RE: Porsche 997 Carrera: Catch it while you can
Discussion
After reading the full technical article posted above I have a lot of respect for Hartech. In summary they are fixing an awful lot of problems with Porsche's compromised engine design. The extent of Hartech's research, development and investment is quite something. It is quite mad these small companies have to fix all these issues from a giant manufacturer. No wonder the costs are high. You really should read it if you have not.
It is a shame many of these issues have been caused by clear penny pinching from Porsche, who must have known they were sailing very close to the wind. After all, their engineers are not stupid. I very much suspect it is a case of engineers being over ruled by accountants. Hence causing the entire mess and explaining their massive profitability. Lets just hope their future products are made with engineering excellence as a priority, instead of shareholder dividends. Otherwise their reputation will be ruined before long.
It is a shame many of these issues have been caused by clear penny pinching from Porsche, who must have known they were sailing very close to the wind. After all, their engineers are not stupid. I very much suspect it is a case of engineers being over ruled by accountants. Hence causing the entire mess and explaining their massive profitability. Lets just hope their future products are made with engineering excellence as a priority, instead of shareholder dividends. Otherwise their reputation will be ruined before long.
Guvernator said:
As long as the engine doesn't die on you, a Porsche is peanuts to run in comparison.
This is the nub of it really. My Lambo owning mate previously had a 997c2s and a V8 Vantage after that. He doesn't have much good to say about Aston after being raped for replacing the wiper mechs on a low mileage car and had a fight with them over the dreaded paint bubbling issue, both jokes on what is supposed to be a high quality product. Its only really the engine concerns that count against the Pork but then its more a case of risk mitigation either with a maintenance/warranty plan or a slush fund.k-ink said:
After reading the full technical article posted above I have a lot of respect for Hartech. In summary they are fixing an awful lot of problems with Porsche's compromised engine design. The extent of Hartech's research, development and investment is quite something. It is quite mad these small companies have to fix all these issues from a giant manufacturer. No wonder the costs are high. You really should read it if you have not.
It is a shame many of these issues have been caused by clear penny pinching from Porsche, who must have known they were sailing very close to the wind. After all, their engineers are not stupid. I very much suspect it is a case of engineers being over ruled by accountants. Hence causing the entire mess and explaining their massive profitability. Lets just hope their future products are made with engineering excellence as a priority, instead of shareholder dividends. Otherwise their reputation will be ruined before long.
I think they've already lost it to some extent tbh. At least two generations of cars effected by this issue and they even had to recall the last GT3 due to engine issues. I'm not a Porsche air-cooled beardy but I just don't get the impeccable engineering integrity and hewn from granite feeling from Porsche that I used to 20 years ago. I suspect under VAG management the penny pinching will only get worse too.It is a shame many of these issues have been caused by clear penny pinching from Porsche, who must have known they were sailing very close to the wind. After all, their engineers are not stupid. I very much suspect it is a case of engineers being over ruled by accountants. Hence causing the entire mess and explaining their massive profitability. Lets just hope their future products are made with engineering excellence as a priority, instead of shareholder dividends. Otherwise their reputation will be ruined before long.
Can i ask a simple question, well trying to be simple if its possible, i've never owned a 911, but curious which will be the most reliable water cooled car, i ask because,
1- I am lost with the discussion here which car is close in reliability to the earlier air-cooled cars,
2- Even if i decide on the earlier air-cooled cars, they just can't meet my needs which leaves the water cooled cars still as an option cause of size really, i will need use of back seats and the 993 just won't do no matter how hard i try to convince my self, roof line is too low due to slope hence leaves a 997 or 991 which are ever so slightly bigger.
Sorry if i am being too simplistic, but i want something that i can use for a long time or years and possibly hand down to my little one that will be reliable, i keep my cars for years i.e e30m3 in family over 20 years and e34 m5 near 10 years and both are bullet proof apart from usual maintainance. Thanks in advance.
1- I am lost with the discussion here which car is close in reliability to the earlier air-cooled cars,
2- Even if i decide on the earlier air-cooled cars, they just can't meet my needs which leaves the water cooled cars still as an option cause of size really, i will need use of back seats and the 993 just won't do no matter how hard i try to convince my self, roof line is too low due to slope hence leaves a 997 or 991 which are ever so slightly bigger.
Sorry if i am being too simplistic, but i want something that i can use for a long time or years and possibly hand down to my little one that will be reliable, i keep my cars for years i.e e30m3 in family over 20 years and e34 m5 near 10 years and both are bullet proof apart from usual maintainance. Thanks in advance.
Josco010 said:
Can i ask a simple question, well trying to be simple if its possible, i've never owned a 911, but curious which will be the most reliable water cooled car, i ask because,
1- I am lost with the discussion here which car is close in reliability to the earlier air-cooled cars,
2- Even if i decide on the earlier air-cooled cars, they just can't meet my needs which leaves the water cooled cars still as an option cause of size really, i will need use of back seats and the 993 just won't do no matter how hard i try to convince my self, roof line is too low due to slope hence leaves a 997 or 991 which are ever so slightly bigger.
Sorry if i am being too simplistic, but i want something that i can use for a long time or years and possibly hand down to my little one that will be reliable, i keep my cars for years i.e e30m3 in family over 20 years and e34 m5 near 10 years and both are bullet proof apart from usual maintenance. Thanks in advance.
The gen 2 997 from 2009 onwards don't seem to suffer from the same engine issues as the earlier 997's, however if you are planning on keeping it very long term, even that may need a rebuild at some point so either get an early 997 and get preventative work done on it now or get a late 997 and gamble on it not ever needing one. Do note that the gen 2's seem to command at least a £10k premium over the gen 1's.1- I am lost with the discussion here which car is close in reliability to the earlier air-cooled cars,
2- Even if i decide on the earlier air-cooled cars, they just can't meet my needs which leaves the water cooled cars still as an option cause of size really, i will need use of back seats and the 993 just won't do no matter how hard i try to convince my self, roof line is too low due to slope hence leaves a 997 or 991 which are ever so slightly bigger.
Sorry if i am being too simplistic, but i want something that i can use for a long time or years and possibly hand down to my little one that will be reliable, i keep my cars for years i.e e30m3 in family over 20 years and e34 m5 near 10 years and both are bullet proof apart from usual maintenance. Thanks in advance.
Late to the party here, but just considering the engine failure rates for bore scoring etc....
They built roughly 175K 996s, of which say 20% came to the UK (happy to be corrected on this, I'm guessing large to err on conservative side, I couldn't find any numbers for UK numbers specifically), so that's 35K UK vehicles in total say. Let's err even more on the conservative side and assume that they're all the NA / non turbo cars as they were sold in smaller numbers so don't skew the stats too much.
Hartech repair about 3 watercooled engines a week, say 2 of them are 996 lumps. So that's 100 996 lumps a year. From my wanderings on this forum, Hartech have been doing this for 5 years plus, so have maybe done 500+ engines. Say that they do 1/3 of all the engine rebuilds for UK 996s as they're so well known, so in total in the last 5 years about 1500+ engines have been done UK wide.
That's 1500 out of 35,000 cars so about 4% of UK cars. Now it's only rough, but it's certainly not going to be a factor of 10 out either way. And I would argue that is probably a conservative figure as it only considers 2010 onwards. Tweak those numbers with better data and I think you could see 10-15%....so far.
I don't think cmoose is scaremongering, but equally, those figures wouldn't stop me buying a 996 or 997.1. I suspect the dealers that do still deal in these cars and have warranties you can rely on probably bid £1k or so less for those cars at trade to cover the risk of them having to fork out.
They built roughly 175K 996s, of which say 20% came to the UK (happy to be corrected on this, I'm guessing large to err on conservative side, I couldn't find any numbers for UK numbers specifically), so that's 35K UK vehicles in total say. Let's err even more on the conservative side and assume that they're all the NA / non turbo cars as they were sold in smaller numbers so don't skew the stats too much.
Hartech repair about 3 watercooled engines a week, say 2 of them are 996 lumps. So that's 100 996 lumps a year. From my wanderings on this forum, Hartech have been doing this for 5 years plus, so have maybe done 500+ engines. Say that they do 1/3 of all the engine rebuilds for UK 996s as they're so well known, so in total in the last 5 years about 1500+ engines have been done UK wide.
That's 1500 out of 35,000 cars so about 4% of UK cars. Now it's only rough, but it's certainly not going to be a factor of 10 out either way. And I would argue that is probably a conservative figure as it only considers 2010 onwards. Tweak those numbers with better data and I think you could see 10-15%....so far.
I don't think cmoose is scaremongering, but equally, those figures wouldn't stop me buying a 996 or 997.1. I suspect the dealers that do still deal in these cars and have warranties you can rely on probably bid £1k or so less for those cars at trade to cover the risk of them having to fork out.
Mario149 said:
Late to the party here, but just considering the engine failure rates for bore scoring etc....
They built roughly 175K 996s, of which say 20% came to the UK (happy to be corrected on this, I'm guessing large to err on conservative side, I couldn't find any numbers for UK numbers specifically), so that's 35K UK vehicles in total say. Let's err even more on the conservative side and assume that they're all the NA / non turbo cars as they were sold in smaller numbers so don't skew the stats too much.
Hartech repair about 3 watercooled engines a week, say 2 of them are 996 lumps. So that's 100 996 lumps a year. From my wanderings on this forum, Hartech have been doing this for 5 years plus, so have maybe done 500+ engines. Say that they do 1/3 of all the engine rebuilds for UK 996s as they're so well known, so in total in the last 5 years about 1500+ engines have been done UK wide.
That's 1500 out of 35,000 cars so about 4% of UK cars. Now it's only rough, but it's certainly not going to be a factor of 10 out either way. And I would argue that is probably a conservative figure as it only considers 2010 onwards. Tweak those numbers with better data and I think you could see 10-15%....so far.
I don't think cmoose is scaremongering, but equally, those figures wouldn't stop me buying a 996 or 997.1. I suspect the dealers that do still deal in these cars and have warranties you can rely on probably bid £1k or so less for those cars at trade to cover the risk of them having to fork out.
You forgot one factor which probably accounts for 90-95% of all UK failures - simple engine swaps at the OPC - which does nothing to fix the issue but keeps the customer happy. They built roughly 175K 996s, of which say 20% came to the UK (happy to be corrected on this, I'm guessing large to err on conservative side, I couldn't find any numbers for UK numbers specifically), so that's 35K UK vehicles in total say. Let's err even more on the conservative side and assume that they're all the NA / non turbo cars as they were sold in smaller numbers so don't skew the stats too much.
Hartech repair about 3 watercooled engines a week, say 2 of them are 996 lumps. So that's 100 996 lumps a year. From my wanderings on this forum, Hartech have been doing this for 5 years plus, so have maybe done 500+ engines. Say that they do 1/3 of all the engine rebuilds for UK 996s as they're so well known, so in total in the last 5 years about 1500+ engines have been done UK wide.
That's 1500 out of 35,000 cars so about 4% of UK cars. Now it's only rough, but it's certainly not going to be a factor of 10 out either way. And I would argue that is probably a conservative figure as it only considers 2010 onwards. Tweak those numbers with better data and I think you could see 10-15%....so far.
I don't think cmoose is scaremongering, but equally, those figures wouldn't stop me buying a 996 or 997.1. I suspect the dealers that do still deal in these cars and have warranties you can rely on probably bid £1k or so less for those cars at trade to cover the risk of them having to fork out.
Josco010 said:
Can i ask a simple question, well trying to be simple if its possible, i've never owned a 911, but curious which will be the most reliable water cooled car, i ask because,
1- I am lost with the discussion here which car is close in reliability to the earlier air-cooled cars,
2- Even if i decide on the earlier air-cooled cars, they just can't meet my needs which leaves the water cooled cars still as an option cause of size really, i will need use of back seats and the 993 just won't do no matter how hard i try to convince my self, roof line is too low due to slope hence leaves a 997 or 991 which are ever so slightly bigger.
Sorry if i am being too simplistic, but i want something that i can use for a long time or years and possibly hand down to my little one that will be reliable, i keep my cars for years i.e e30m3 in family over 20 years and e34 m5 near 10 years and both are bullet proof apart from usual maintainance. Thanks in advance.
You would need a car with a 'Mezger' engine. This is not the 996/997 with the exception of the Turbo, GT cars. The 'Mezger' engine is derived from a GT1 block which is considered bulletproof.1- I am lost with the discussion here which car is close in reliability to the earlier air-cooled cars,
2- Even if i decide on the earlier air-cooled cars, they just can't meet my needs which leaves the water cooled cars still as an option cause of size really, i will need use of back seats and the 993 just won't do no matter how hard i try to convince my self, roof line is too low due to slope hence leaves a 997 or 991 which are ever so slightly bigger.
Sorry if i am being too simplistic, but i want something that i can use for a long time or years and possibly hand down to my little one that will be reliable, i keep my cars for years i.e e30m3 in family over 20 years and e34 m5 near 10 years and both are bullet proof apart from usual maintainance. Thanks in advance.
http://www.total911.com/technology-explained-mezge...
If you could get a low mileage turbo manual or GT2 that would be where my money would go.
Rawhide said:
You would need a car with a 'Mezger' engine. This is not the 996/997 with the exception of the Turbo, GT cars. The 'Mezger' engine is derived from a GT1 block which is considered bulletproof.
http://www.total911.com/technology-explained-mezge...
If you could get a low mileage turbo manual or GT2 that would be where my money would go.
Low mileage 996 Turbo manuals seem to going north of £40k this year and GT2s are up around £100k+.http://www.total911.com/technology-explained-mezge...
If you could get a low mileage turbo manual or GT2 that would be where my money would go.
Mario149 said:
Late to the party here, but just considering the engine failure rates for bore scoring etc....
They built roughly 175K 996s, of which say 20% came to the UK (happy to be corrected on this, I'm guessing large to err on conservative side, I couldn't find any numbers for UK numbers specifically), so that's 35K UK vehicles in total say. Let's err even more on the conservative side and assume that they're all the NA / non turbo cars as they were sold in smaller numbers so don't skew the stats too much.
Hartech repair about 3 watercooled engines a week, say 2 of them are 996 lumps. So that's 100 996 lumps a year. From my wanderings on this forum, Hartech have been doing this for 5 years plus, so have maybe done 500+ engines. Say that they do 1/3 of all the engine rebuilds for UK 996s as they're so well known, so in total in the last 5 years about 1500+ engines have been done UK wide.
That's 1500 out of 35,000 cars so about 4% of UK cars. Now it's only rough, but it's certainly not going to be a factor of 10 out either way. And I would argue that is probably a conservative figure as it only considers 2010 onwards. Tweak those numbers with better data and I think you could see 10-15%....so far.
I don't think cmoose is scaremongering, but equally, those figures wouldn't stop me buying a 996 or 997.1. I suspect the dealers that do still deal in these cars and have warranties you can rely on probably bid £1k or so less for those cars at trade to cover the risk of them having to fork out.
Don't geddit? cmoose's scaremongering was on the 997 and this thread is on the 997 and you did all the maths on the 996? You said yourself 2 out of 3 that Hartech are doing are 996 engines and still only got to 4% for that model.They built roughly 175K 996s, of which say 20% came to the UK (happy to be corrected on this, I'm guessing large to err on conservative side, I couldn't find any numbers for UK numbers specifically), so that's 35K UK vehicles in total say. Let's err even more on the conservative side and assume that they're all the NA / non turbo cars as they were sold in smaller numbers so don't skew the stats too much.
Hartech repair about 3 watercooled engines a week, say 2 of them are 996 lumps. So that's 100 996 lumps a year. From my wanderings on this forum, Hartech have been doing this for 5 years plus, so have maybe done 500+ engines. Say that they do 1/3 of all the engine rebuilds for UK 996s as they're so well known, so in total in the last 5 years about 1500+ engines have been done UK wide.
That's 1500 out of 35,000 cars so about 4% of UK cars. Now it's only rough, but it's certainly not going to be a factor of 10 out either way. And I would argue that is probably a conservative figure as it only considers 2010 onwards. Tweak those numbers with better data and I think you could see 10-15%....so far.
I don't think cmoose is scaremongering, but equally, those figures wouldn't stop me buying a 996 or 997.1. I suspect the dealers that do still deal in these cars and have warranties you can rely on probably bid £1k or so less for those cars at trade to cover the risk of them having to fork out.
It was just an example to show that there is a significant problem with 996s. Bore scoring also affects 997.1s, so run the numbers on them. Hartech may have been doing 1 997.1 engine a week for 5 years, so 150. Other outfits doing a total of 2 a week, so 450 in five years all added together. If 20K 997s were sold in the UK, and half of them were gen 1 which are affected, that's 450 out of 10,000 failures so about 4.5% again. And again that's probably conservatively low figure.
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