When I looked at the odometer of my 1977 Porsche 911 2.7 after the run down to Sydney for the Porsches and Coffee event last Sunday it showed 215,408 kms. When I bought the car in August 2001 it had 156,528 kms on the odometer so in the intervening 18 years I have driven it 58,880kms. A reasonable mileage for a hobby car seeing that it has shared my affections with my 2.2 911.
I bought that car from a used car yard on Sydney's Parramatta Road - formerly the home of many dodgy used car dealers. It had languished on that dealer's yard for many months unloved and unwanted because it was a 2.7 with a Sportomatic gearbox.
The Sportomatic
was a semi-automatic transmission: a four-speed
Porsche manual gearbox (later a 3 speed) operated by a three-element hydraulic torque
converter with a single dry-plate clutch.
The clutch
is disengaged by a vacuum servo unit that gets its signal from a
microswitch on the shift linkage; a touch on the shift lever
disengages the clutch. Not a good arrangement if you are prone to handling the gearshift knob whilst driving. The gearbox was initially a Porsche all-synchro 4-speed unit with a parking pawl added but later as power outputs increased Porsche moved to a 3 speed unit with more robust gears. Mine was a 3 speeder.
I did take a big chance on the car and I did not really know as much about early 911s as I should have done before parting with my money. I did get it at a very good price but the bills started mounting up when I had the Sporto gearbox swapped for a manual gearbox 2 years after I bought the car. That was an expensive exercise. I was very fortunate that I found a fully rebuilt 5 speed 915 gearbox for the swap.
Nowadays the Sportomatic transmission is less maligned and some owners are even swapping back their cars to Sportos in the interests of originality.
An American friend, Patrick, owned a 1971 911T with a Sporto which he very generously loaned to me for the day in San Francisco in 2003. However unlike Patrick I never enjoyed driving the Sporto. I felt that the the lack of engine braking was disconcerting and then when mine started jumping out of gear from time to time -once at high speed - I decided that it had to go.
The Sydney Porsche specialist who swapped the gearbox who is well known for both the quality of their workmanship and the size of their invoices warned me at the time of the swap that the engine was a "grenade -waiting to explode at at any moment". I kept driving it and 58,880 kms and many rallies, supersprints, hillclimbs, and fast country drives later it still has not exploded. It certainly has a few oil leaks but it pulls well and apart from the normal blue clouds of oil smoke on start up after standing for a few weeks it is surprisingly good shape.
The 2.7 engine is often cited as Porsche's most troublesome engine and there is no doubt that they suffered from early problems with the magnesium crankcases warping and the head studs pulling out and other problems. But it really is a case of give a dog a bad name as the reality is that in a 2.7 such as mine these problems were fixed long ago and the fact that it has gone so far indicates that these issues are way behind me.
My car is an Australian delivered car first registered in April 1977 to Maree Newall, the wife of John Newall the only NSW Porsche dealer at the time. It came with factory aircon which I have had totally rebuilt and upgraded so that it performs much better than when it was new.
The car has all the books, the original space saver tyre which still inflates although I would not be game to drive on it, as well as the original compressor for inflating the space saver and the original tool roll minus one screwdriver.
Until last year the car had an early Pioneer CD/radio sound system with a big power amp etc. This had been installed by the second owner. It was a big, ugly system and last year I had it ripped out - that really lightened the car-and I acquired a period correct Porsche branded Blaupunkt radio and had it installed. It works really well and looks great.
I'd call the car a 4 metre car meaning that if you view it from 4 metres it looks really good but closer inspection reveals that the paintwork maybe glossy but it is far from perfect and there are a few dents. What the car does not have is tin worm-rust-the local climate has been kind to it. The interior is very original but worn and one owner was obviously a chainsmoker and the headlining is really stained brown and is so fragile that I cannot touch it to clean it. Replacing the headlining is probably a "windows out" job so I just don't look at it. The smell of smoking went long before I acquired the car fortunately.
So that's the update on my 2.7 44 years and 215,408 kms into its life. I might have done better by paying more for a manual car in better condition at the outset-but it would not have been such a great colour - and it's turned out to be a good driving car which has given me a lot of pleasure and I plan to keep driving it for as long as I can.
Thanks to Carlos at Cavaco Motors for looking after the car so well during the early years -I wish I had found you earlier and thanks to Simon at Autowerks, N Wyong for keeping it going for the last eleven years.
