Unbelievable low power problem solved

[shawn911]

Hi I´m new to the forum, so i´d just like to say hi to everyone. My name is shawn, i am british and live in spain. i own a 1976 911 targa 2.7, then engine is out at present as i am treating her to a complete overhaul, i will post some pics soon. I bought the car fairly cheap in england as a non runner, it had been of the road for 12 years due to a strange low power problem that noone seemed to be able to fix. i will tell you what was wrong, i would be interested if anyone else has had this problem.

After transporting the car from england to spain i couldn´t wait to get my spanners out, so we (me and my younger brother edward) set about starting her up, after checking normal stuff plus putting fuel in we had it going in 1 hour, but true enough it was running but seemed lifeless, we checked all the cylinders for compression, all perfect, so the head scratching started. we removed the exhuast complete to have a look at the ports, on starting we found that the engine was only running on 1,2,and 3, 4,5,and 6, nothing!!!!!!!!!. So next i retimed the ignition, guess what, she now ran on 4,5, and 6!!! but 1,2,and 3,nothing ,crazy, so after much dicussion i finnaly came to the conclusion that the valve timing was out, i was right, on removing the timing chain covers, i found new idlers had been fitted, but whoever had done the job 12 years ago had put one of the camgears 180 degrees out, so the valves never touched the pistons, but she would only ever run on one bank of cylinders at a time!!!. on retiming it roared into life on all 6, however because it had low oil pressure plus 12 years laid up ,i decided to rebuild it anyway.
Hope someone has found this story interesting.

[RickM]

Originally posted by shawn911
Hope someone has found this story interesting.

Definitely interesting...and welcome to the board.

Where are you in Spain?

[sammyg2]

It is also manditory that new people show pictures of their cars so we can drool over them. The cars, not the people.......

[buster73]

Great story and welcome to the board. Probably a good idea to shut of some cylinders with the gas prices as high as they are in Europe.

[kach22i]

Interesting story, I second the pictures motion.

[Miguel Antonett]

Neat story and hope the valves still don't touch the pistons after the rebuilt... :-). PICTURES, PICTURES.

[2.7RACER]

Sean,
It's a good thing these engines aren't four cams.
As much trouble people have with two cams, four could really create opportunity for knowledgeable buyers to pick up these mystery problems for a song.
Always remember. "Keyways, dots or numbers both up at TDC"