Daily driving a cheap Porsche 911 (996) - what could possibly go wrong?

thewheelman wrote: Have you cleaned between the radiators and AC condensers? Other than that, possibly an air bubble in the system? The cooling system on these cars seem to be notoriously difficult to fill/bleed properly.

I haven't, but the problem appeared after I had already driven the car for about 200 miles in similar temperatures after I got it back from the shop. Mind you, I probably should still check.

We're pretty sure that the cooling system is burbed correctly, too.

thewheelman wrote: Side note, how is your car as far as suspension noise is concerned? Mine has developed a few rattles and thumps, which I attribute to droplinks and heat shields. I plan a thorough investigation in the next couple of weeks.

Pretty good, actually. No real clunks or anything from the suspension. It's got a bit of an annoying rattle in the door that I need to fix once the more important parts are working correctly, but for ~113k miles it's pretty quiet suspension-wise.

Given that Tim Suddard is looking for a Boxster of similar age, I figured I'll give a non-update.

The car is still in residence at the shop and they have been busy diagnosing it. Unfortunately so far they have not been able to reproduce a rather nasty buzzsaw-style noise that I got once when firing up the engine, although they mentioned that the secondary air pump is a bit noisy, but at this point still acceptably noisy.

We also have good news on the temperature front, the engine is running exactly at the temperatures it should be running at, so the question now is why it didn't to that before.

Last but not least, they've also noticed that there is a little bit of timing chain noise on cold startup again even though the tensioners have less than 1000 miles on them, so it's getting new tensioners now.

At the current ratio of repair time/driving time, I have my doubts that I need to bother taking the hardtop off . Unfortunately it does mean that between all the car issues my wife an I have been having in the last few months (her Range Rover has started to use/lose coolant again at an alarming rate, which it seems to do every six months), I may have to buy another car until we can figure out which of the other ones need to be let go. Bah.

Egads man, it seems you'd have no luck if it weren't for bad luck. I so so want this car to be a success for you.

Yikes.

A Range Rover and a 996, you're just a glutton for punishment aren't you?

My wife takes the blame for the Range Rover, she always wanted one .

I'm rooting for you but apparently the answer to the thread title is "everything." I've decided the extent of my 996 ownership is going to be reading about it online.

Hope it's a quick and cheap fix

Well, the fix was cheap for me (as in free).

In the end it turned out that one of the brand new chain tensioners the shop had fitted was starting to fail already, so after diagnosing that they replaced the tensioner and the car is happy again. They ended up keeping it for a bit to make sure everything was 100% - I'm a big believer in giving people the time they need to do a good job.

Overall I'm impressed with this particular shop as usual - they took care of the problem, kept me informed as to what was going on and even sent someone to give me a ride to their shop so I could pick up the car as my wife is out of town.

Obviously I'm off to a rather rocky start with this car even by my standards, but at least it seems that the idea of picking the car based which shop you can trust wasn't that bad an idea.

So, how much are you into this car for - total nut?

My thinking is that for the performance level... you have a certain buy in, whatever the the price of the car. If you exceed $25k I think you are upside-down but otherwise you could not replace what you have with something else and so it was money well (if not grudgingly) spent.

Thanks to all that engine work, I'm in it for around $30k including the original catch-up maintenance. I reckon I'm about $6-8k under water at this point in time, which isn't exactly where I wanted to be but the alternative was yet another 996 with a broken engine.

There is no "cheap Porsche" that is also a 911 Working at a specialist Porsche shop for over a year erased the mythology for me (and realistically, as much as I'm a huge Porsche fan, I've never been a huge 911 fan). And even taking into account the small production runs, there is no reason for the absurd astronomical prices on some of the parts or on the cars themselves, either, it's just the P-car tax. One of the editors of a Porsche mag, Excellence maybe?, documented his travails with a brown SC or 3.2C (can't remember) that ended up costing $80,000 over the course of ownership, and this was before the prices starting going back up. A stock-ish, 220HP old 911. The price-per-performance is nowhere near worth it, and the driving experience, while nice, still doesn't justify it, especially the older trailing-arm cars. The water-cooled cars aren't built as well as the older ones, either, despite being designed better in general (multilink rear, DOHC, etc).

And people give Subarus a hard time?! I got a built, cammed, headworked race engine with factory fresh head castings/crank/etc that can handle over 500wHP for less than a "refresh" of this stock 996 engine. If it had been a project instead of a daily, I'd be half tempted to fab an adapter to put a lightly-built Scoob flat-4 or turbo'ed Legacy flat-6 in the back of a 996 instead

Nothing kills the mystique of something like working on it and living with it. Think Ferraris are cool? Work on a Mondial 3.0 cab Rose colored-glasses in the recycle bin.

jsquared wrote: There is no "cheap Porsche" that is also a 911.... I've never been a huge 911 fan. And even taking into account the small production runs, there is no reason for the absurd astronomical prices on some of the parts or on the cars themselves, either, it's just the P-car tax.

It's only 'expensive' if you can't afford it. Pricing is simple supply/demand econ -- they charge what they charge because they can. If it weren't working out for the sellers AND buyers the price would change. And, if you're a 'huge fan' of the car, you find a way to afford it. So, in the end, it all becomes a matter of perspective.

And I have a different perspective on the Range Rover. They're like swimming pools. Some folks just have to have one. Until they get it and have to live with it. And then, usually, it's 'never again.'

. . . . and I love my swimming pool, so I guess that is why Range Rovers and Porsche's are still popular.

Something like that. If/when my wife's Range Rover gets too annoying to repair, we'll probably just get another, slightly newer one.

911s are a bit "Marmite" as they say in the UK - you either like them or you don't. I happen to like them although with the money I ended dumping into this one, I could've bought a decent SC instead. Having a properly working heater is nice, though.

The heater in my AC 911 is the best part! My wife decreed that we will not be getting headers. The AC sucks balls though, so there's that.
My 911 makes me happy in a way no other car I've owned has. Just opening the garage door and seeing it makes me smile every time. I love driving it. I love owning it.

jsquared wrote: There is no "cheap Porsche" that is also a 911 Working at a specialist Porsche shop for over a year erased the mythology for me (and realistically, as much as I'm a huge Porsche fan, I've never been a huge 911 fan). And even taking into account the small production runs, there is no reason for the absurd astronomical prices on some of the parts or on the cars themselves, either, it's just the P-car tax. One of the editors of a Porsche mag, Excellence maybe?, documented his travails with a brown SC or 3.2C (can't remember) that ended up costing $80,000 over the course of ownership, and this was before the prices starting going back up. A stock-ish, 220HP old 911. The price-per-performance is nowhere near worth it, and the driving experience, while nice, still doesn't justify it, especially the older trailing-arm cars. The water-cooled cars aren't built as well as the older ones, either, despite being designed better in general (multilink rear, DOHC, etc). And people give Subarus a hard time?! I got a built, cammed, headworked race engine with factory fresh head castings/crank/etc that can handle over 500wHP for less than a "refresh" of this stock 996 engine. If it had been a project instead of a daily, I'd be half tempted to fab an adapter to put a lightly-built Scoob flat-4 or turbo'ed Legacy flat-6 in the back of a 996 instead Nothing kills the mystique of something like working on it and living with it. Think Ferraris are cool? Work on a Mondial 3.0 cab Rose colored-glasses in the recycle bin.

as a person interested in this thread from a personal stand point, I want to ask some clarifying questions.

what is "the older ones are built better" mean? For example the old vinyl in BMWs were a thicker more solid feel. Now it is thinner. Reason? Weight and a little cost savings. It helped trim about 5 lbs off the interior weight because the old stuff was so damn heavy. Is that what you mean by built better? Please clarify.

Also, which parts are the ridiculously priced ones? I know for Nissan, who has a price bump on some of their stuff, the VQ thermostat was a little ridiculous. The reason was it was the housing and it was billet. Beautiful yes, required? no. Would a cheap cast piece have worked? Absolutely. Would I have went FRP/Plastic, nope. So there is a level of cost reduction that can be done before reliability and functionality is lost.

So all that being said, could you specify a little more? A future Porsche owner is at stake.

There's a definite "Porsche Premium" on parts, both aftermarket and OEM. Have a poke around a place like Pelican Parts to get a better handle on this. This tends to go for a lot of the parts, even (some) of the consumables.

Then there's the cost of the labour - the majority of the engine refresh was labour, not parts. Goes for a lot of the other work, too. One big advantage of the older torsion spring cars is that dropping out the engine is comparatively cheap and easy (like an hour or so). On the later cars, it's much more involved and access to a lot of the areas you need to fiddle with is more and more unpleasant the newer the car gets. Typical example - my car didn't really need an air/oil separator but they're a known consumable so we put one in when the engine was out because it wasn't worth saving the $180-odd and spend several times that amount later one when you try to replace the thing through the letter box slit at the back.

As to better built, the interiors on the earlier cars tend to hold up a bit better than the ones on 996s, and there is definitely some production engineering going on to make certain parts cheaper. OTOH the older cars have their foibles and faults as well (pre-galvanised rust rather well, most of the engines have a typical fault here or there, the a/c doesn't). I certainly wouldn't mind another SC or C3.2, but a 996 is a much more modern and "better" car if you live with it on a daily basis.

Petrolburner wrote: A Range Rover and a 996, you're just a glutton for punishment aren't you?

That's odd, that makes two of us.

In reply to BoxheadTim:

thanks

mazdeuce wrote: The heater in my AC 911 is the best part! My wife decreed that we will not be getting headers. The AC sucks balls though, so there's that. My 911 makes me happy in a way no other car I've owned has. Just opening the garage door and seeing it makes me smile every time. I love driving it. I love owning it.

Agreed. My 911 heater is awesome. The A/C was never any good (though you can replace the whole system for about $1800 with modern, working stuff if you install it yourself).

And it makes me smile.

I am a convert, but nothing about a 996 is cheap, I simply love my car though. Thank God the Turbo does not have an IMS.

aussiesmg wrote: I am a convert, but nothing about a 996 is cheap, I simply love my car though. Thank God the Turbo does not have an IMS.

So what you are saying is....

Or get a GT3. For sensible, reliability reasons.

Wow, I just reread my old post and realized how badly I went off into rant-tangent-land The 911 does that to me sometimes...

MichaelYount wrote: It's only 'expensive' if you can't afford it. Pricing is simple supply/demand econ -- they charge what they charge because they can. If it weren't working out for the sellers AND buyers the price would change. And, if you're a 'huge fan' of the car, you find a way to afford it. So, in the end, it all becomes a matter of perspective.

LOL even if I can afford it, it's still expensive I realize that you have to "pay to play", but I don't like paying inflated prices for something just because of its reputation. Example: comparison between the 911 and the Corvette. I can't remember the exact generations (either 996 vs C5 or 997 vs C6) but at one point it cost Porsche only a few thousand dollars more to produce a 911 than it cost GM to make a Corvette (including defraying R&D, etc), yet the MSRP was something like 35% more. Some of that is because it was a better car (more refined, better interior), but mostly it was because of brand reputation and image. Similar to today, why are prices of pre-964 cars so high? They aren't that rare, they aren't that exceptional performance-wise, but the price of a decent SC or 3.2 Carrera is something like double what it was ten years ago. I'd call it a temporary bubble, but I don't think it'll bust because "911 folk" are bonkers. The 928/944/951 haven't had the same price spikes (maybe except for the 928 GTS) even though they're the same age/rarity and are arguably better cars.

Flight Service wrote: as a person interested in this thread from a personal stand point, I want to ask some clarifying questions. what is "the older ones are built better" mean? For example the old vinyl in BMWs were a thicker more solid feel. Now it is thinner. Reason? Weight and a little cost savings. It helped trim about 5 lbs off the interior weight because the old stuff was so damn heavy. Is that what you mean by built better? Please clarify. Also, which parts are the ridiculously priced ones? I know for Nissan, who has a price bump on some of their stuff, the VQ thermostat was a little ridiculous. The reason was it was the housing and it was billet. Beautiful yes, required? no. Would a cheap cast piece have worked? Absolutely. Would I have went FRP/Plastic, nope. So there is a level of cost reduction that can be done before reliability and functionality is lost. So all that being said, could you specify a little more? A future Porsche owner is at stake.

Unfortunately I haven't worked on them in about 8.5 years so a lot of the specific examples in my memory have faded. It's not as bad as Ferrari for example, but there is still a noticeable premium on Porsche parts compared even to other German marques (Merc, Audi, BMW). Part of the "built better" is just nostalgia for the simpler engineering and layout of the older cars, but part too is that the bigger and more complicated they got, the more you start to think "those freaking Germans" when working on them It's almost like the culture seeps through the cars. Maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, but you can kind of sense the space-conservation and efficiency mentality (especially when my hands won't fit LOL) of Japanese engineers when working on Japanese cars and the tech obsession in the 90s... and when working on some of the 964/993 stuff you'd almost be able to feel that the German engineer in charge of designing that assembly came from a long line of clockmakers where each generation used more bolts or brackets than the previous because it was always assumed that more parts make it better

I know that probably isn't much help, but I just don't remember stuff like fading/cheap interior bits or major mechanical failures like the IMS in the older cars (except maybe the chain tensioners on the older engines... or the case studs in magnesium-case engines... OK maybe there have always been issues LOL). The cars in general are solidly-built in most generations and have their foibles like most cars, just be aware that parts are expensive even if you do the work, and specialists will charge more for labor as well. And Germans aren't near as good as Japanese when it comes to electronics, at least automotive electronics, so the less electrical gadgets the better

I was doing some parts prices comparisons and it really seems to be where you shop. The prices seem to fluctuate 300% in some cases depending on the vendor. I know everyone says go to Pelican Parts but from my research Pelican knows this. I did some Rock Auto comparisons and killed the P.P. prices. I guess it is one of those brand specific things.

I really want one of these cars. I will probably dip my toe in the Boxster pool first before going full on 911. Just easier on the wallet for the first dabble.

Love the thread. Keep it up.