Why do so many people sell their 911s just after a rebuild?
Discussion
There seems to be a bit of a trend where people pay a lot of money for a full engine rebuild, and then almost immediately list the car for sale. Seems like this would be the BEST time to enjoy the car, not to get rid of it. Why spend all that money if only to sell it on? Seems like bad economics to me.
What am I missing?!
What am I missing?!
I think that for a lot of people the project is the allure- once it's done, it's no longer a project. Time to move on.
I suspect it also depends on why you rebuild the engine - if it is because it went wrong then you may harbour a degree of animosity toward the vehicle, and that's going to result in the car moving on fairly quickly, especially if something new catches your eye.
I suspect it also depends on why you rebuild the engine - if it is because it went wrong then you may harbour a degree of animosity toward the vehicle, and that's going to result in the car moving on fairly quickly, especially if something new catches your eye.
dbr84 said:
There seems to be a bit of a trend where people pay a lot of money for a full engine rebuild, and then almost immediately list the car for sale. Seems like this would be the BEST time to enjoy the car, not to get rid of it. Why spend all that money if only to sell it on? Seems like bad economics to me.
What am I missing?!
Because there is a 10mm socket missing and the last time it was seen it was in the engine.What am I missing?!
True, although you're always going to lose money on that - a 996 with a Hartech engine will sell faster than one without, but it won't sell for much more money. Therefore if you take (say) a 70,000 mile car that will sell for £15,000, you'd need the scrap value of the car to be below £3,000 to make (any!) kind of sense out of a rebuild project, if the rebuild is ~£12,000.
And if the rebuild was a project then all bets are off on the cost side of things, I currently have sitting on a shelf £5,000 in a pair of heads, £6,000 in engine cases and pistons, and £5,000 in tappet carriers - so £16,000 in parts which with the best will in the world are not (yet) an engine, and will need many more parts to become one.
I've also got a fully functional engine actually in the car, however.
And if the rebuild was a project then all bets are off on the cost side of things, I currently have sitting on a shelf £5,000 in a pair of heads, £6,000 in engine cases and pistons, and £5,000 in tappet carriers - so £16,000 in parts which with the best will in the world are not (yet) an engine, and will need many more parts to become one.
I've also got a fully functional engine actually in the car, however.
t that they are built proof and realise that they actually have chocolate engines, probably!In many adverts the owner states that he/she has paid out thousands of pounds repairing and enhancing this and that, like it's a good thing. I can see a £50K car that has had £20K of work in the last couple of years as a risk - What reason is there to assume it won't require another £20K just to keep it going?
Dammit said:
True, although you're always going to lose money on that - a 996 with a Hartech engine will sell faster than one without, but it won't sell for much more money. Therefore if you take (say) a 70,000 mile car that will sell for £15,000, you'd need the scrap value of the car to be below £3,000 to make (any!) kind of sense out of a rebuild project, if the rebuild is ~£12,000.
This is what I mean about the economics of it all. Seems as though you'd be better off selling the car as "spares or repairs" and letting a new owner rebuild it than paying out for the build and then selling it. Dammit said:
And if the rebuild was a project then all bets are off on the cost side of things, I currently have sitting on a shelf £5,000 in a pair of heads, £6,000 in engine cases and pistons, and £5,000 in tappet carriers - so £16,000 in parts which with the best will in the world are not (yet) an engine, and will need many more parts to become one.
Wow, that's going to be one expensive engine! What's it going to be?Very possibly I'm creating a vast waste of time and money.
The genesis of the project was a desire to remove the weaknesses that Porsche left in the M96 - IMS, unsupported crank, bores prone to going oval, underspecified main bearings.
Now tackling those meant rebuilding the engine, so "whilst we're in there" it makes sense to up the capacity.
But, that changes the character of the engine - in a way that many will love, but to me a sports car engine should be about power and revs, and I wanted to keep that.
Looking at the charts that PPBB put up from his Autofarm rebuild you could see that the power and torque curves both move up (relative to the base engine) but they also move left, i.e. the larger engine runs out of puff earlier than the stock unit.
Now if one has a sensible view of the world this is all positive - more power and torque at lower revs puts less strain on everything, and makes more sense of the 996 gearing ratios, which are on the long side for a sports car.
But I've never claimed to be sensible, and I wanted to maintain the free revving nature of the 3.4 which to me was a big part of the character that I liked about the car.
This brought in a new character in the list of Usual Suspects - the tappet chest, which in the M96 is a cast part that breaks under normal use, let alone when asked to support cams with higher lifts and longer durations. This one part is likely to be a large part of the reason that no one has really made any tuning parts for the M96 beyond small bolt ons - as soon as you start looking at cams and valves you back away waving your hands and buy something with a Mezger in it.
But that's no fun, so we put a standard tappet chest through an MRI, got a (frankly staggeringly vast) file which showed the part in great detail, translated that into a CAD file and had a firm (recommended by Bad Obsession Motorsport) CNC a new carrier from billet.
This means that cam choice now opens up, as do longer and larger valves, and higher RPM's.
With the new valves, springs, cams, tappet chest and extensive work done to the heads we've got a pretty nice improvement to the flow of the engine and something we believe can support an additional thousand rpm above the Porsche red-line, which should give plenty of headroom to keep the sprightly character of the stock 3.4.
Because of the profile of the cams, and frankly because we wanted too, we're also changing from the stock intake to one that comprises of a Cup airbox, feeding into a 4.0 RS central plenum that then distributes air into six 50mm ITB's. This will likely make one hell of a racket, but should also give extremely sharp throttle response.
Hopefully one of the engines will run for the first time on the engine dyno in late summer, but we need to get rods made first so that's more of an aspiration than a deadline at the moment. Again, aspiration - but I'd like to see the engine in my car by this time next year.
I'll then drive to Brands Hatch, be asked to hold it at 4,500 rpm, and then be sent home for "taking the piss" by the noise chap.
The genesis of the project was a desire to remove the weaknesses that Porsche left in the M96 - IMS, unsupported crank, bores prone to going oval, underspecified main bearings.
Now tackling those meant rebuilding the engine, so "whilst we're in there" it makes sense to up the capacity.
But, that changes the character of the engine - in a way that many will love, but to me a sports car engine should be about power and revs, and I wanted to keep that.
Looking at the charts that PPBB put up from his Autofarm rebuild you could see that the power and torque curves both move up (relative to the base engine) but they also move left, i.e. the larger engine runs out of puff earlier than the stock unit.
Now if one has a sensible view of the world this is all positive - more power and torque at lower revs puts less strain on everything, and makes more sense of the 996 gearing ratios, which are on the long side for a sports car.
But I've never claimed to be sensible, and I wanted to maintain the free revving nature of the 3.4 which to me was a big part of the character that I liked about the car.
This brought in a new character in the list of Usual Suspects - the tappet chest, which in the M96 is a cast part that breaks under normal use, let alone when asked to support cams with higher lifts and longer durations. This one part is likely to be a large part of the reason that no one has really made any tuning parts for the M96 beyond small bolt ons - as soon as you start looking at cams and valves you back away waving your hands and buy something with a Mezger in it.
But that's no fun, so we put a standard tappet chest through an MRI, got a (frankly staggeringly vast) file which showed the part in great detail, translated that into a CAD file and had a firm (recommended by Bad Obsession Motorsport) CNC a new carrier from billet.
This means that cam choice now opens up, as do longer and larger valves, and higher RPM's.
With the new valves, springs, cams, tappet chest and extensive work done to the heads we've got a pretty nice improvement to the flow of the engine and something we believe can support an additional thousand rpm above the Porsche red-line, which should give plenty of headroom to keep the sprightly character of the stock 3.4.
Because of the profile of the cams, and frankly because we wanted too, we're also changing from the stock intake to one that comprises of a Cup airbox, feeding into a 4.0 RS central plenum that then distributes air into six 50mm ITB's. This will likely make one hell of a racket, but should also give extremely sharp throttle response.
Hopefully one of the engines will run for the first time on the engine dyno in late summer, but we need to get rods made first so that's more of an aspiration than a deadline at the moment. Again, aspiration - but I'd like to see the engine in my car by this time next year.
I'll then drive to Brands Hatch, be asked to hold it at 4,500 rpm, and then be sent home for "taking the piss" by the noise chap.
Dammit said:
...we've got a pretty nice improvement to the flow of the engine and something we believe can support an additional thousand rpm above the Porsche red-line, which should give plenty of headroom to keep the sprightly character of the stock 3.4.
That sounds very, very appealing. Individual but still 'very Porsche'.Gassing Station | 911/Carrera GT | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff