salomon

I am considering buying a 911 SC that does not have a Carrera Tensioner Upgrade. Is it essential that the car have the upgrade? What is the estimated cost to install the upgrade kit with parts and labor? Thanks for the help.

autobonrun

You'll get differing opinions but I have never felt the upgrade is necessary. Many do it, but a tensioner kit is now around $900 excluding the install cost. Then you have the plumbing to deal with on the outside of the engine.

I chose back in 1985 to put the mechanical stops on my tensioner shafts. Twenty six years later they are fine and my car has 212k miles. The mechanical stops cost $20.

http://www.pelicanparts.com/cgi-bin/...set%20of%20%32

Makmov

My opinion is it will give you plenty of warning the tensioner is going bad and if you continue to drive with a bad tensioner you kind of deserve to buy an engine for the car.

Edgy01

I guess I'm always surprised that by this time there are 911Scs running around without the Carrera tensioner setup. That tells me that the owner was a wee bit frugal. For piece of mind the upgrade will solve a lot of problems. True, the mechanical stops work, too, however, it just depends upon how long you plan to keep the car and if you plan to spend anymore money on the engine. it's not that invasive and it's money well spent.

aadrew10

Hydraulic tensioners have issues sometimes as well. The upgrade doesn't solve a lot of problems; Only one. My car has had lots of money put into the engine but still retains the mechanical tensioners, and old dilavar head studs, which I recently replaced.

Ed Hughes

You can install stops inside the cylinders on the hydraulic tensioners which makes them pretty impervious to collapse.

rusnak

I had a tensioner start to fail in the 914/6. I did shut it down quickly, but it's definitely something that youlwant to avoid, and the onset was quick with no warning.

race911

Anyone done a top end on a car that had a tensioner collapse, with a stop installed? I'd say my count is 10+. I'm not sure what they're making them of now, but in the '70s through the mid '80s, either improper install or poor use of materials pretty much made them useless in practice.

A bad tensioner isn't that easy for even the most astute to notice. I've had a couple go bad way back when. At the track once, coming off a run session. EZ change because most of us had them in our spare pile of parts. Another time on a trip where I had to nervously nurse it back home.

Ed Hughes

I used bronze oilite bushing, cut to length and inserted inside the tensioner under the plunger. It physically cannot collapse.

gtihop

I did the inside bushing too after having an oil fed one go bad after a year. No worries now.