New to the 911 and diving in… questions

[ADDvanced]

Originally Posted by REVerend

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. .

Carry a fire extinguisher til you replace them. Heck even after you replace them. But when you plan on the inevitable engine drop, just plan on doing the fuel lines front to back. Now I don't need to worry about it for another 3 decades.

[PeteKz]

The steel fuel lines through my tunnel are still fine. I can't see a reason to replace them except on condition. Rubber lines are a different matter. At this age, they should be replaced with newer spec lines that also are more resistant to ethanol contamination.

[ADDvanced]

The lines through the tunnel are a hard plastic, not steel. Unless you have an older one. Idk.

[PeteKz]

Yeah, my car is a 1973, so they are steel.

[86 ssinit]

Nice car nice thread! I’ve got it brother. Bought it in 2013. I’ve done a lot over the years but always could use more. Thing I want to say is drive it and enjoy it! These cars just run!
Things I’ve done is remove everything offtne rear bumper and weld the hole and repaint. I’ve got a body shop that understands it’s just an old car .
This is it now. Changed out the exhaust for a billabong system. Much loader . Also redid the suspension and interior but nothing yet to the engine. It still runs great.
Two other things done were replace front windshield and the rubber on the tail.

[Charlie V]

Congrats. Good looking car.

Have fun with it - I find wrenching to be just as enjoyable as driving it. Once sorted, these cars are like tractors. They just keep running and get the job done. Plus they are a blast to drive.

I've had mine for over 18 years now and reconditioned and rebuilt everything along with a number of mods - some brakes, most of the suspension and all of the engine. She flies...........

My passion is long distance driving and canyon carving. Have zero plans to sell it. The kids can fight over it when I'm gone.

[NE Ohio 911]

Nice! Welcome to the club. I’ve had mine 18 years. Suspension upgrades are a great investment IMHO. I enjoy projects all winter and then drive all summer. Make it yours, purists be damned!

[REVerend]

Things have been busy with some traveling and I hadn’t driven the 911 in a few weeks. I had ordered a FabSpeed Supercup from our host two and half months ago but apparently the 2-3 week delivery time was a bit optimistic. It finally arrived yesterday:



After going through everything a couple times and then looking on Fabspeeds site it isn’t exactly clear how it mounts up. The instructions on the site appear to be for some other type of system and doesn’t offer any help. Google some images and eventually find a pic of what this thing should look like once installed from some other performance parts seller. Not a great pic but enough so that I can now make sense of it.

Start bolting it all together and the bracket seems to sit too low. The strap for the muffler seems like it wants to pull the muffler down and put additional tension on the headers/heat exchangers through the test pipe. It also seems to want to pull it down to touch the bumper valence thing and I would like them to not touch and the muffler to sorta be in the middle of the bumper shell.

After tinkering with it for a long time I decide to take it apart and use only the one bolt to make the bracket sit higher. It may not be correct but at this point I’m irritated at the lack of information available and I’m gonna do it my way. This is how it now fits before I put the strap in place.



I drilled another hole to add a second bolt to hold the bracket together and tightened everything up. By this time it’s nearly 11pm and I’m drowning in sweat because it’s really hot here and my garage isn’t air conditioned.

This morning fire up the 911 to drive to work and it sounds incredible. It’s everything I like with having the straight pipe confit from a few months back but isn’t deafeningly loud. I’m going to probably take the whole Supercup exhaust off this weekend and rework the mounting bracket. The bolts for the clamps/strap are excessively long and in general I’m going to tidy up the whole thing. Thinking replacing the strap with a sorta bolt clamp setup between the two muffler chambers so I can adjust the bracket… to be determined.

In all it sounds great but it definitely wasn’t as straightforward as I expected to install.

[REVerend]

Reinstalled the FabSpeed Supercup yesterday as I wasn’t particularly satisfied with the way it had gone together before with the mounting bracket. It seemed like it would be pulling the muffler down putting tension on the heat exchangers/test pipe which didn’t seem ideal to me. Also the exhaust tip seemed to stick out unnecessarily far and looked a little too much like it belonged on a Honda.

Take the various bits apart and get it all aligned the way I think it should go and then reassemble the mounting bracket. It seems like the mounting bracket sits too low so I use a stainless hose clamp and put it around just the lower muffler portion and weave it through the 911 cutout on the mounting bracket and tighten it up. That seems to hold the muffler where it needs to be and doesn’t put tension on the rest of the exhaust system. Then I tighten up the clamps that hold the various bits of the muffler tube/exhaust tip together.



One recommendation I will make is cutting the bolts down shorter on the clamps to minimize the length. You could say it’s for weight savings (every once counts right?) but the reality is that it’s way easier to not have to use deep sockets to tighten things down. I also used stainless bolts/nuts with nickel anti seize for the mounting bracket and flanges because I was annoyed at the oddball size copper nut bolts it came with. Then I cut them all down to min length with a Dremel.

[REVerend]

After getting the vaccine exhaust all together yesterday afternoon I took the car for a long drive once things cooled off a bit… Supercup sounds great and car ran very well. All was fine until I got home and heard a suspicious hissing as I pulled in the garage.

The Michelin Pilot Sports on the car are about five years old but have a lot of tread life left so I wasn’t planning on new tires for another year or so. But it turns out there was about an inch long section of razor blade embedded in the drivers side rear tire. Now I’m not opposed to plugging up and running a tire but this is about an inch long cut in the tire and pretty sure that it isn’t fixable. Only thing I can think of is the front tire flipped it up and back tire caught it just perfectly to press it in. Given the rate it was losing air it must have happened just in the last mile from home. Threw a tire pump on it to keep it from going completely flat while I got the car up and sitting on blocks in the garage. Really glad it didn’t happen out in the middle of nowhere.

So now my dilemma is to just get an inexpensive tire to throw on and drive it for a while or just go ahead and pull the trigger on new rubber all around. It looks like folks here like both the Pilot Sports and Continental Extreme Contact.

[HarryD]

Originally Posted by REVerend

Reinstalled the FabSpeed Supercup yesterday as I wasn’t particularly satisfied with the way it had gone together before with the mounting bracket.

I also used stainless bolts/nuts with nickel anti seize for the mounting bracket and flanges because I was annoyed at the oddball size copper nut bolts it came with. Then I cut them all down to min length with a Dremel.

Stainless steel bolts and nuts for this application is not the best selection. They tend to gall and make removal very difficult. Steel bolts with Silicon bronze or copper plated is the correct selection for this harsh environment.

Originally Posted by john walker's workshop

Regular old steel. SS can bind/gall on itself on removal.

[REVerend]

Originally Posted by HarryD

Stainless steel bolts and nuts for this application is not the best selection. They tend to gall and make removal very difficult. Steel bolts with Silicon bronze or copper plated is the correct selection for this harsh environment.

Hmmm… well I have the copper hardware that came with the muffler so I can swap it out pretty easily still. The galling was a concern but I figured that liberal application of nickel based never seize would minimize any potential issues.

Having to cut off the original bolts which were rusted wasn’t a fun chore.

[Longtallsally]

OK, I can’t contain myself any longer! I have long been a mild Porschephile and have debated for more years than I’d like to admit on which series of 911 I’d like to get. My passion for them goes back far enough that I could have gotten an SC for a little over $10k with some miles and maybe needing some work. Ah well, I couldn’t even afford that for a toy car being just out of college and the like…

Anyway, we have relocated to Stuttgart for a second time and I’ve decided this time I’m bringing one back! On our last tour, we brought back a 460 series G Wagen for my wife, and I think I’ll get the green light in a year to get one, so I’m doing the prep and learning specifics for when I get serious.

Threads like this just make me more and more excited to jump into the adventure. We already have too many cars (left 4 in storage in the States) and I feel like my former addiction to E30 BMWs, and current masochistic infatuation with Land Rover Discovery IIs were sufficient preambles to when I can fulfill this dream. In the mean time, I’ll live vicariously through this and other “build” threads as they teach me and I can make certain I get the most car with the least problems when taking my budget into account.

I’ve had a few air cooled cars on course and otherwise back in my auto crossing days, and the first car I ever went over 100mph in was my uncle’s ‘78 SC targa, so I kinda know what I’m getting into, but this being my first post here on Pelican (who I used for my E30s back in the day) makes me more excited to jump into things.

Best of luck with your machine and it will be fun to follow along.

[REVerend]

Haven’t driven the 911 in a couple weeks due to the hunk of razor blade that got embedded in the drivers side rear tire… ordered up a new Pilot Sports to go all around but they won’t be here for a few more days. Decided now would be a good time to attack on the new brake lines that have been sitting for a couple months as well.

Unfortunately to really work on the car I had to move it in the garage a bit which meant throwing the flat tire back on it. Problem was it had a nearly inch long cut… to remedy the high leak rate when inflated I put a bunch of superglue in the cut and let it sit overnight. It may not be roadworthy but it was enough to hold air and move the car a few feet over. I wouldn’t drive on in apart from moving in the garage but it’s still holding pressure.

Getting the car jacked up and on blocks was pretty straightforward… I may be wrong on this (feel free to tell me) but I feel a lot more comfortable with it up on a bunch of large wooden blocks that just Jack stands. Glad I had bought some pinch weld blocks a while back on a late night Pelican shopping binge. Once I got all the wheels off I discovered a screw in the passenger side rear tire. It wasn’t leaking to any significant degree but now I’m really glad new rubber is on the way.

First brake line went pretty well, it was the one that had already been replaced with braided stainless. Then I get to the other side and discover why it hadn’t been replaced. The fitting on the hard line from the rear coupler where it attaches to the flexible line was pretty much completely rounded off. I tried it a few different ways very carefully but it seems to be toast. On the plus side it doesn’t seem to be leaking.

I did order up a replacement hard line from our host but it appears likely that the engine will have to be dropped in order to replace it. I’m going to evaluate the situation a bit more once the replacement is on hand but it looks pretty much impossible without at least dropping the transmission support and I’m guessing the whole engine.

I’m going to evaluate things once I finish getting the brakes bled but I’m pretty sure it’s just gonna have to remain as-is for a bit as it’s too damn hot for me to want to really tear in and drop the engine at present.

Anybody have experience replacing the rear hard line from the coupler?

[REVerend]

Adding to this thread after some time away… my windshield washer isn’t working which isn’t terribly surprising as it looks really crusty.



Pull it out and start hunting through Pelican to see where in the world it is… turns out under miscellaneous parts. There’s a Uro parts version for $29 but has multiple bad reviews, a few unrated options at similar price and a Porsche version for $117. Since various replacement options are out but there I decide that I might as well try things out a bit more before I order.

Connect it to power and it makes a click noise but doesn’t do anything. Guessing the pump is gummed up and a couple minutes later it’s apart. The steel bracket is pretty rusty and the brass plate inside has some corrosion, there are some obvious bits of grit jamming up the gears of the pump. Connect the motor by itself to power and it spins perfectly.



So I think I’m just gonna fix this thing… I’m not extremely concerned with originality but I also really like to recondition original parts. I remember Jim Glickenhaus telling me about having the original wiper motor rebuilt for his GT40, if memory serves it was the wiper motor from a Boeing 707. Something cool about making original parts work rather than just buying new.

The brass plate and rubber seal at the bottom I carefully separated with a razor blade. Seal is still pliable and in good shape. Brass plate and gears scrubbed up easily with an SOS pad. Same with plastic parts. The steel parts I’m going to sand blast and paint.

[REVerend]

A somewhat amusing blast from the past… just over two years ago when I bought my car I ordered up a bunch of stuff including an oil cooler kit from our host. Most of the stuff came in but for the oil cooler. I have been focusing on other projects and the oil temps are fine. But I never got the oil cooler kit… several months back I had to call our host because my shopping cart wouldn’t complete (it still doesn’t, they seem to know it’s a problem) and I asked what this old order. Guy on the phone looks it up and sure enough it never got fulfilled and just kinda ended up in limbo. They said they would look into it.

Today out of the blue the thing showed up on my doorstep… so if you have any MIA orders from Pelican give them a call and eventually you will get it.

Bunch of projects coming for the SC… new turbo tie rods, axle shafts (the GKNs were cheap enough on Rock Auto I just decided to replace the whole thing rather than mess with new boots/CV), new headlights, new fuel lines and now the oil cooler as well.