pressure fed tensioners-waste of money?

[lagoon]

80'+ SC owners- I know this topic has been discussed many times before, but would like to know this: if I currently have no problems with my stock tensioners @ 100k miles, would it be wise or a waste of $$ to update my tensioners to pressure fed? 81'SC

[Doug Zielke]

It may be too late by the time you find out.

On my own car, I was maybe one or two trips to the redline away from disaster. And don't expect some noise as a warning. The only noise you might hear is the motor blowing-up.

[nhromyak]

If money is an issue, I would get some chain tensioner locks I think they are ~ $29.00 for the pair.

[gslater]

When I bought my '80 SC two and a half years ago, it did not have the updated tensioners. I asked my trusty local Porsche mechanic about it, and also asked the service advisors (whom I know fairly well) at the local Porsche dealership. Both basically suggested not to worry about it. Well, technically, they both said that it's something I should be aware of, but not worry about. Both said that if you're someone who pays attention to the details of your car, particularly the mechanical details, you'd almost certainly hear that something isn't right before any serious damage was done.

I feel very confident about trusting my local Porsche mechanic. He started his own shop about a decade ago after working at a dealership for some time. He won Porsche's U.S. service tech of the year (or whatever they call it) sometime around 1991, and I've yet to hear him be wrong on anything with my or other people's cars.

Of course, getting the tensioners updated will remove all doubt, and I may do the update to my car this winter just to make the sale process easier when I get around to getting a newer 911 in a few years.

[Doug Zielke]

I don't like the collars.
My dislike for them stems from a damaged motor I saw at my wrench's shop. The (extensive) damage was caused by one of these collars coming loose and falling into the chains. How much money was saved now? I think collars are just a band-aid for a critical part of the motor.

[Superman]

I have a brand new set of collars I never used. I went to the PF tensioners and this means I also have spare original tensioners. They are 18 years old and about 140K miles.

I went to the pressure fed tensioners because they are the REAL DEAL. At the time, I was already spending a bunch of money just maintining/restoring the car, and I sprung for the PF tensioners because with all the dough I was spending, I wanted to achieve at least one UPgrade.

[911pcars]

Nothing against tensioner safety collars per say as they did a good job of preventing imminent disaster up until the hydraulic tensioners and kits became available in '84. Whenever you have critical components, like these small parts so close to the timing sprocket/chain, the fasteners should be high quality so they don't break and probably safety wired so they don't loosen, or at the least, Loctited.

Too bad the factory countered this effort with rubber chain ramps that broke and caused the same kind of damage, but were eventually superceded by plastic ones that seem to be okay.

Sherwood Lee

[RoninLB]

Lagoon--------looks like you have a problem waiting to happen. Just because your paranoid doesn't mean we are not talking about you.