Porsche 911T Project Car RennsportKC

Had this little guy waiting in line to come in, so once we knocked a few projects on their head, we had room to get it in. It’s a barn find that hasn’t run in quite some time. The car originally was at another shop who tried to resurrect it, but they couldn’t get it quite right, so it came down to us for the work. One thing we have learned in the dozens of these cars we have brought back from this condition, is that you can’t half ass the process. You have to start at one end of the car and work to the other end, specifically in the fuel and ignition system. If you try and leave out a step, it’s gonna burn you. We’ve learned a lot about doing these cars right the first time, and really stick to our guns on our process now! It isn’t a perfect process, but we make it better each time we go through one of these old cars and add each experience to the flowchart. If you don’t, in the end it ends up costing the customer and shop far more than it should!

It is a neat little 911T targa! Seems to be in nice solid shape, now we just need to revive it. Unfortunately with these old cars, you can’t just replace one thing and have it spring to life. Over the years of sitting, rubber rots, fuel lines/tanks rot, brake lines rot, injectors/carbs plug up, etc, so you end up really having to do a LOT of work to get them right. We follow the saying….”there isn’t anything more expensive than a cheap Porsche.” But…when they are done, they are a ton of fun!

The old MFI system has long been removed and replaced by a set of original Italian Webers. Of course, half of the old MFI system is still in there with a permatune, so we aren’t sure if that is going to interfere with us or not.

After some quick diagnosing to see what we had, we found the #1 and #2 cylinders were not firing at all. A compression test of the engine confirmed we had good compression, so we will tackle that with new wires, etc. A quick glance in the tank (and the see through filter) showed a ton of junk in the tank, so we start by pulling that to have the interior of the tank cleaned and coated.

Someone has replaced all the brake system…..except for the master cylinder. When we pushed it around the shop, it was like the brakes were dragging. Once we turned the key on and saw the brake lights come on by themselves, we knew we had a bad master, so I will replace that while it is in the air.

With the addition of the carbs (whenever that was), a small flow pump was added. Gonna have to secure this stuff up in place a lot better!

The tank finally out of the car. She was stuck in there pretty good! Removing the fuel sending unit so we can get a better look in the tank.

Poof!

The issue with these old cars is the new ethanol fuel. It is absolutely eating up these old fuel systems. The ethanol attacks the metal and instantly rusts it. The rust then breaks free and ends up clogging the system further down the line. New cars don’t have these problems with plastic fuel tank and plastic lines, but even they have problems with the pumps going bad from the crappy fuel. This tank was supposedly cleaned recently, but if you don’t line it, it will instantly rust. All this rust then goes through the fuel lines, pump, and ends up in the bowls of the carbs and will eventually cause them to stop operating properly. We will send the tank off and get our custom coating done, then start putting that end of the car back together! In the meantime, the carbs come apart to clean out the bowls, get the jets and emulsion tubes correct, etc. Wes can add more with his fancy technical carburetor terms 🙂