John in Norcal

MAS

I'm far from an expert (as I'm a relatively new 911 owner too)... but oil leaks can be present for many other reasons, other than a broken head stud. For example, valve cover seals and oil return tubes are major candidates... and (to the best of my knowlege) reasonably cheap and easy fixes too.

Also, from what I've gleaned from other 911 owners... most of these engines leak a little at times.

-MAS

Driver8

Small leaks are typical on 911's (but should be no bigger then a half dollar when the car sits for a extended period of time). When I purchased my 87 Carrera I had a small oil leak which was remedied by replacing the oil return tubes. My advice is to first find where the oil leaks are coming from then take the necessary steps to get them repaired. In some cases you will be able to do the work yourself and save a buck.

In regards to your broken head stud, I would recommend getting all the head studs replaced. When you do, you might want to consider something like a Raceware head stud, because the can be reused the next time you need to take you heads off unlike OEM studs.

Bill Gregory

Repairing a broken head stud involves removing the engine and pulling the heads. That's when the mechanic can then tell you if any other studs should be replaced. The majority of your dollars go into taking the engine out and apart. For replacement studs the current 993 part number steel studs work fine, don't recall what they cost, though. Figure $2.5K-3K, rough ballpark.

OneNineElevenGuy

John,

I am in the middle of a journey in replacing a broken head stud on my 1982 911SC.
I only had the car for a few months when I noticed a sound when I put the motor under load. Acceleration. Took it to my wrench thinking it was, on the outside chance, a CV joint. Not so lucky. It was indeed a broken head stud on #6 cylinder. There was an oil drip present also. My car originally came from North Carolina. I took the car in the next week. It is drivable, but I was cautioned not to press my luck as driving could further damage the surfaces of the cylinder head.

Anywho, yes it is a big deal to repair. Mine is currently in pieces at the repair shop. Everything is all cleaned up and ready to reassemble. I am putting in 993 head studs, not the Raceware as some people have suggested.

Replace all of them, not just one. If one failed, you can bet that it has a brother not too far behind. I am only replacing the Exhaust side and not the intake side. I understand that these are of a different material and are not exposed to the elements of gasses and weather. I hope that makes sense.

$2,500 to $3,000 sounds in the neighborhood.
Find a mechanic that you can work with, ask questions, ask if you can come down and check the progress. Mine let me take the tinware and paint them up, I took the fan and polished it up, etc....... I also took my Fuchs home and refinished them.

The car has been in the shop for about 3-4 weeks now, and with any luck, I should be getting it back next week.

I hope all of this helps. Feel free to email me with questions. Good Luck.

Sonic dB

Thats a pretty ****ty thing to do for that "Pelicanite" to not inform you of this.

Are you certain that you have a broken head stud? Did you pull the valve covers and look? Is it possible that he did have it fixed in the top end but its just not documented?

Oil leaking from the cylinder is a sign of broken head stud. This requires engine teardown to fix. Not cheap. Check out the Engine Rebuild book by the Pelican owner Wayne for more info.

If it turns out to be broken, if I were you I would expose this PO on the Pelican board for the jerk that he is.

jlkline

First, find out for sure if you have a broken stud.

If yes, and the PO knew about the problem and did not repair it, he has violated disclosure laws in effect in most states. You should then approach the PO to negotiate a FAIR sales price adjustment to repair the car in the form of a refund or let him know you plan to seek legal remedies, which might easily cost him more that the adjustment price.


Any top end job where a broken stud is discovered (and would be by definition) could not be left unrepaired by any Porsche shop, so if the problem was present at the time of the top end job, it's fairly certain that the problem for that stud was corrected. (an ethical PO should have still disclosed this info)

The proper repair is to replace all the studs with upgraded ones...at minimum all the lowers. If one stud breaks, its more than likely others will follow due to similar conditions being present at all of the stud locations (lower and upper stud conditions are a bit different and its the lowers that usually go) so its possible that a single stud was replaced properly in the top end job, and another broke afterwards, which the owner might claim he didn't know existed.......but its difficult to not know the sound of a Porche motor with a broken stud, once it has been heard.

My $.02

Sonic dB

* Thats Bulls-it. Ive read Wayne's comments on broken head studs in many posts...and he always recommends fixing the problem as soon as possible and not driving the car for more than 100 miles.

Look it up on Pelican by doing a search on 'broken head studs'. There is no way that other people would say its "no big deal"....it is a big deal!

pjc

If you want "the experts" chapter and verse on this read the section in "How to rebuild & modify Porsche 911 Engines 1965 to 1989" by Wayne R. Dempsey. This explains the problem, why it needs fixing and the options. The book is also a great read.

PJC