One of the first restoration projects taken in by Pacific Throttle House is this one-owner, numbers matching 911T. Purchased new off the showroom floor, it was the ownerʼs daily driver for many years of service before being retired first to weekend duty, then finally put in storage in 2009. Having been a California car all its life, it has managed to dodge the rust bullet that claims so many of these beautiful but non-galvanized long nose 911s, but is definitely an old car in need of restoration. Our orders are to make it like new, so it can go back to serving as a great weekend car for an owner who spends a lot of time on the road.
Our first order of business was to clean and scrub everything we could. We stripped the interior, as the car had the tell-tale smell that mice had made themselves at home in the chassis. Once all the evidence of rodents was taken care of, we turned our attention to the drivetrain. The owner had parked the car because he believed it developed gearbox problems. The oil bath on the underside of the car gave us little reason to doubt him. At the very least, this gearbox is in need of resealing. On a positive note, we found the shift linkage had very deteriorated bushings, which may have been the source of the shifting problems.
The motor ran when the 911 headed to the barn for storage, but sitting for four years can lead to a myriad of woes in the engine compartment. Therefore, we carefully proceeded to ascertain the condition of the power plant: we removed and cleaned the carburetors, changed the spark plugs (scoped the bores at the same time to inspect the cylinder walls), turned it over by hand, and changed the oil. The batteries were beyond saving, so a spare was summoned. After this, the engine turned freely, but despite good compression and fresh fuel, would not fire. One new spark control unit and a twist of the key later, the engine proved to run and run well.
As of now, the engine and transmission are coming out of the car so that they can be separated, cleaned, and returned to new condition. All trim is coming off the car this week in preparation of being re-chromed and, as soon as we finish patching in metalwork where an aftermarket A/C system had been installed, the final decision whether to try and revive the current paint job or prep and paint will be made by the owner. Either way, this is going to turn out to be one nice 911!