East Coast 911 new to California, takes a while to crank up

CiscoSF · 03-29-2013, 05:36 PM

I bought a 911 in Maine at the beginning of March. It had been parked in Maine since October 2012 and spent most of its life in Florida before that. I had it shipped to San Francisco and it got here a couple weeks ago. I just picked it up from Charles Rossignol's garage, for those of you who don't know him he's a great classic Porsche mechanic in SF.

He basically did a going over, fixing some things, letting me know the status of other things. One of the vehicle's quirks is it takes a lot of cranking to get it started up. Charles replaced the fuel filter to try to fix that but it doesn't seem to have helped. He speculates that it may be related to a chip under the driver's seat, something to do with its East Coast origin.

Could someone give me some more information about replacing that chip with something suitable for California?

Thanks!

E Sully · E Sully's Garage

East Coast, West Coast, the engine doesn't know the difference. If I drove my car with the '86 engine from NY to California it would still run great.
Unless you have reason to believe it has an aftermarket chip, I would look more into the basic settings than a chip change out. The only difference in East Coast and California cars is a single wire that is connected by the DME to change emmisions that is not connected outside California and Japan.
Make sure the throttle linkage is adjusted properly so that the plate in the throttle body is opening and closing completely and the microswitch is being activated. If the microswitch is not set correctly the DME will not work properly, as well as the full throttle switch.
In my post #16 on this thread is a chart so you can check the sensors on the engine. Old single wire temperature sensor should also be upgraded to 2 wire if not done already.
Trouble with 3,2 at accelereration between 2 and 3k rpm

r-mm · 03-30-2013, 05:37 AM

I looked at that car (on the internet) paint looked spectacular - how is it in person?

I seem to have misplaced my "101 projects" book but I recall there being a good engine troubleshooting section in there that had a useful entry on long cranking times.

One pretty standard check, especially for a car that has sat, is to have the battery checked or just go ahead and replace it. Dying batteries cause a bewildering array of symptoms.