vascott99

Hey all...

Newbie here with a trivial question...

What would you buy for a stock 79 930..with 45k miles

I am trying to figure out projects that I can do for the next several years and need ideas on what I should upgrade and why...I figure this would be the place to get some great ideas. I do not have the money now but I am trying to save so that when I do the upgrades I know what to get and why I am getting them.....

BTW the car is in pretty solid condition
Interior and exterior

Also the brands with good reps

Thanks all for your help

sand_man

This comes from a guy that uses his 930 as a daily driver: the best upgrade imaginable is a beater car to drive around while the "low mileage" toy is being sorted out!

vascott99

This is strictly a weekend car and hibernates during the winter months

mainly used for street driving and a few DE's

WERK-I

Suspension and engine......in that order.

Sameer

Updated whatever that needs to be updated. Electrical, leaks, worn out parts and a full service. After that I'd do the below:

Kokeln Long neck intercooler
1 bar boost spring
Fuel head mod
Port and polish intake manifold to anywhere between 38mm-41mm
B&B headers
Fabspeed muffler
K&N panel air filter and make a few 1 inch holes under the air box
Sc 330, 964 or Ruf Cams
K27HFS turbo
Additional oil cooler
Heavy duty clutch
Suspension mods
Big red brakes

I'm sure all the above will cot more that what you wanna spend but it's all mostly bolt on's and will put you way over the 430bhp mark with reliability with regular maintenance.

Tom F

Exhaust, if you still have the thermal reactors or the thermal reactor based system, G50/50 transmission (this from what I hear, rather than my own experience), sway bars, 9 inch rear wheels, in that order, IMHO.

sand_man

My car is an '87. I bought it with 39,000 miles. The car never saw rain or snow. Never was in Northern Climate. Was always part of someones personal collection in a climate/humidity controlled garage. It looks like it did the day it drove off the lot for the first time in 1987. It passed PPI with great results. The car ran like a Swiss watch from TN to NC when I went to pick it up. After only a few months, the engine began leaking "Black Gold"..."Texas Tea" (oil) like a damaged refinery, or worse, the Exxon Valdez! Leakes from the front chain housing covers, leakes from the the back of the chain boxes, misc oil lines, etc., etc. After two thousand miles, the OEM 3LDZ turbo seals went South sending mucho oil into engine intake. Exactly 1,000 miles later the rubber centered clutch disintegrated. This brings us to 42,000 miles and I now have a couple broken head studs! I'm now in the early stages of a total engine rebuild.

My advice, don't spend your entire budget on "bolt-on upgrades". Save for the most important part of the car...THE ENGINE!!!! Even in it's most basic, stock form...it's all about the engine!!! I've seen it time and time again: low mileage+ALL original car+Porsche 930=stuff waiting to go bad for the new owner.

Please don't musinderstand the tone of my message. I'm not at all bitter about it. I enjoy working on cars. I dearly love this one. She'll be fixed soon and better than ever. This car just needed the right owner...and now she has him! I'm just dissapointed that I spent a premium on a low mileage car that didn't really last as long as it should have.

Jeff

srf506

sand_man, right on. A "pristine" low-mileage car with low miles is not a reliable machine when you put it out on the road on a regular basis as in "daily driver." I bought my 85 eurospec 930 in PA. Car had 60,000k miles and I'm the third owner. The previous owner kept it in a climate controlled garage. It still had a few "warts," as in the leather dash, and driver's seat rub marks. Rest of car was immaculate. Engine pulled strong and had good numbers on the leak-down and compression testing. I drove it home from PA (1100 miles) Car ran like a top. I used to crew for Alex Job Racing and I have a friend who crewed with us that owns his own Porsche shop. I took it to him to have him assess the car and what really needed to be done to it. List was pretty minor actually. We replaced all of the fluids, did a valve job, cleaned and balanced the injectors, set the car up at the right ride height and a good alignment. Replaced an oil line, all the belts, put teflon-stainless braided brake hoses on, adjusted the clutch, changed over to synthetic (Mobil 1), put the right tranny oil in, replaced the engine insulation blanket, new sport motor mounts, replaced the old Pirellis with Kuhmos in the proper sizes, and serviced the AC. Within a week of doing that I developed an oil leak, broke (!) a left rear torsion bar, the AC became a convection oven, and more mysteriously, it started blowing fuel pump fuzes. I now have all of that straightened out, but of course, it ate up the dollars I had allocated for taking care of the dash, and while in the shop we noticed a couple of new things to work on, like the rear calipers were beginning to look a little damp, and the passenger side interior door handle no longer sprang back to the closed position meaning the door wouldn't latch when you tried to shut it. So, to make a long story longer, it takes a while to find and debug a low-mileage car in order to have basic day-to-day reliability. Now I understand why so many people tow their low-mile weekend and sunny weather toys to meets and shows. It isn't reliable enough to get there w/o incident because the car is deteriorating faster than if you drive it and you get with these things all at once versus one thing at a time. I still love my car, and I knew going in I'd have to repair and replace things, after all it is a twenty year old car. I just hadn't counted on them all in the first month of ownership ;-)

Tom F

Good points in the last two posts. The most important budget for these cars is to maintain them as they deserve.

sand_man

I guess the short of what I'm trying to say is for a car of that age with such little mileage, what might be "BTW the car is in pretty solid condition" right now at this very moment will likely change quicker than you can snap your fingers...just be prepared. Even if you don't drive it daily. Good luck...they really are fantastic cars! And who knows, you might have the low mileage example that runs FOREVAR!

Also be advised that some engine "upgrades" could cause your beast to reveal it's age very rapidly. If I had it to do over again, I'd probably buy the same car again (I do love her) and spend the balance of my budgeted funds ensuring that my foundation (engine) was TOP-NOTCH!

fiftyfive

sand_man and srf506,

My newly purchased 86 has 56.6kmiles, very solid/original, great PPI checkout, etc., etc. Looks like I'm next on bubble to repeat your experiences. We'll see after my wallet's even lighter, but right now all I have to do is go out in the garage and look at it--the anxiety melts away.

These things are among three or four of the iconic cars of that era. Big bucks TLC is just part of owning them two decades later.

vascott99

They trullllly are ONE if not thee most awesome looking cars....I melt everytime I stick her in gear and proceed. I wait til I can enhance her...and trully feel her purr...Good luck

DonE

Amen.