins, and cleaning up the bay. A couple weeks later, I went back and picked up a squeaky-clean and fresh transaxle. What a fine reunion.




Got it thrown back together, and after a bit of troubleshooting, we were back on the ground, and ready to break things in.

[mikesarge]

So, I’m about 6’2, and 185lbs. So, I was sliding around in these comfort seats, and I could not fit in the car with a helmet on.



I consulted the boy cat, and he encouraged me to find some Recaros, and I fit way better (I have 2, this pic is when I was first testing it out)




Now that I was firmly planted inside the vehicle, I was noticing on spirited drives that the car was not terribly planted at speed. Commence aero upgrades.





We went ahead and did the Maryhill Loops Tour, and got to push the car a bit on an excellent road (closed course) with some fun folks- met HarryD who was super fun to chat with, and got to hang with him and some others that day. It was fun. Reminded me why I like this car, and car people.

[mikesarge]

Then, I again consulted the boy cat, he figured we could paint this duck with a couple rattle cans and some sand paper.










... It honestly looks *just okay.* It's not a huge loss, because my stock decklid was trashed, so it's fine for now but I'm on the hunt for a wing that's correct for the car, that I'll paint correctly.

I had started to notice during hard braking a slight pull left. We all know what that means. Re-built calipers on all 4 corners, new pads, new rotors, stainless lines.



Now, the car was driving pretty well, and I figured it was, at last, time to drive the ***** out of it for a season. By now, it’s already January 2022. A buddy and I drove up to Bremerton for a Porsche club event, and it was a blast. We took the long way through the hills, and found some great roads. The event had Auto-X, slalom, crash avoidance, and a skid pad. Car did a good job, but I was noticing that it was pig rich at part throttle, and had a hard time idling some of the time... I didn’t want to pry too hard about why, because the car was driving so well.

[mikesarge]

...
Also, it was january, so the last two hours of the drive were DARK- driving by candle-light in the rain is not fun, so I ordered some headlights from the hotel room that night, they arrived a week later and I put them in ASAP.




I was feeling good about it, so I went ahead and threw on some sticky rubber




But then, things went off the rails just a bit....

[mikesarge]

Next, I did an auto-x in Salem, Or, with a non-marque-specific club, and it was a beginners’ class of sorts, with instructors. The instructors were okay, the crowd was too, but it wasn’t really my scene. The lot was really rough in spots, and there was very little runout, so I left at lunch. On the drive home, the car drank fuel, ran rich unless it was floored, and it seemed like it wasn’t adjusting fueling for part-throttle.

Some investigation (in another thread I started) revealed that my 1980 USA-spec car had been poorly/partially converted from a lambda spec system to a non-lambda system. The WUR was still for lambda, so no vac nipple. No wonder it was a pig unless it was getting flogged!

So, I enlisted boyt911SC (Tony), and he did his damndest to get it running right, working with me over PM and the phone, but unfortunately it wasn't meant to be.

I pulled the CIS for further inspection, and once it was out, it was clear it wasn’t going back in.

[mikesarge]

I once again rang Al at X-Faktory and ordered up some ITBs. This summer has been an adventure in installing, de-bugging, trouble-shooting, and (more recently) tuning. Shouts out to alkosmal (Al), timmy2 (Dennis), showdown (Julian), without whom I’d probably have given up on this thing. I was close a few times.





Some key takeaways from my experience converting to ITBs:

-If you want EFI, ITBs are just one way to do it. I’m not sure they’re the best, but they look and sound cool. If I were to do it again, I’d probably go common plenum, maybe varioram or something. Since I've got the ITBs running okay for now, I'm gonna keep em.

-Garbage in, Garbage out. By that I mean the following:

- BALANCE THEM! Take your time, do it right, then do it again. It’s a huge pain in the ass, but it pays dividends in limiting frustration later.

- Be meticulous about process. Wiring must be immaculate. Make good connections. Think about placement of FPR, vacuum manifold, fuel lines, vacuum lines, etc... Map it out, look at other folks’ cars, take your time with this, so you don’t drill a bunch of holes in your car. I got lucky, but there were a few things I did that I’d do differently. (like where I mounted the FPR)

I’m still not *done* per se. It needs help on tip-in, and I want to get the IACV dialed in asap. But, those are relatively minor things and the car is, at this moment, relatively drivable. It feels good.



Upcoming projects:
- cruise control re-fit
- IACV install and tune
- Align/corner balance (including building a home alignment setup)
- Stereo improvements (rear speakers sound awful)
- A/C. Haven’t decided yet if I want to go Griffiths or Electric..

[ToySnakePMC]

That’s a beautiful SC you got there. What is the paint color/ name? And love the BBS LM’s. Hope you kept those in the attic or somewhere similar!

[mikesarge]

Originally Posted by ToySnakePMC

That’s a beautiful SC you got there. What is the paint color/ name? And love the BBS LM’s. Hope you kept those in the attic or somewhere similar!

Thanks! It's Casablanca Beige Metallic.

Yep- the LMs are hung on the wall. They have a more "touring" oriented tire on them, so they'll go back on once it starts to rain.

[mikesarge]

This weekend, along with getting some good time in tuning the car, I also cleaned up the wiring and some hose routing. It's still a bit busy back there, largely as a result of the EVAP system, and some extra hoses for cruise control, that I'm going to deal with soon.

Here's a pic of the engine bay today, to give an idea for how far its come:

[Flynt]

Cruiser and goth girls stickers
Nice progress on the car. Wish I could ditch CIS.

[almostordinary]

Great thread! I am planning on making my car's intro just like this.... I've built enough cars and done enough build threads, but like the full meal that you presented with your build's progress.

Also, love this line..... "I'm not planning on making this too much of a "build,"

[mikesarge]

Originally Posted by almostordinary

Great thread! I am planning on making my car's intro just like this.... I've built enough cars and done enough build threads, but like the full meal that you presented with your build's progress.

Also, love this line..... "I'm not planning on making this too much of a "build,"

Thanks, "best laid plans.." am I right?

Originally Posted by Flynt

Cruiser and goth girls stickers
Nice progress on the car. Wish I could ditch CIS.

Thanks

Don't get me wrong, CIS is great, as long as it's great anyway. I've had plenty of cars that ran perfectly fine with it- mine just was not set up right from the previous owner(s), and needed a massive overhaul, so I threw up my hands and went with EFI. Now I've been plagued with AFR/VE tables taking over my dreams.

If this was my primary car, I'd be pretty sad because I lost a whole driving season with it (because of my inexperience with ITBs and Megasquirt,) !BUT! since it's just a hot rod/toy that I get to tinker with, it's not been too bad, now that it's somewhat drivable I can say so anyway. I guess my dreams of dailying my 40-yr-old sports car have hit the back burner a bit. Even so, we're lucky on this forum that there are so many folks who have already broken trail on this stuff, so it's not like I'm doing anything that hasn't been done before. Likewise, I feel fortunate to be in the PNW where we've got a relatively high number of these cars, and people who know how to work on them, and are willing to offer advice.

[gtilove]

Nice work! It was a pleasure seeing it in person, and chatting with you at See See's a few weeks ago.

[mikesarge]

Alright! Just got back from a day tuning on the dyno, after months of bashing my head into the wall trying to make my car drivable. Not as much of a heartbreaker as other dyno days I've had with other cars, but to be honest, I was a bit hesitant to post anything about it anyway, given some folks' treatment of modified vehicles on this board and the way folks get so worked up about numbers.

In the lead-up, I built my version of what I'll call the "Showdown Manifold." No pics, it's ugly still, but you can check Julian's build thread for the details. I was having a hard time getting a reliable vacuum signal, and I hated the web of hoses in the engine bay. This cleaned it up nicely, and I got way better part-throttle vacuum resolution.



Before we get into it: I realize I have spent a ton of money on this car to make essentially what looks like stock horsepower. I also realize there are broken things on this 43-year-old sports car with what's become clear is 'unverified history.' Yes, your car is faster, it makes more power, you spent less money on it, and you're a better person for it. You're certainly smarter. I do not want to wade into this. I do not care. I'll just mute you and move on. I do welcome input on how to improve the car, or other thoughts- let’s just avoid the horsepower wars and discussion on the merits of EFI.

Onto the day itself!

The most important thing about this dyno day was that along with the excellent dyno operator, we were able to pinpoint some problems with the car. First, my O2 sensor is WAY out of wack, which has certainly been causing me problems, as that's what I've been tuning based on. So, given my struggles, this is not a huge surprise. What was surprising is how lean the thing was running! O2 would show dead 10, and the dyno's O2 would show 12.5. No wonder I wasn't able to tune it on the street.

On an early run, we videoed the headers and saw the left bank glowing, and the right not. Huge red flag- are we out of balance? no- I verified that up to the top of the scale on the gauges, so up to about 3500rpm, we are in perfect balance. Put a pin in this.

Next pull was fine, everything looked good, even heat in the headers, neither glowing. We chalked the imbalance up to a fluke, which was not satisfying.

Really inconsistent performance at tip-in. Glad I wasn't going crazy, as I have been having this problem on the road. The dyno owner/tuner stepped in to lend a hand on this, and even he struggled with it, which made me feel better, though still frustrating! We are zeroing in on the injectors as a problem at this point.

Another issue: big delta between the dyno O2, and my on-board O2. We were thinking this was also a balance issue, until we verified the air balance was fine. Then, coupled with the tip-in troubles, we determined that these injectors cannot consistently change pulse-widths quickly, and sometimes they freeze shut, and other times, they just puke fuel. This tends to happen when big changes are requested.

So, we tuned it to the dyno O2 sensor, and got some decent results given the constraints:



That's 182 HP and 155 ft-lbs peak, since this is uploading pretty small.

We got the WOT stuff dialed in to the extent we could, given our constraints around ignition control. You can see at about 5500RPM there's a big spike in power. This, we suspect, is when the weights in the distributor actually start to move. It feels like it's coming onto the cam, but this is just a 964 cam, so it makes no sense that it'd come on that strong that late. I am planning to take the distributor apart and clean it soon, hopefully it makes for more (and more smooth) power throughout the mid-range. I suspect nobody has been in this distributor in at least 25 years.

Here's the pull where we made the most power, mostly for the noise:



"Excuses" section:

-Ignition control was lacking, and there was definitely some timing issues within the distributor. This thing wants to eat, we just gotta feed it.

-It's a Mustang dyno- those are notoriously conservative (or accurate, depending on who you ask) compared to dynojet and some other brands of dyno. These are WHP numbers, not crank HP, so on and so forth

-Another factor, was the weather. Yesterday barometric pressure in Portland was super low, so I was only hitting about 95 kpa at WOT. Under normal higher-pressure barometric conditions, I hit 102kpa easily. So, I think there's more in it on a normal day. I think the J1349 correction factor takes some of that into account, but I don't honestly completely understand it.

/Excuses

So, we got peak power figured out. We got the drivability-zone adjusted for my bad O2, and shut off EGO control for now.

Now we just had to deal with tip-in. As mentioned, we figured out that these injectors just can't hack it when it comes to quickly-changing fuel requirements. I'm going to ship these to a local injector place, and see what they think/if they can verify they're struggling with quick changes to pulse-widths. We got it pretty close though, which marked a massive improvement in driveability.

I've ordered a new wideband sensor, and I'm next going to clean the distributor to see what we can do to build out the power in the mid-range a bit. I also have a leak above the passenger heat exchanger, dripping oil onto the header. I'll have to look into that, but I'm guessing either valve cover or (hope not) oil cooler. EDIT: my oil pressure warning sensor was a tiny bit loose, maybe that fixed it.

The drive home was unreal though- this is the best this car has run since I bought it (which has been a theme here, this car was apparently in ROUGH shape when I got it).

It wanted to GO like it never has since I've had it. great throttle response (like ITBs should have), great sound, and it just felt nimble. I'm encouraged by this in a way that I haven't felt in a LONG time, and feeling optimistic about getting the timing issues squared away, and sorting out the injectors, then getting along to idle control and cruise control, and then just driving the damn thing for a while!

I really think EDIS or some other programmable ignition system would open up a lot of power on this engine, and with knock sensing I think you could really squeeze a lot out of it.

So, that's it. that's my dyno day!

[FA-18C]

Mike - thank you for these posts. It was the best part of my day! Soldier on, this is the way...

[Showdown]

Rock on Mike!!

This is great to hear!! It can at times feel super frustrating to be mired and not making progress but eventually if you keep working the problem there’s bound to be a breakthrough moment and that makes it all worthwhile!!

I know folks love carbs but a well tuned EFI does more for these engines than anything else and kind of brings them into stereo from mono, or technicolor from black and white.

[fanaudical]

Great story!

[mikesarge]

Another exciting day in the garage.

I'm currently in between shutting down my solo law practice, and transitioning to a non-profit firm. As a part of that transition, I've passed all of my cases that I can't take with me off to other lawyers. This has left me with more free time than I've had in many years. Lots of time to play with the sports car. Too bad the weather stinks, or I'd go for a drive.

First, I took apart and cleaned the distributor. It wasn't too dirty, but I was able to free up the advance mechanism a little bit, so I'm looking forward to driving it and seeing how it feels now that it's fixed. Out of sympathy for my neighbors, I did not check total timing at 4k. I did give it a couple more degrees when I set base timing, but just a couple (like 2). It pulls more vacuum now, and reliably idles at 56kpa, according to megasquirt. I'll take it.

Next, I've been having intermittent problems with the fuel pump. Sometimes it just doesn't trigger when you turn the key. Today it did it, and I happened to bump the knee bolster, and then the fuel pump gave its little prime pulse. I took this picture to investigate.



Cheesey in-line fuse holder? check.

T-tap? check.

This is the partially decomissioned alarm system I've stumbled into a couple of times now on this car. It was time to do a bit more investigation. If you look at my first post in this thread, you'll see a relay with a resistor across two terminals. This, it turns out is part of this alarm. I think the resistor was someone's attempt to bypass the alarm after it was decommissioned. The white wire goes to the fuel pump fuse. I think the red wire is the original wire to the fuel pump fuse, and this relay was used to immobilize the car before some of the wires were strategically cut.

So, I followed a few wires back into the dashboard, and found this box, which I promptly removed and opened up. Dip switches, resistors, two boards, and some cut wires. Yup- someone else did a half-assed job taking this alarm/immo out.



I went ahead and finished the job, which was a total PITA but worth it- now it'll just start! I took out the box with the boards, some wiring, the klaxon, and it starts right up. great.


Then, I went ahead and changed the oil. The car has been through some ***** while I've been tuning. Super rich conditions, start-stop, not a ton of mechanical sympathy.

Now, this engine has about 2-2.5k on it since a full top-end job with a head refresh. I've changed the oil according to Wayne's procedure, this is the first oil change since it was considered "broken in." It's got two HPDEs (auto-x style, so low speed), a dyno day, and a bunch of street tuning in it. So while it's not super old oil, it's also seen some things.

Here's a video of the end of the tank drain. It gave me some pause, but I'm curious what more learned-minds think of it. Sorry for the background noise, I can't figure out how to turn off the sound in the youtube editor.



Ignore the large specs on the outside, those are unrelated. I'm focused on the metallic shimmer in the drips and stream hitting the pan.





The magnetic plugs look pretty good in my opinion, so this is either aluminum, or assembly lube maybe? EDIT: I’m fairly certain it is indeed residual assembly lube. Al and I changed emails, and he sent me a video of someone putting some assembly lube into oil, looks identical to this.

Anyway, I'm curious what anyone thinks about this oil. I fired it up, and it sounds fine, I think. These engines are relatively loud, so I get paranoid easily. It seems to rev fine, and there are certainly no noises that get worse as you rev- just the (what I think is) standard valvetrain noise at idle.

Weather is looking good tomorrow for a shakedown drive. I'm hoping to get out for a quick one anyway, just get the oil up to temp and see if I think it's sufficiently in shape to drive up to Bremerton for a re-do of last year's driver skills event next month.

[Nick Triesch]

Hi. Just so you know my headlight washers did not work after I cleaned them and pushed the button. However, when I was driving down the road and tried them , water came out full blast!! Try it!!