When I bought my 1973 in 2002 the AC was non functional. Being in the Pacific Northwest, I decided to just remove it. So far, I have only felt the need for AC on a few days. If I was to restore my AC, I would seriously consider the Classic Retrofit alternative.

https://www.classicretrofit.com/en-us/collections/electric-air-conditioning/products/air-conditioning-kit-for-classic-911-full-kit

If I still lived in the PNW I would ditch the AC as well… it’s a lot of stuff that isn’t nearly as necessary up there. If the PO hadn’t put in the Kuehl system currently in the car I would look long and hard at ditching it even living in the south.


Mine has a Kuehl AC installed by the PO a few years ago and I need to look at it a bit more. It could be entirely user error but I think it should be performing a little more than it seems to be.

I would definitely like to take some good road trips with the car, in a way I trust it more than my newer stuff. When I had Corvettes there was weird stuff happen that I had no easy way to fix a few times.

Threw a blanket on the seat and took someone for their first Porsche ride… he couldn’t help himself and promptly got a bunch of nose prints on the windshield

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684804370.jpg


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Fold the rear seats down so they have stable footing, my dog loves it back there!

I love the fact that the first thing you did was loud exhaust.
Before you change it back, go find a long tunnel to drive through.

Rich

Love it!

A few questions…

If the car is off and the turn signal lever is flipped on to either side the corresponding front and rear lights come and are solidly lit. They seem to work normally/as expected when I’m driving and the hazards seem to work just fine as well. Mostly I’m worried about accidentally bumping it on and draining the battery.

Is that just a idiosyncrasy of the 911SC or is there something I should be hunting down to fix?

Also I’m trying to put together a lot of some basic stuff to have on hand and a spare coil seems like something good to have. My car, as far as I can tell, is completely stock in this regard. Is the MSD Blaster a reasonable choice?

In the comments on Pelican I see this:

“Hotter spark. Make sure you replace your rotor with a non-resistor type rotor if you are running this coil”

I have no idea what type rotor is the original and when I go look at rotors on Pelican I don’t see anything about non-resistor vs. whatever. If my coil were to die and I throw on the MSD is it gonna fry the rotor in short order?

Also…. At some point I would like to upgrade the oil temp gauge but for now I have the basic original. I take it easy until the car is warmed up a bit but what should I be watching for? It only gets to 70 or so at night (mid 80s right now in the afternoon) here so it doesn’t take long to get to the first bar and if I’m moving along not driving hard it usually stays down mid way between the two or lower. If I’m stuck in traffic or driving hard it will get to the upper bar but hasn’t ever got much beyond that.

Obviously orange is bad news but what should I be looking for or getting slightly concerned about? Is the upper bar getting pretty hot where is should be more concerned? Oil pressure seems to be good based on the little bit I have gathered, it currently has Mobil 1 15W-40 in it.

Oil cooler is coming at some point (email from Pelican said it was back ordered) which will probably help a lot when it starts getting proper hot here in the summer. This car has become my daily driver for now just because it’s a lot of fun ripping to work along the beach to and from work.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684892891.jpg

Not a fault, a feature. This is a requirement for German cars. When you are pulled off to the side of the road, you are required to turn on the signals on the side facing the traffic.

I will need to defer on others. I have a good used Bosch coil for this purpose.

If you look carefully inside the temp gauge (under the shroud), you should see some numbers. The bars correspond to specific temperatures.

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Steve Weiner (RIP) offers the following advice:


What do you mean about the oil cooler?

Do you have a trombone now? Have you verified the external thermostat is working? This may be the problem.

Is the unit on order a Carrera Cooler to replace the existing trombone?

Thanks for all the info

There is a trombone cooler but I ordered up a carrera cooler partly because it seemed like a good change a few weeks ago jumping into this thing. Also because the heat is brutal down here in the summer. I don’t think there is a problem with the thermostat, but it’s something I will check out.

Excellent… I was worried that I had some kind of potential electrical issue.

If I could find a good Bosch coil I would get it however based on what I read about the current production it seems like a poor bet. I guess I could take the current coil off (a “good” old Bosch coil) and keep it as a spare and then use a new one as primary. I just hate messing with stuff that works but I don’t fully understand just yet.

Consider getting the correct Bosch coil from our host (https://www.pelicanparts.com/More_Info/90160250200.htm?pn=901-602-502-00-M114&bc=c&SVSVSI=0578). It is covered by a Lifetime Replacement policy (https://www.pelicanparts.com/support/lifetime-replacement-parts.htm).

Took a good look around under the car for the first time now that I have a very minor idea what I’m looking at… there are a couple dozen projects I have in mind and I wanted to take stock of various situations. After driving the car a few weeks I have established that it does have an oil leak from somewhere in the vicinity of the oil tank. I halfway suspect it’s actually leaking from the plug but I’m not gonna mess with that until I change the oil. It doesn’t seem to leak at all when running but when it’s hot from running it will drop 6-12 drops down off the drain plug and then stops. My current theory is the PO reused the drain plug washer and when it’s hot the oil is just thin enough to leak a bit, it doesn’t leak when running because of the vacuum… but I’m open to any other suggestions. Didn’t take any pics of that, will get to it at some point.

Getting down underneath the engine it looks like there are some other leaks somewhere in the engine. I haven’t notice any drops on the garage floor but will be putting down some clean cardboard just to help with the search. My guess is that it’s just a tiny bit leaking and it more or less cooks off.



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There is some oil on the bottom of the engine as well but again I have yet to see any drip on the floor from it. I will also add that the PO told me he had overfilled the oil when it was changed last and that made a bit of a mess… so it could be related to that. What I probably need to do is spray it down with some stuff to clean it up and then keep an eye on it.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1685408871.jpg

There is also this stuff up at the front of the engine… there is one shiny bit I thought could be something leaking but poking at it and whatever it is is hardened and solid. I’m thinking it’s brake related but I really don’t know what I’m looking at. In general it looks about like what I would expect for a 40 year old car with 100k miles.

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I had been thinking about replacing fuel lines after reading all the stories but (assuming I had the correct thing) they seem pretty solid and I’m not gonna stop driving the car but it is a project for the future. One of the brake lines has been replaced with braided stainless and I think I’m gonna order up new lines for all four corners as that seems a more achievable project at the moment.

Only drove the car for 60 miles this weekend when the weather was cooler and washed it this afternoon. It runs well and I’m trying to balance my desire to “improve” a bunch of stuff against just enjoying the thing as is.

Enjoy it as is, fix problems. As you get aquatinted and familiar with it, make informed decisions on what truly needs upgrades and what is fine as is.

How long ago did you have that done? I thought about doing something similar once, but I heard magnesium won't hold paint long term. Although I don't know the magnesium content of those later Fuchs tbh. (sorry for hijacking the thread).

Sent from my SM-G988B using Tapatalk

Before you say your fuel lines are fine, grab one in the back of the engine compartment, near the fuel filter, and bend it/flex it. If you see a bunch of cracks, it's time to do it. I thought mine were fine but replaced them since I had the engine out, and brother, they were not fine.

I think some of your posts are what have me concerned about the fuel lines… if I had the engine out I would definitely replace them but I’m not at the dropping the engine stage just yet. Part of the problem is that I’m not even sure what I’m looking at and what to order up as replacements. I have vaguely thought about just ordering up a bunch of the various fuel hoses available from Pelican and taking it on piecemeal.

Staring into the back of the engine I see fuel lines running to various things but in most cases I’m not able to see where they ultimately go. I printed out the ~680 page parts catalog thingy you can download from Porsche and I’m going to start trying to decipher some of this stuff.

I’m pretty sure I need a new fuel accumulator so I may just start with that and the fuel filter and replace the relevant hoses and go from there.

My belief that I might need a new accumulator is based on the car being slow (3-4 seconds) to start after it’s sat for more than 4-5 hours. Of course it could also be the check valve thingy up front but the fuel pump was replaced a year or two ago. No hot start problems, fires up instantly, but sometimes when I really mash the throttle down it bogs down slightly which makes me think it’s not getting quite enough gas in certain circumstances.

The upgrade from the trombone cooler to the Carrera cooler with a fan is a BIG upgrade for hot weather driving. I drive my car in 100+ temps with the AC cranking. My 85 came with the Carrera cooler of course, but no fan. To add the fan, I had to remove the cooler, and add the fan and wiring. My cooler does not have the bung for the temps switch, so I just put in a manual toggle switch and I have a human interface. When the temp gets to 210, on goes the fan, even on the highway. It does indeed help even at 75 MPH for hours of driving.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1685458903.JPG

You will want to replace the short hoses unless they have been replaced already. Those hoses are tricky to get threaded on and not cross thread them. Be careful and patient. And getting them tight enough to not leak is tricky. I ended up wrapping mine in a paper towel zip tied in place. Then I could see just where the very seeping leak was. Once it was all sealed up, the paper towels came off.

Be certain to get a new foam seal for the cooler. You want all the air forced to go through the cooler, and not around it!

Mine is nothing near as clean as the photo now after many tens of thousands of miles.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1685459347.JPG

The very first "upgrade" or project I did on my 911 back 28 years ago was replacing the dumb unnumbered temp gauge. It is really easy to take the gauge out of the dash, and replace the temp gauge with a numbered version. You most likely have to replace the temp sender as well. I did back then, but they may have gauges that work with the stock sender.

It is comforting to just glance at the gauge and know what the temp is, and not have to do calculations and test your memory.

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One other glaring omission on the instruments is no factory volt meter. I remedied that. I sent in my gauge to have the volt meter added. Once again it is nice to KNOW what the charge level is. And it is also a great fan belt warning. It the voltage drops, pull over and check that fan belt ASAP.