Ups and Downs and the generosity of others

I continue to be surprised and heartened by the willingness of others to lend a hand with no expectation of compensation in this little Porsche community of ours.

I've now gotten a little farther having added my cam chain towers.  I had to make a judgement call due to finances not to spend the $800-1k that new Carrera Tensioners go for.  But when I pulled mine out of the bag I put them in 6 months ago and started to fiddle with them I noticed one could be compressed quite easily by hand and the other could not.  I posed this question to the community and was quickly enlightened that the easily compressed one was certainly not operating properly.

I put the picture above on my build thread on Pelican and I also sent a little side question about the same to our local Porsche whisperer.  He quickly diagnosed by the pictures that BOTH of my tensioners were woefully sagging but told me if I'd put them in the mail to him he'd rebuild them for me.  So off to him they went the next morning.  Here is where I found out what several of the little o-rings in my seal kit went to (nothing is noted anywhere just where each thing in these multiple plastic bags go)  apparently these ARE meant to be rebuilt.  I'd like to note that although every single resource reading up on a rebuilt says you just plain HAVE TO replace these babies with the later version I've now heard from several old hands that they are perfectly serviceable (and I'm going w/ that since I now have a nice new set and don't have all that extra $ laying around burning a hole in my pocket.

He sent me this little exploded diagram, I had tried briefly to disassemble them without getting too far and was all too happy to take him up on his offer to fix them for me.

And here is what I got back, quite a difference:

Current thoughts:  I'm somewhere between awe that my car seemed to run as well as it did, and relived that I think I did stave off impending disaster when I took her off the road.  My chain tensioners were both not doing their job, they had failure collars on but they were installed backwards so doing no good whatsoever.  I had 2 fully broken springs with fragments roaming around the case, I kinda assume there were other springs [that are now all new] that were sagging and ready to pop.  I had 1 valve not seating properly and all my exhaust guides were worn.  And I haven't gotten back there yet but my airbox has a huge crack in it (no wonder I've fought so many FI tuning issues).  

I'm getting closer, still need to step it up as there is a show in late March I'd like to be driving this wonderful beast to.