krichard

I have been researching SC's and happened upon a Carrera in my price range. I have not been researching them and need to know what the must haves are for these models. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Kerry

Dave Thomas

Hi Kerry,

Not sure what you mean by "must haves" - OEM problems that should have been corrected, or performance upgrades?

The Carreras are pretty great cars right from the factory, but a couple of things come to mind.
There was a factory upgrade for the clutch fork which you will want to do if the car hasn't already had it. Also the rear sway bar brackets (at the floor pan) tend to break and there is an improved part for that.

You also might want to backdate the oil temp gauge to the earlier style with numbers - there are kits available that include the gauge and the sender.

krichard

I am more refering to OEM problems like those found on the SC. Like the chain tensioners, head bolts, pop-off valve and so on.

JeremyW964

no, they got the Carreras right from the start!

Luus

The '87-89 Carreras have the G50 transmission. It's a lot nicer than the 915 tranny in the earlier cars.

Bill Gregory

Earlier Carrera's did have some valve guide wear issues. Beyond that, as pointed out, there aren't any generalized faults.

Dave Thomas

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Helvetica">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Helvetica">Originally posted by krichard:
<strong>I am more refering to OEM problems like those found on the SC. Like the chain tensioners, head bolts, pop-off valve and so on.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Helvetica">Got it. Not much, other than what is mentioned above. The only other thing I can think of is the climate cotrol fans. Between the fresh air, A/C and heating, there are 6 fans. Heating has an electric fan in the rear on the engine and two footwell fans. Fresh air has it's own fan, and the A/C has a front condenser fan and an evaporator fan. The motors aren't very durable and you'll probably need to replace all of them eventually. All 6 have failed on my '88 with only 67K miles. I did the fresh air and evaporator fans last summer, all 3 heater fans last winter, and now the condensor fan is bad.

mm86911

Remove the AC system completely and save almost 60 lbs. - targa top off unless at the track. If you have a coupe, and dead set on AC, then you'll spend quite a bit getting it to work marginal results. Anything else on Carerra is minor and expected with age.

classic911

I too was looking at both SCs and 84-86 Carreras and came away with a 1982 SC coupe in excellent condition, all updates (tensioners, popoff, spring clutch) and, more importantly, excellent service records. The 87-89 G50 gearbox is more desireable, but everyone I looked at was outside my "toy" budget.

Really can't go wrong with either as long as they were properly maintained.

I think I read something somewhere once in one of the Porsche magazines that said something to the effect "try to avoid the first three years of production as it will usually take Porsche that time to make a model right". I can't remember if the author was talking about the 84-86 Carreras since the G50 came in '87, or if he was talking about the 928/944. He may have also been talking about the valve guide improvement porsche made to the 911 in 1977 after the 2.7 motor debacle.
I don't agree with the author since the SCs and Carreras were solid cars from the start...

Christian K

I guess that avoiding the first three years of production is more true to some models but not all. The 3.2 Carrera actually didn't have many alterations, if any, done to it due to design or construction achilles heals like the chain tensioners in the earlier cars or the flywheel in later cars ... There were some changes which were more of the developement-type than the problem-solving, the G-50 gearbox, better ventilation system etc.

In retrospective, the 3.2 Carreras together with the 3.0 SC and 3.3 Turbo must be some of the most reliable cars to ever leave Zuffenhausen.

cheers

Christian