andrew911

I was reading one of my old Car & Driver magazines (February, 1972), and was reading an article on the 1972 2.4 911. It was a comparison test of a 911T, 911E and 911S. The article mentions that titanium connecting rods for the engine were an option available for $903.50. Does anyone have these, and what is the purpose- faster revving due to lower moving mass plus added strength I would imagine?

That was a lot of money back then (the tested 911T was $8,800 for comparison to the 1972 dollar), and an expensive option (again for comparison, the Forged wheel option was $473 on the T and $360 on the E). I wonder if anyone actually every got these rods. I don't recall hearing about them, but then again the oldest 911 I owned was a 1978 and I wasn't born until 3 months after this article was written

bron964

andrew - is it possible at all to receive scanned images of the old article? i would be very interested in reading it.

tia,
dan

andrew911

I can try- I don't have a scanner, but my brother-in-law does. Several of the pictures in the article show the cars going more sideways than straight

Steve Weiner-Rennsport Systems

Hi Andrew:

Titanium rods were not used in any production 911's,.....even the 2.8 & 3.0 RSR's had steel ones, albeit special items.

The "S" rods were simply nitrated steel, a surface hardening process.

Titanium rods were used in 906, 907, 908, 910, 917, 934, 935, 936, 956, 962, 959, GT-3 and GT-3RS race engines.

andrew911

My assumption is that this was such an expensive option with the real benefits being to racers, that probably no production cars were sold with these. It may have been on the option list that the Car & Driver testers looked at, but not one of those things that a normal customer would opt for.

bron964

Thanks in advance!

Have a good one!

ebsalem

I know you could buy Porsche OEM Ti connecting rods for a 2.4 as they were in our 914/6 with a 2.4 and all internals had to be OEM when we ran it in SCCA C Production.

If I remember right that car won the MiDiv title in '76 & '77.

With some work we could dig up the part number if anybody really cares.

pwd72s

I have a copy of that magazine. No scanner here, but I can quote: "It's all unashamedly there; hemi heads, overhead cams, fuel injection, oil coolers, dry sump, and the clincher half way down the option list-titanium connecting rods well worth their $903.50 price" -Patrick Beddard Alas, reading more makes this reader take all in the article with a grain of salt.
The article compares the 3 models, T, E, and S. Beddard also writes: "They all have the same transmissions with the same gears and final drive ratios, the brakes are identical, ...." Nope, not as standard equipment were the brakes identical in all '72 models.... All that said, isn't the color of the main cover car just drop dead gorgeous????

andrew911

Yes- 3 cars in classic early 1970's paint hues- Green, Orange and Yellow!! Great stuff! Maybe since they were testing early (maybe pre-production) cars, the brakes were all the same?

Here's another fun quote from the race-track test of these cars, with a picture of a car going sideways around a track bend below it: "Typically, 911s lift the inside front wheel but few to the dizzy heights of this Targa. And as a driver you can tell it too. The bruising thud you usually feel when you hang a sheel off the inside edge of a turn doesn't happen. You just glide over it like...well, like you were flying."

Tom Tweed

Ti connecting rods (from the 906?) were available as a factory option when my father bought his 911S in 1967. Unfortunately, he didn't want to wait for a special order car from the factory, so he traded his '65 356SC in on a new non-sunroof coupe with the plain vanilla 901/02 motor. I still have that car.

I believe the option was only $800 in 1967, but that was a huge percentage of the price of the whole car at the time ($6995).

TT

andrew911

Tom- That's very cool that you still have your dad's '67 S !!