High mileage 996 TT?
02-17-2014, 10:57 AM
#106
Guys,
Here are some pictures from this morning. It is sitting with the winter tires and rims on it, the front lip is removed for the winter season also. As you can see it is covered / crusted in salt and dirt.
I've added some photos of the exterior, the interior seats and of course one of the dash showing the current mileage on the odometer. I know a lot of you were curious about the exterior and interior condition.
The exterior has held up great considering the mileage. I had an unfortunate meeting with a deer about a year ago - the passengers front fender and passengers door got banged up pretty good - car was fine and completely drivable. The fender and door were replaced at that point. While it was in I had all the exterior cosmetic stuff cleaned up - paint the bumper cover and lip and the rear bumper cover as well. In general you will see some stone chips downstream of all four tires from the winter driving - I got all that stuff cleaned up at that point.
The interior has never been touched up and anything - it is totally original as delivered - minus the steering wheel recover (done at the factory in Germany). As you can see the passenger seat is barely worn and the drivers side shows some signs of age. I'm lucky I get to wear blue jeans to work about 90% of the time so the seats have not been exposed to much other than blue cotton, machine wash. I see cars with far fewer miles with seats worn badly - my only theory is that those cars saw dry cleaned pants every day and the chemicals finally got to the leather.
This past summer I had the engine dropped and rebuilt. I had a couple of minor oil leaks and one turbo had a broken actuator arm inside the turbo housing that caused a very annoying rattle and all the boost from it was dumped. My intention was to rebuild the engine while it was out. What we found when we got inside the engine was a near perfect condition. There was only a light shadowing on a couple of the rod bearings, cams looked like new. The heads were taken apart and the mechanic mic'd the valves and said that everyone spec'd to a brand new valve dimensionally. There were still hatch marks inside the cylinder sleeves, chain guides were barely worn. Lifters looked like new also. My mechanic only works on Porsche's - he's been doing so for many decades. He and the mechanic who performed the rebuild were in amazement at what we found - it is a testament to the build quality of these engines. Once we were in to do this work I thought it would be short sighted to not replace all the components with new items so that is what we did. The crank, cams and block, heads are all original. We used factory parts for everything. I did also replace the main wiring harness.
Hind sight being 20/20 we could have easily buttoned up the leaks and replaced the turbo's and wiring harness and moved on.
Now to the oil question. This car is driven nearly everyday - at least at some point or another. My commute and most of the driving around town takes me about 10-15 minutes of 60 MPH driving to and from the house - cops ticket over 60 here. It affords me a chance to properly warm up and cool down the car. I have used Mobil 1 0W-40 exclusively in this car up until about 16 months before the rebuild - the mechanic recommended 5W-40 Motul I think it was 8100. After the rebuild we had that oil in and I noticed intermittent / occasional smoke at start-up (sometimes left, sometimes right, sometimes both - hot / cold - there was no rhyme or reason), I switched to Mobil 1 5W-40 TDT and still had smoke, although a lot less. I finally recently went back to Mobil 1 0W-40 and have virtually no smoke at all. In thinking about the mileage on the engine and what we found when we got into the rebuild I went back to what got me what I thought was a near perfect engine internally at 372,000+ miles, Mobil 1 0W-40, it looked like it protected that engine very well and there I will stay. It should be noted I change the oil religiously every 5000 miles.
I expect to pass 400,000 miles in about 6 weeks or so. It's been a great journey and one I had dreamed about since I was a young kid (I always wanted a 911 Turbo) - I was (am) that kid in the commercials.
My experience is but one data point not something to take as the law of the land. Have I been lucky - sure have. I believe in driving and maintaining a car as the factory recommends - when things break I fix them.
I hope your experience is similar.
T2 - continues to knock on wood!!
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Here are some pictures from this morning. It is sitting with the winter tires and rims on it, the front lip is removed for the winter season also. As you can see it is covered / crusted in salt and dirt.
I've added some photos of the exterior, the interior seats and of course one of the dash showing the current mileage on the odometer. I know a lot of you were curious about the exterior and interior condition.
The exterior has held up great considering the mileage. I had an unfortunate meeting with a deer about a year ago - the passengers front fender and passengers door got banged up pretty good - car was fine and completely drivable. The fender and door were replaced at that point. While it was in I had all the exterior cosmetic stuff cleaned up - paint the bumper cover and lip and the rear bumper cover as well. In general you will see some stone chips downstream of all four tires from the winter driving - I got all that stuff cleaned up at that point.
The interior has never been touched up and anything - it is totally original as delivered - minus the steering wheel recover (done at the factory in Germany). As you can see the passenger seat is barely worn and the drivers side shows some signs of age. I'm lucky I get to wear blue jeans to work about 90% of the time so the seats have not been exposed to much other than blue cotton, machine wash. I see cars with far fewer miles with seats worn badly - my only theory is that those cars saw dry cleaned pants every day and the chemicals finally got to the leather.
This past summer I had the engine dropped and rebuilt. I had a couple of minor oil leaks and one turbo had a broken actuator arm inside the turbo housing that caused a very annoying rattle and all the boost from it was dumped. My intention was to rebuild the engine while it was out. What we found when we got inside the engine was a near perfect condition. There was only a light shadowing on a couple of the rod bearings, cams looked like new. The heads were taken apart and the mechanic mic'd the valves and said that everyone spec'd to a brand new valve dimensionally. There were still hatch marks inside the cylinder sleeves, chain guides were barely worn. Lifters looked like new also. My mechanic only works on Porsche's - he's been doing so for many decades. He and the mechanic who performed the rebuild were in amazement at what we found - it is a testament to the build quality of these engines. Once we were in to do this work I thought it would be short sighted to not replace all the components with new items so that is what we did. The crank, cams and block, heads are all original. We used factory parts for everything. I did also replace the main wiring harness.
Hind sight being 20/20 we could have easily buttoned up the leaks and replaced the turbo's and wiring harness and moved on.
Now to the oil question. This car is driven nearly everyday - at least at some point or another. My commute and most of the driving around town takes me about 10-15 minutes of 60 MPH driving to and from the house - cops ticket over 60 here. It affords me a chance to properly warm up and cool down the car. I have used Mobil 1 0W-40 exclusively in this car up until about 16 months before the rebuild - the mechanic recommended 5W-40 Motul I think it was 8100. After the rebuild we had that oil in and I noticed intermittent / occasional smoke at start-up (sometimes left, sometimes right, sometimes both - hot / cold - there was no rhyme or reason), I switched to Mobil 1 5W-40 TDT and still had smoke, although a lot less. I finally recently went back to Mobil 1 0W-40 and have virtually no smoke at all. In thinking about the mileage on the engine and what we found when we got into the rebuild I went back to what got me what I thought was a near perfect engine internally at 372,000+ miles, Mobil 1 0W-40, it looked like it protected that engine very well and there I will stay. It should be noted I change the oil religiously every 5000 miles.
I expect to pass 400,000 miles in about 6 weeks or so. It's been a great journey and one I had dreamed about since I was a young kid (I always wanted a 911 Turbo) - I was (am) that kid in the commercials.
My experience is but one data point not something to take as the law of the land. Have I been lucky - sure have. I believe in driving and maintaining a car as the factory recommends - when things break I fix them.
I hope your experience is similar.
T2 - continues to knock on wood!!
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911user (03-07-2021)
02-17-2014, 12:19 PM
#107
Instructor
Join Date: Nov 2013
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T2, thanks for the write up! Not only do you write well but you know about engines and their internals. I too feel very fortunate to have a tt. I ran Mobil 0w-40 and had those occasional puffs of smoke on start up --- switched to Motul 8100 and now I don't see the puffs on smoke very often but I also changed my driving style -- a bit more aggressive with higher rpm shifts.
Cheers to you! Ed
Cheers to you! Ed
02-17-2014, 02:20 PM
#109
To all,
One thing I neglected to mention in the post above is that at some point in the near future I plan to take all my repair invoices by date, by mileage and then put parts, labor, tires, misc costs columns for a true cost of ownership - plot the individual columns and then plot the totals over time and mileage so you will be able to see what your costs of ownership will be (again based on my data only).
Stay tuned (no really I mean it).
T2
One thing I neglected to mention in the post above is that at some point in the near future I plan to take all my repair invoices by date, by mileage and then put parts, labor, tires, misc costs columns for a true cost of ownership - plot the individual columns and then plot the totals over time and mileage so you will be able to see what your costs of ownership will be (again based on my data only).
Stay tuned (no really I mean it).
T2
to T2
02-17-2014, 08:26 PM
#114
Rennlist Member
To all,
One thing I neglected to mention in the post above is that at some point in the near future I plan to take all my repair invoices by date, by mileage and then put parts, labor, tires, misc costs columns for a true cost of ownership - plot the individual columns and then plot the totals over time and mileage so you will be able to see what your costs of ownership will be (again based on my data only).
Stay tuned (no really I mean it).
T2
One thing I neglected to mention in the post above is that at some point in the near future I plan to take all my repair invoices by date, by mileage and then put parts, labor, tires, misc costs columns for a true cost of ownership - plot the individual columns and then plot the totals over time and mileage so you will be able to see what your costs of ownership will be (again based on my data only).
Stay tuned (no really I mean it).
T2
02-18-2014, 01:34 AM
#116
Drifting
02-18-2014, 09:56 AM
#117
thanks for sharing T2! love seeing this stuff 
02-18-2014, 11:59 AM
#118
Rennlist Member
Nice, thanks for the report. Nice to know with good attention these cars can go that far! One question when you had the engine out and did the rebuild, did you do anything to the cooling pipes that has been so highly discussed on this site!
02-18-2014, 06:58 PM
#120
Alpha and Bryan - stock turbo rims with Bridgestone LM-32, 235-40-18 up front and 275-35-18 in the rear. I really like the tires but my favorites were Dunlop Winter Sports - could not get them this year.
Kevinmacd - Never had any issues with the coolant tubes leaking at all but as a precaution we welded them.
Jumper - yes supple leather - looking for the factory 997 GT-3RS two piece style seats now so I can have harnesses for the track and be more planted in the seat.
Keep motoring!!
T2
Kevinmacd - Never had any issues with the coolant tubes leaking at all but as a precaution we welded them.
Jumper - yes supple leather - looking for the factory 997 GT-3RS two piece style seats now so I can have harnesses for the track and be more planted in the seat.
Keep motoring!!
T2