911SC reliability

I find these postings to be a great source of information and opinion but, but I was surprised to see that the Porsche and in particular the 911SC series is considered a reliable car and can be depended on as a daily driver. I always assumed that a high performance machine would necessarily be a high maintenance machine and would spend much of its life in tow or in the shop. While it is great to drive, I always find myself waiting for something to go wrong and wondering how many and what sort of spare parts and tools to carry and where the closest garage might be found.

I am busy putting "maintenance" stuff on my '83. Clutch, popoff, tensioner collars, belts, filters, gaskets, etc. The car is 17+ years old. When it is back together, I will drive it wherever I go with probably not much more than the factory tool kit. I have been told to forget about all those accusations that Porsches are finicky, temperamental, tricky to work on, etc. I am convinced this is a bunch of bunk. My car has 145k miles, and I intend to take it to 400k with no major trouble. Only the Germans could have done this, and only they have.

I drive an '83 SC with 135,000 miles. My father used this car as a daily driver since day one and now I have the privilage of racking up the miles. I often drive from New York to Baltimore and back in a weekend (about 400 miles round-trip) and have never experienced any problems. It is one of the most reliable, solid cars I have ever driven. With proper maintenance and care, it could probably run forever.

I think this high performance issue and reliability have alot to do with design. If you take an engine and hop it up you run the risk of pushing the "design" and reducing reliability. The Porsche has been "designed" to the tune it is so it should be just as reliable as any other engine.

Bruce

I have a '79 SC, and it has been the greatest joy to own. In the almost three years that I have owned it, the only major troube I have had has been a faulty alternator and a blown voltage transformer (the one that blew was a "new" Bosch unit so I put the old one back in and it fired back up!!!). I have every single record on my car dating back to 1981. The case has never been opened, nor has any major system had any problems.Some parts that have been repaired on my car are things like the door locks, power antenna motor, and I think the fuel pump has been replaced as well. I have 5 or so records of the car being towed in. . .seems the PO. had a bad habbit of leaving the lights on.
Not too bad for a car that has 215,000 miles on it!
I swap fluids @3K every time. The sparkplugs are clean, dry and absolutely normal. (even my mechanic says they look really good) Other than my slight cold start problem, the car runs extreemly smooth. I couldn't be happier with this little car. I really lucked out finding it .

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Leland Pate

___79 SC Targa

I have never understood why Porsches are considered "high performance". Any six banger with 3 liters should put out 180HP @6200RPM no sweat. I have always thought the secret of the Porsche mistique was the look and light weight advantage. The true performance Porsches are the later 928s and all the turbo cars. I would drive my SC anywhere - and I would EXPECT to be able to drive it anywhere with no problems. That is why I chose it. Just an observation.

I just rolled over 180,000 miles on my 83SC
on an extremly enjoyable trip to Austin
Texas to take the Hill Country Region PCA
Spring tour. 39 Porsches on a 200 mile trip
through the Austin Hill Country. I live
400 miles from Austin and I covered 1,400
miles during the entire trip.My car is a
daily driver and has provided me with
bullet proof performance and an emmence
amount of pleasure.

RarlyL8, you need to compare the SC engine with engines of its time, not modern engines. 180 hp from a 3 liter 6 was very, very good in the late 70's. What did GM V-8s have back then, about 160? 150? From 4.5+ liters of V8. What did a Corvette have back then? The Ferrari V8 in 1980 put out about 200 hp, but the SC would wipe the floor with a 1980 308. In fact, other than the Turbo, I believe the SC was one of the 2 or 3 fastest production cars available in America in the late 70's and early 80's. The 911 has always been in the very top of every performance category, compared to the cars that were available at the time, which is why the 911 is considered a "high performance car." Pretty simple, really.

The fact that you can even begin to compare it with cars that are almost 25 model years newer speaks volumes for the SC.

[This message has been edited by Jim T (edited 04-13-2000).]

You missed the point. If all cars are low performers (and they all were in the 70's) then does the best of the low performers become high performance? I just don't consider 180 HP high performance - now or 20 years ago. I absolutely love SCs. They are reliable, small, quick handling, peppy cars. Porsche did the best with what they had to work with at the time, I'll give you that.

Oh, absolutely, a "high performance car" is a car that is among the best of performance cars *in its time.* How could you expect Porsche to predict the techology to compete with cars 20 years down the road?!? By your way of thinking, Formula One cars from the 50's and 60's are not high performance cars. Old Ferraris are not high performance. In fact, no car built before fairly recently really would be considered high performance, since nothing would come even close to, say, a 2001 Twin Turbo for top speed, handling and acceleration. You must also think that Galileo was a below average astronomer, since he knew less than a college freshman astronomy student today.

The SC did 0-60 in 6.2 - 6.7 seconds, as recorded by various magazines. Other than the Turbo, I believe that no other car from '78 to '83 even came close (production cars for sale in the US). Its top speed was somewhere in the 140 mph range. Again, nothing came close. That was very high performance 20 years ago. HP is just a number on a piece of paper, performance is measured on the road, in real life.

However, if you do measure performance by today's standards, I would agree that the SC probably would not be considered a high performance car by most. From a handling and braking perpective, it probably would, but it would need more beans to be considered high performce in today's world.

Perhaps it all depends on the definition of performance as it relates to cars. If you decide that agility or handling is the key, then you consider the 911SC a performance car. If you consider any of the 'muscle cars' of similar vintage to be performance cars, then maybe the Porsche doesn't belong. If the old notion of Porsches being VW bugs on steroids is true, then maybe they represent German 'muscle'.

This is beginning to get off tha subject a bit, but who cares! The quickest production US vehicle in '78 was Dodge's Lil' Red Truck, and the fastest car was a '78 Dodge Police cruiser, at around 155, as tested by Car and Driver! Corvette drivers didn't do much bragging that year, and '78 Indy Pace Car Corvettes languished in showrooms all over the country, discounted as leftovers! Pretty bad when a $6800 truck beats $20K Coevettes at stoplights, every time!

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Warren Hall
1973 911S Targa

Yeah, it is fun. If anyone has access to these stats, it would be interesting to see the top 5 or so 0-60 times recorded by US car mags, and the top 5 or so top speeds.

155 in an 1978 Dodge police car?!? That's a scary thought. Must have been the one from the Blues Brothers!

Yes! I remember the Little Red Express! Man, is that sad. Jim, I understand where you are comming from and I agree to a point, but I remember those dark days very well. AT THAT TIME I thought there were no high performance vehicles. This is because just a few years earlier I was riding in my friends' 454 SS Chevelles, 455 GTO's, etc. You get the picture. Here is a really good example of how bad it was - I purchased a 1975 Chevy Monza (kinda like a Vega) with a FACTORY 350 ci (5.7L) engine that put out less than 150HP !! When I got around to removing the smog crap and adding a 4bbl and headers it knocked 3.5 seconds off the quarter mile time! In those days if you wanted "high performance" you did it yourself, it just did not exist stock.

Actually, Rarly, you were just starting to sway me, the more I recalled the late '70 and early 80's, the more I remember that maybe it WAS possible that no cars qualified as "high performance." Those were pretty grim times. Anything that could do 60 in less than 10 seconds was considered a fast car! The worst part was that it looked like performance was going to slowly get even worse, not better.
But still, 60 in the 6's, 140 mph + great handling still made the SC a "high performance" car.

Yeah, I got disgusted with 'Car and Driver' in the early 80's when they started calling the Honda CRX Civic's 'sports cars' ... pretty pathetic if you asked me!

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Warren Hall
1973 911S Targa

Well, this is very interesting food for thought and I appreciate ALL your comments. My cut is this: While I have driven late 60s muscle cars with VIOLENT torque output, my '83 is the best, funnest and overall fastest car I have every driven. While I know there are other cars out there that are faster overall (most of them newer Porsches), it seems that few other cars out there can stay with my car when the throttle is open, and most of those fall further behind after each curve. High performance? Definitely.

My SC is the least powerful auto that I own. It is also the one that I most like to drive. The original question concerned reliability (sorry I got us off the subject). The SC is a very reliable car, not hard to work on, not overly complicated, not too expensive to maintain (as Porsches go). As for spare parts or tools, I keep no spare parts, you can't begin to out guess what you may need. The tool kit I carry is bare bones, stuff to help you limp home if you have to. I carry the same type of stuff in the 911 that I carry in my daily driver. I'm not afraid to drive this car hundreds of miles from home and I do it as often as possible. Know your car and pack accordingly.

I owned an '81 SC Targa from 1996-98. During that time, I replaced the Targa top, put on SSI mufflers and had to replace a wheel bearing. That's it! I have a 993 now but I sure miss that Targa.

Well!!!!!

I guess, for my 2 cents, I have never felt that it was worthwhile replacing my 1983 SC. The newer cars seemed to have only "minor" improvements year after year, and I could never "justify" buying any of the newer ones.

Finally, after 17 years, the new Porsche 911 does seem to be a vast improvement to my old one, but guess what? I still don't think it's worth trading in. There is nothing, other than a possiblity of pulled studs, which makes this SC "unreliable". I feel it is bullet proof. And after mostly sitting in the garage all winter in Ohio (with an occassional 20-mile loop to heat up the oil and keep the battery charged now and again), this last weekend we got in, the kids in the back (yes one can fit two small kids or one larger one in the back), the wife in the front, and the car fired up first try and we had a lovely three hour ride through the back roads of Ohio.

Life is good, with a 911SC!!!!!!!......Andras