All true, these are by and large one of the lowest mileage old cars as a group I've ever seen. I sell a boat load of fuel tanks and warm up regulators
and fuel distributors and pumps to old 911 guys too
who are famous for not driving the things or them having been sitting for decades in some garage and someone trying to get them back on the road since they are
worth a fortune now.
Most of them just replace everything since it's largely available and isn't really expensive compared to what the cars are worth.

If it's been sitting, or is going to sit, odds are high you're going to have trouble with the fuel system.
Your odds are a fair bit better if it has mileage on it indicating it's been in use more than it's sat
during its life. I've never had anything but trouble from low mileage old cars. The logic being
that unless it was driven into the ground and parked when too many failures piled up to be
able to crutch it along (which does happen) then if it made it to 150 or 200 or more K miles
across two or three decades it likely was serviced when it was needed to get it there.
There are always exceptions but by and large that's been my observation.
There's nothing wrong with buying something cosmetically nice that's done very
few miles a year as long as one is aware that they are likely still going to run into
a bunch of mechanical issues from it. That even counts for "new" cars. I'm
a member of a 3rd gen Lincoln Town Car forum and those guys would get all
excited for a 20, 30K mile grandma edition car that's 20 years old and they'd be
quite nice looking and then spend half the purchase price replacing degraded rubber
and deferred maintenance that was never done since nobody was driving it.
Pick your poison I suppose.


But when you DO get the thing sorted, drive it.
Almost 250K on mine and it's been a daily for the 14 or 15 years we've had it, fuel tanks were clean
when I preemptively replaced the seemingly original fuel pump last year.
Not a coincidence imo.

 

Wolf
I 100% agree.

 

Great observation Doug! And it makes me realise that I really need to rethink my approach to my 30-year old 4 litre Convertible.

The problem is that my head forgets that it's no longer a newish car. I bought it when it was about 7 years old and originally did about 20k per year. But it now lives a much more sedate life. Over my time with it, it's been pretty well-maintained - I'm obsessive about fluid and filter changes, engine oil, gearbox oil, diff fluid, coolant, brake fluid, engine, fuel & air filters etc. The diff was rebuilt at 60k because of a noisy bearing. The front and rear suspension have been rebuilt. One exhaust manifold was changed because of the customary crack. The rad was rebuilt because of fin corrosion. The alternator has been replaced. The windscreen flange corrosion has been resolved. And I've just had the sills stripped and repainted. I only ever put in E5 high-octane fuel and run a bottle of Redex every few tanks. And it runs beautifully.

BUT

It's on the original injectors, the fuel hoses have never been touched, the fuel pump is original and the tank has never been out.

So, I guess I ought to rethink my regime. I need to think about it as a 30-year old car, not the 7-year old daily driver, that I originally bought. I should think about changing ALL the fuel hoses. get the injectors cleaned, clean the fuel tank and replace the pump. Not because there's anything wrong, but because they are all 30-years old!

Cheers

Paul

 

Much like ourselves, we don't notice aging till it suddenly makes itself painfully apparent.

30 years is "carry a fire extinguisher" time for fuel lines in my book. I'd leave the pump alone if it's not noisy, I went through two or three new production Bosch ones that are supposed to be "better"
and they are all louder and don't speak to me of the quality of the original that was still humming along at a quarter million miles. I had some crazy hot fuel issues last summer in triple digit ambient temps
and I'm pretty sure it was having issues but it was the design of the fuel system not so much the pump. In fairness the Bosch ones did maintain a base level of noisiness regardless of the temp so it technically
was better, but anyway..

Since you've kept the car up and used it, as long as you don't let it sit for months at a time I wouldn't be too concerned otherwise in your case. Injectors do get cruddy eventually but having them cleaned isn't very expensive.
I've similarly put well over 200K on Bosch gas injectors without any issue more than a few times though so if it runs well...