Deal... or No Deal? ('86 Turbo)

[sporqster]

A coworker has a friend-of-a-friend who has to get an ’86 911 Turbo out of the garage. It has right side fenders in primer that need painting, and burns a lot of oil (as in a thick opaque blueish smoke screen when starting – must be fixed), but runs and drives. Only 30k on the ODO, interior looks great. Story is that it is a track car (thus motor probably abused (?)), and was in an accident while being towed which crushed the right side fenders - thus the primered fenders.

Wants $6k to get it out of the garage.

He asked me if rebuilding the top end on one of these cars would be worth buying this car as a project that could be on the track by springtime with a few weekends worth of work, or maybe just a project to fix and resell for a profit.

Looking around, the cylinder/piston sets for the 3.3 turbo ARE NOT CHEAP. WOW… but for only 6K – man that seems like a steal for a turbo 911…

so... Deal or no deal?

[john walker's workshop]

engine's worth that.

[porsche930dude]

Id get it. But im not very smart

[matt4hand]

I'll take it if you don't want it

[MT930]

I'd do it.

[the]

I'd do that in a second!

[rfuerst911sc]

I'd buy it and drive it for a while, it's possible the blue smoke at startup is because the car has sat idle for a long time. A compression check along with leakdown should give a decent idea on the health of the engine.

[Noah930]

$6K is a good deal. As long as your friend realizes that it may cost another $15-25 to get the car to where he wants it. Or, it might not (if the engine's not really shot). But just as long as he's psychologically and financially prepared for a "worst case scenario" type PPI/teardown results.

[sporqster]

Dave (the co-worker) says that at least one of the pistons has virtually NO compression. so - at least pistons and rings are in order. The oil burning is intolerable - as in you DON'T want to be behind this car - It's difficult to back the car up due to visibility.

But based on this feedback and some sage advice from my buddy Paul, we may have bought ourselves a project ;-)

Details as they develop...

[Macroni]

Deal

[sporqster]

I'll shoot y'all some pics as soon as I get 'em - he's still got to get them off his camera.

We were talking about it this morning - and he has a laundry list of items that he wants to fix and acts like he's worried- things like "There's a spot of rust around the sunroof- I'm going to need to grind all that out and repair it before repainting" and "the hoses to the oil cooler in front are all dry rotted-looking, I'm going to need to replace those" "I think the body work on the fenders is a little rough - I'll need to work on that". According to Dave, apparently, once the car is actually warmed up it doesn't smoke all that bad, and pulls HARD as soon as the turbo kicks in. (and this is coming from a guy whose daily driver is a Honda CBR1000xx).

I think Dave got the deal of the century. We all hate him now.

[Rory Mckenna]

Buy that mother....... and drive the pissola out of it.. they aren't getting cheaper...