Clark's Garage Message Board

[mikepellegrini]

After my kid (Travis) got his 951 a couple years ago, I've been lusting after having one of my own.

I finally found the perfect car last August.

It's an 86 with about 170 K mies on it.


Click on the image to view it at its original size

More pictures: http://www.mikepellegrini.com/Photos/Porsches/Mikes_Turbo/index.html

The guy I got it from had owned it since about 1999. It had been his daily driver until he parked it in 2006 - he said it had a problem with accelleration (it wouldn't rev past about 2K RPM). It sat under a tarp in his carport until August 2008. He was moving and selling the house, and the car had to go.

The car has a straight body with original paint - the paint's in reasonable shape, except the clear coat is peeling in spots. The interior is in excellent shape - someone took really good care of it. Nice leather sport seats, a perfect dash with no cracks.

The PO had spent a lot of bucks maintaining the car mechanically - not long before he parked it, he'd spent a bunch on new headders (the parts were flown in from Germany, he said) which he'd had installed because of an exhaust leak.

The car has Koni's in front and newer Bilstein's in back.

I picked the car up way cheap, and had it towed home.

After turning over the engine by hand and inspecting the belts, we were able to start it with almost no effort - pretty awful good after it had sat for two years!

My kid diagnosed the performance problem (in less than 5 minutes) as a bad TPS.

I replaced the TPS, and then soon after, replaced all the vacuum hoses under the intake manifold and the cycling valve and BOV, and the fuel hoses (to the rail), as well as one injector that was leaking and several cooling system hoses. 20+ year old rubber is expected to have some problems.

At about the same time, I did the belts and rollers, and changed the brake fluid. I also replaced the clutch slave.

I also detailed and painted the engine (since I had the intake manifold off).

I replaced the starter last week.

Since the repairs, it's been performing really well. I'm very impressed. Not too bad for a 23 year old car.

I plan to keep it more or less stock. For mods, I can live vicariously through my kid. He's dumped an insane amount of money into his car (most recently a bigger Garret turbo, a MAF and 71# injectors, plus a bunch of other stuff).

On the horizon for possible repairs/improvements:

Clutch master cylinder
Waterpump
New locking pins for the rear hatch
New Lloyd's mats
New stereo and sub
Window tinting
Strut tower brace

It's a really fun car to drive. I'm really glad I got it.