Hi,
About 2 months ago a friend asked me to retrieve his Porsche from Scotland back to Bristol, England. It had been with a mechanic in Scotland for the last 6 years, supposedly having some minor work done before being sold.
Nothing had happened in the 6 years and, as my friend is no longer able to drive, he just wanted it brought home, recommissioned and sold.
So I went and collected it, expecting to drive it on my trailer, but when I got there the mechanic explained that although it had been running a few days earlier, it had run out of petrol and he hadn't been able to restart it since.
Also the battery kept going flat so he'd removed it. Luckily I have a winch so we winched it on and headed home. The car had been dry stored for the 6 years so looked very good.
Back home I chatted to my friend and his family, and foolishly volunteered to get the Porsche back on the road and then manage the sale for them. I'd always liked the 911's but had never looked at one closely, and didn't even know one of this age had fuel injection, so started searching the web for more information which led me to this excellent forum
Believing the mechanic, I filled with fuel, fitted a new battery, bled the fuel lines and injectors but there was still no life. With the help of my landlord, a retired engineer, we discovered there was no spark, checked the plugs (which were all brand new), checked the new points and found they were incorrectly set, adjusted this and then had a spark.
Now there were signs of firing, but only if I tried to start after manually triggering the injectors and it would only run for a few seconds. I left it for a few hours, thought it might be a problem with cold starting, so the next time I tried as soon as it fired I revved the engine to 3000rpm and kept it there. This worked and the engine stayed running although you should have seen the clouds of smoke from the exhaust
After 10 minutes of running, the smoke cleared, she settled down to a fast idle and everything seemed fine, although the alternator light was on permanently.
A couple of weeks later, after more forum reading and fixing other minor issues (no windscreen washers, drivers window motor burnt out) I tracked the cold starting issue down to a faulty thermotime switch - now bypassed with a simple switch, on for cold start and off for everything else.
A few miles on the road to loosen the brakes and off to the MOT station for the yearly inspection which she passed!
By this time I was having so much enjoyment from tinkering with the Porsche and my first drive surprised me how quick it was, so I made my friend a good offer and bought the Porsche off him.
He had owned the Porsche since 1991 and gave me a history file which included a lot of previous MOT's and also the original handbook and service record. The car was first sold by a Porsche Dealer in Colchester to a company in London and was registered on 24th January 1978. The history also shows the mileage of 74k is correct. It looks as though the car is very original, although some body repairs have been done over the years, there have been no modifications (the VIN number, engine type and number seem to be correct for the model year) so my plan is to keep it original, do a few thousand miles a year and tidy up / fix any minor issues...
Gavin Rogers