Hi all, I have been cruising around this site for the past few weeks since I have finally started a rebuild that I have been dreaming of doing for years. In 2002, my grandfather passed away and his daily driver--a Viper Green '75 911S--passed into my hands. It was his daily driver for over 20 years, and he drove it as he should have...enthusiastically. I was only 15 when I got her, and needless to say, I had neither the resources, knowledge, skills, or time to devote to restoring her to a reliable condition. I now have the time, tools, and money to at least get started on bringing gramp's Porsche back to life. Unfortunately, as the car sat unattended for several years in my grandma's garage, it was attacked by mice, time, and the wet weather of the Pacific Northwest. These abusive conditions ruined the already worn interior, most of the vacuum hoses, fuel lines, and undoubtedly didn't help the already leaky engine. So, six months ago I stripped the interior to the bone, dropped the drivetrain, and disassembled the body. After having some of the body panels sand-blasted, I hand stripped the rest of the body and sent it off to the body shop for steel-work and paint. I decided to stay with the original color, and a month ago it was returned to me looking fantastic!
I have now turned my attentions to the drivetrain. It was rebuilt about 30,000 miles ago (new cams, crankshaft, bearings, valves, pistons, cylinders) after an oil pump failure prompted catastrophe. I am hoping that I can avoid tearing into the bottom half of the block, and as it stands now I am planning to replace the stock valve covers with aluminum turbo covers, swap out the restrictive '75 exhaust with 1.5" stainless headers and a 2-1 muffler (it will be a warm weather street car), remove the remnants of the air injection piping, replace the ignition wiring with the Magnecor set I found on Pelican (and new spark plugs), and replace all of the fuel lines and vacuum hoses and fan belt. This is just my preliminary list, and I would appreciate any advice that you all might have to send my way!
I have had one real scare during the breakdown that I would love some advice on. When I went to remove the intake manifold I noticed that one of the two nuts was missing on the 3rd cylinder and that after the mani was removed that there was a small amount of water pooled on top of the thankfully closed valve. The body-shop had steam cleaned the block recently, and I think some water must have gotten in then because there was little to no rust. I cleaned out the port with a cloth and air gun and then hand-cranked then engine with a little engine oil added to the ports. The rest of the valves and ports looked pretty clean (see pictures) but I was wondering if I should get the heads off and take a look.
I was happy to find that all of my head studs seem to be intact (although without case-savers), and that my grandpa had replaced the standard spring loaded tensioners with hydraulic pressure-fed tensioners.
Anyway, I know this was a lengthy first post, but I am excited to get this baby up and running and to get some sagacious advice. Hope you enjoy the pics, and wish me luck...I plan to lay siege to the heat-exchangers this weekend (fingers crossed for no broken HE studs)!
