78SC self destructs!
 

My distributor decided to drop its gear into the engine yesterday. The gear then launched itself thru the left side on the crankcase. The engine will have to be rebuilt. Is it possible to repair the whole with welding? Does anyone know a good source for a 3.0 liter crankcase.

Very sorry to hear about your bad luck.
Hard to believe that little gear had enough momentum to leave a hole in the side of your engine case. Without seeing a picture of the damage to the case and without knowing of any internal damage it may have done that you can't see yet it is hard to say weather or not the case half can be repaired. You may want to check with some competant welding shops to see if they would even touch it. And call a recycler like Partsheaven to see if you can just replace the left side of a crankcase.
I'm hoping that when the gear dropped and went through the case, the motor died very quickly??? Preventing any debris from getting sucked into your oil pump and strewn about your oil system. When you do the rebuild make sure you pay special attention to the oil passages. I am guessing the gear must have impasted a connecting rod or crank counterweight to give it enough momentum to blast its way through the side of the case, so you can most likely expect to find some damage there as well.
best of luck, post pictures if you can,




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Leland Pate
___'99 Dodge Dakota <-which pulls the "real" car
___'79 SC Targa
Which hopefully will be back together soon...

The case can be repaired if the structural webbing is not involved in the damage. You MUST have a mechanic familiar with 911s do the job. A friend of mine does this for 930 racers that throw rods out the side.
The damaged area is cut larger and a piece from another case is welded in from both sides. The engine will be taken completely down and hot tanked, so no shrapnel will be left behind.
If you can find another SC case cheap you may be money ahead.

Now it's time to upgrade to a 3.2 or 3.6. And believe me, you'd be very happy with a 3.2.
Just with a chip, and crummy bursch muffler (and short shifter), my car is a 6 flat 0 to 60.
And Jack'll tell you all about a 3.6 upgrade.


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Kurt B
'84 Carrera Cab.
carrera_cabriolet@yahoo.com

Thanks for the help. I found a crankcase for $600. Is this a good price? How should I ck it out to make sure it is ok? thanks again

Ron:

Very important the you remember that the early '78 SC used a different (smaller) pinion size at the crankshaft end. This is not interchangeable with the later engines.

There is a service bulletin dated July '79 that covers this one. Porsche updated this in the later SC models.

I found this out by chance when listening to a tech explain that you can't just drop any old distributor into the early SC 3.0. I am assuming this has not been the case for your engine.

Jw