The 997 - General Discussion Thread

[Slippydiff]

FriedMarsBar said:

As per my earlier post, I took on, what for me, was a big job in taking the exhaust off and sorting the snapped manifolds studs and all the corroded nuts/bolts. I'm glad I did it and I learned a lot.

After I put it all back together, I was browsing a youtube, and discovered that my car was missing two heatshields that cover the cats. Argh!!!!
So annoying as I thought I'd planned this job in great detail, which isn't my nature, I'm much more of a take it apart and figure it out on the fly sort of person. I'd obviously obesesed over the detail of drilling out the studs and overlooked these two missing heatshields.

Heathsields purchased, from 9Apart, who were VERY competitively priced.

This is one of the missing heatshields



This is where it should go, mocked up in red. I'm not 100% sure what these heatshields protect but it looks like I'm going to have to undue the Lambda sensor (in the engine compartment) and feed them through the heatshields.



I had a slot booked at the excellent Center Gravity and this this is what the car looked like upon arrival.

Pete said in his opinion that the car has never had a geo, which surprised me.



This is what the geo was upon arrival.



I had to have new rear toe arms, not because they had failed but because the ajuster bolts had seized and as I had bought droplinks we put them on as well.

Pete sorted the castor by tweaking the front sub frame.



Geo after Pete had done this thing.



Car drives so much better but my 7 year old PZeros, which are bald on the inside due to the previous geo, are making the car fun in the wet :-)
I'll be having all four corners replaced with MP4Ss in the new year.

Testing the car in the wild

Think it's good now ?

Wait until you get some decent tyres on it ...

You'll be absolutely blown away I guarantee you

[FriedMarsBar]

Slippydiff said:

Think it's good now ?

Wait until you get some decent tyres on it ...

You'll be absolutely blown away I guarantee you

I'm sure you're correct! :-)

[ATM]

FriedMarsBar said:

Pete said in his opinion that the car has never had a geo, which surprised me.

I've bought 2 x 996 cars and at their geo found them both to have some negative toe on one of their fronts. Definitely wasn't their first geo ever just first geo with Me.

[997_Sussex]

The dials on my 997.1 are de laminating.

Does anyone have experience of these Lockwood dials;

https://lockwoodinternational.co.uk/product/porsch...

[FriedMarsBar]

ATM said:

I've bought 2 x 996 cars and at their geo found them both to have some negative toe on one of their fronts. Definitely wasn't their first geo ever just first geo with Me.

What do you put this down to?

[ATM]

FriedMarsBar said:

ATM said:

I've bought 2 x 996 cars and at their geo found them both to have some negative toe on one of their fronts. Definitely wasn't their first geo ever just first geo with Me.

What do you put this down to?

No idea.

I'm assuming the previous owners didn't get it checked or checked regularly. Not sure how often is classed as good practice. If I get a new car I try to get the geo checked ASAP. A bit of negative toe makes them feel awful. But you don't - well I don't - realise until it's put right. Of course the other possibility is my geo place is out and they're misreading and misleading me. But the cars feel so much better after their adjustment so I trust them even without seeing the before and after print out.

[steve1968]

FriedMarsBar said:

I'm sure you're correct! :-)

I owned my 997 C2 for 6 years before changing old tyres to PS4’s and a center gravity set up .

Driving away I realised I had wasted 6 years ownership

[r4_rick]

Has anyone put a macan steering wheel into a 997.2 pdk, no steering wheel controls?
any guides out there
i think the control button panels in the steering wheek can be swopped out for the non button version

[ATM]

ATM said:

FriedMarsBar said:

ATM said:

I've bought 2 x 996 cars and at their geo found them both to have some negative toe on one of their fronts. Definitely wasn't their first geo ever just first geo with Me.

What do you put this down to?

No idea.

I'm assuming the previous owners didn't get it checked or checked regularly. Not sure how often is classed as good practice. If I get a new car I try to get the geo checked ASAP. A bit of negative toe makes them feel awful. But you don't - well I don't - realise until it's put right. Of course the other possibility is my geo place is out and they're misreading and misleading me. But the cars feel so much better after their adjustment so I trust them even without seeing the before and after print out.

[FriedMarsBar]

This happened at the weekend



on the way to get my PDK serviced and diff oil changed before an upcoming drive in Spain and France

[Mhoy81]

Hi everyone. I hope I am posting in the correct place. I am in the process of trying to find my first Porsche 911. I found one I liked a 997.1 C2S.
I have had a PPI performed on it and a bore scope. This has cost me about £500 total.
The car seems tidy but there seems to be some scoring on the bores. The garage are going to speak to Hartech to get a second opinion on the car. As they don’t think it is too bad and have seen much worse. It is currently on for £25k

My question is: what would you do? Would you walk away? Or go with it?

[S600BSB]

Mhoy81 said:

Hi everyone. I hope I am posting in the correct place. I am in the process of trying to find my first Porsche 911. I found one I liked a 997.1 C2S.
I have had a PPI performed on it and a bore scope. This has cost me about £500 total.
The car seems tidy but there seems to be some scoring on the bores. The garage are going to speak to Hartech to get a second opinion on the car. As they don’t think it is too bad and have seen much worse. It is currently on for £25k

My question is: what would you do? Would you walk away? Or go with it?

Pretty sure I wouldn’t pay £25k…

[Terry Winks]

Hi Mhoy81. I’d say that’s a no from me. This is a photo of Cylinder 6 on one I had inspected by Northway, who know what they’re on about and had no skin in the game, their advice was walk away, shame as it was a rare Lapis Blue car.



Doesn’t look too dissimilar. I’ve noticed a trend recently though of hartech rebuilt cars going on the market for high 30’s. For the record I bought a Hartech rebuilt car for £27500.

[FriedMarsBar]

Mhoy81, I don't see why you'd take a chance on a car with the start of BS, it's not going to get better on it's own and you don't know how long it will be before it gets substantially worse.

The car below is on sale for £26K with a Hartech build at 80K and it's now on 107K. My previous car had a Hartech rebuild 40K before I bought it and it was BS inspected twice in my ownership and it was still perfect and I put about 10K on it.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202311133...

Obviously other things can go wrong on a car so do your due dill on the car's history but I would suggest a car with a rebuilt engine in a better place to start.

Here's another.
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202401285...

and another
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202312285...

Have a look at the websites of PortiaCraft's or AMS Porsche, they both sell rebuilt or thoroughly checked cars.

Good luck

Edited by FriedMarsBar on Thursday 1st February 12:09

Edited by FriedMarsBar on Friday 2nd February 16:38

[Mhoy81]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.
I spoke to Hartech today who told me the car is probably still ok for another 30k miles. It has 70k at the moment. But to start to budget for an engine rebuild. Although as with any Porsche that might not be the thing to go first and then you do the rebuild anyway at the same time whilst the engine is being dropped anyway.

I guess if I hadn’t had the bore score done I never would have known and it might be fine. But now I know it’s hard to overlook. The only other thing I could do is ask for a significant discount off the car I suppose. I really wanted a manual, 997 c2S ideally.

[CrouchingWayne]

Mhoy81 said:

Thanks for the feedback everyone.
I spoke to Hartech today who told me the car is probably still ok for another 30k miles. It has 70k at the moment. But to start to budget for an engine rebuild. Although as with any Porsche that might not be the thing to go first and then you do the rebuild anyway at the same time whilst the engine is being dropped anyway.

I guess if I hadn’t had the bore score done I never would have known and it might be fine. But now I know it’s hard to overlook. The only other thing I could do is ask for a significant discount off the car I suppose. I really wanted a manual, 997 c2S ideally.

Hi Mhoy81 - where are you based? I've got a rebuilt C2S, drop me a PM if you're interested in a look. Cheers

[dgswk]

Mhoy81 said:

Thanks for the feedback everyone.
I spoke to Hartech today who told me the car is probably still ok for another 30k miles. It has 70k at the moment. But to start to budget for an engine rebuild. Although as with any Porsche that might not be the thing to go first and then you do the rebuild anyway at the same time whilst the engine is being dropped anyway.

I guess if I hadn’t had the bore score done I never would have known and it might be fine. But now I know it’s hard to overlook. The only other thing I could do is ask for a significant discount off the car I suppose. I really wanted a manual, 997 c2S ideally.

When I was looking 12-18. months ago, I looked at a couple which had early stage Borescore like this; feedback from the Indy who looked at them was similar - probably alright for a good 10-20k miles - but it won't get better by itself. Although to be fair, one I looked at probably had another £10k of non-engine related work doing, due to previous owners repeatedly selling up when big bills were inbound.... front to rear coolant / brake pipes for example can be a few thousand, condensers, suspension refresh - another few thousand. If I did the maths on the one car, the dealer should have almost needed to pay me to take it away!

Borescore is just one thing to look out for on these. Good luck - get a good one and they are awesome cars!

[maz8062]

dgswk said:

Mhoy81 said:

Thanks for the feedback everyone.
I spoke to Hartech today who told me the car is probably still ok for another 30k miles. It has 70k at the moment. But to start to budget for an engine rebuild. Although as with any Porsche that might not be the thing to go first and then you do the rebuild anyway at the same time whilst the engine is being dropped anyway.

I guess if I hadn’t had the bore score done I never would have known and it might be fine. But now I know it’s hard to overlook. The only other thing I could do is ask for a significant discount off the car I suppose. I really wanted a manual, 997 c2S ideally.

When I was looking 12-18. months ago, I looked at a couple which had early stage Borescore like this; feedback from the Indy who looked at them was similar - probably alright for a good 10-20k miles - but it won't get better by itself. Although to be fair, one I looked at probably had another £10k of non-engine related work doing, due to previous owners repeatedly selling up when big bills were inbound.... front to rear coolant / brake pipes for example can be a few thousand, condensers, suspension refresh - another few thousand. If I did the maths on the one car, the dealer should have almost needed to pay me to take it away!

Borescore is just one thing to look out for on these. Good luck - get a good one and they are awesome cars!

Indeed there are so many things that cost a fortune to fix on these cars - clutch, coolant pipes, suspension, gearbox etc. They’re old cars that have identical been ragged to within an inch of their lives.

To the OP that’s just spent £500 on an inspection to now be thinking of walking away because of a picture, how many cars are you prepared to throw £500 at before deciding to look elsewhere?

[dgswk]

maz8062 said:

dgswk said:

Mhoy81 said:

Thanks for the feedback everyone.
I spoke to Hartech today who told me the car is probably still ok for another 30k miles. It has 70k at the moment. But to start to budget for an engine rebuild. Although as with any Porsche that might not be the thing to go first and then you do the rebuild anyway at the same time whilst the engine is being dropped anyway.

I guess if I hadn’t had the bore score done I never would have known and it might be fine. But now I know it’s hard to overlook. The only other thing I could do is ask for a significant discount off the car I suppose. I really wanted a manual, 997 c2S ideally.

When I was looking 12-18. months ago, I looked at a couple which had early stage Borescore like this; feedback from the Indy who looked at them was similar - probably alright for a good 10-20k miles - but it won't get better by itself. Although to be fair, one I looked at probably had another £10k of non-engine related work doing, due to previous owners repeatedly selling up when big bills were inbound.... front to rear coolant / brake pipes for example can be a few thousand, condensers, suspension refresh - another few thousand. If I did the maths on the one car, the dealer should have almost needed to pay me to take it away!

Borescore is just one thing to look out for on these. Good luck - get a good one and they are awesome cars!

Indeed there are so many things that cost a fortune to fix on these cars - clutch, coolant pipes, suspension, gearbox etc. They’re old cars that have identical been ragged to within an inch of their lives.

To the OP that’s just spent £500 on an inspection to now be thinking of walking away because of a picture, how many cars are you prepared to throw £500 at before deciding to look elsewhere?

indeed, I did three at £300 a pop.... Found a good one in the end, no sign of borescore, all the pipes, cooling, new discs and tyres all round etc. done. Still on original clutch at 60k miles, but factored that (£1k) and some future suspension work (£2.5k) and a replacement PCM (£750) into the price It was an M030 car, so had to have it, on the basis that I'd get probably 5 years before borescore strikes in anger (its a 3rd car, spend more time looking at it than driving it), and by which time, funds for a rebuild will have been put aside.

[Terry Winks]

Yeah, I know prices have softened a bit, looking at the ads I see now, but I feel pretty good about my purchase now.

£27,500 - 100,000 miles but Hartech build 13,000 miles ago (Purchased December 2022)

Place I got it from had already identified to do the brake lines, so had the gearbox off, I bought a new clutch and that was fitted at cost, even thought the old one was fine, I thought a clutch cost replacement made a whole world of sense, won't get that opportunity again. They'd replaced the front discs as they'd needed doing and I pointed out the front cross over coolant pipes were badly corroded and they got replaced before I picked it up.

What some of the other posters are saying is true, its very easy to focus on bore scoring as that as a big big ticket item to fix, but the usual suspects listed above can run you into thousands to sort too and shouldn't be ignored. But if you go into this like me expecting this car to be a keeper then they're great, I don't think I'd buy a 997 for a short term car now, unless it was absolutely sorted, that might sting you.

The suspension on mine feels like its 100k in now, no knocks or bangs, but just doesn't feel as tight as it could be, maybe a little aloof at the front, but Ohlins R&T was always on the agenda anyway.

I did say I would document up the ICE install we did last summer.

Edited by Terry Winks on Saturday 3rd February 10:12