Hey, I am brand new to this forum and porsches in general. I own a fairly modified 00 a4 turbo and am looking to buy another porsche for a project type car. Ive been looking at 944's and am trying to avoid asking the noob questions but if someone could help me out on what years to avoid, and what some common problems are it would be greatly appreciated. Im not a stranger to turbo cars and am farily mechanically inclined so a car that requires a lot of attention is what im looking for. Some answers or general information would be great or if someone would point me in the right direction (search wise) it would be great.
Thanks
Brian

 

Welcome Brian!

Start by checking out the "New Users" post at the top of this forum page. There's a bit of information there to get you started. Then head over to Clark's Garage www.clarks-garage.com. A great technical resource, it also has an FAQ section about purchasing your first 944. Have fun!

 

Thank you, I live on the forums for my audi (www.audiworld.com and www.audizine.com) so I know what a great help they can be. Thanks for the info, and again I know how annoying noob questions can be so I guess im asking for more of a point in the right direction.

 

Looking for a 951? OK, what use are you thinking about? track? street? both? Modding? whats your budget and plans. This info will help us point you in the right directrion on what years and such with these cars. They are a great deal of fun, but require work and money too.
~Eyal

 

Well I was thinking somthing along the lines of occasional autoX with mostly somthing that will be fun to run on the street. I am fairly involved with my audi and have a good friend who owns a porsche shop and knows alot about them so together I figure we should be able to work on these cars. I would like to spend around 5k on a car and from what I hear the turbo is the car to buy. Does that sound low for a turbo 944? I have been looking around and have seen some that look appealing but again I dont know what some of the common problems are and what years to avoid.

 

Greetings and welcome to the boards! Anything you can possibly imagine you can find here. So you came to the right place. It depends on your location, but i have seen decent Turbos go for low prices before. So 5000 might just get you a good running car. It might take a little longer to find one though. 7000 might be an easier find.

 

Have you considered the 944"S" The 16 valve.....

 

Don't buy cheap. The money you will save, will be exceeded by the cash you will have to spend replacing the many minor and major engine parts any used 944. I would expect something from 7-10k for a good to excellent example of a 951 (944 turbo), or you could go for the more powerful 928 for about 10k + .

The best advice I can give you is take your time and search around before buying a 944. Also make sure to get all the records and double check to see the odometer is working (sounds stupid, but you will be suprised how easy it is to not realize the odometer doesn't work). Good luck, and welcome to the forum.

 

yeah, i'd have to agree ... i really love my S

and welcome to the board

 

I'm tired of people saying this. Simply put: don't be a moron, check it out. There are plenty of good deals out there.

People are just too ignorant and conceited to acknowledge it.

I bought a 500 dollar porsche, in utter crap condition. Yet i have a 96k mile engine in it with excellent compression and heres the kicker: its been completely reliable for the past 30k in a little over a year. Oh, and I got the complete engine for 260.

If you take out the enkei wheels, weltmeister swaybars, and a whole bunch of BS i bought for the car....really didn't spend much at all.

If you're mechanically inclined...look for a car with a bad headgasket of bent valves. Easy fix and you can find cars for a few hundred dollars. I recently had a chance to buy a VERY nice 87 944 with a bent valves for 300 bucks...but I didn't have a truck to pick it up and cancelled the purchase.

Good luck with your purchase and don't prejudge cars! Do be warry though.

_

No offense, but whats up with the all the noobies giving advice recently? Seriously.

 

Hey man, nice to see you here. I remember you posting about good Porsche forums on AWOT, I'm glad you found this board, it is a great resource for 944s.

 

Yep that was me, thanks for your help over there and I appreciate everyones help here. I am not planning on buying the car for a couple of months just so that I can look around and gain some knowledge about them on here.

 

Yeah, don't let people discourage you with price. You can find a perfect example for $10k any day of the week. You might find a perfect example for $5000 once or twice a year and you have to be fast and jump on it. You CAN find one though. When i was looking for a new daily car i almost bought another 944. I found a perfect late N/A locally for $2000. I would have pulled out the checkbook, i really wanted to...but i knew it just wasnt right for me. I need more space daily.

Anyways, the only thing with Porsches are, sometimes you pay a little more now, and it saves you thousands later. Make sure the car you look at, really IS good. Get a Pre-Puchase Inspection (PPI) done and dont slide on that. Its vital to know what you are getting and be cautious on cars without their full history. You DO want reciepts! Not some guys word that it has been taken care of. Ideally, you want to be able to piece the car's history together back to the day the delivered it. Not always possible, but you would be surprised what a little research can do sometimes!

 

bjaro5187 - Your post is a bit unclear about which 944 your most interested in. I'll assume for the time being that you are interested in what we call a 951 (the 944 Turbo). There are many examples of this car available at "under market value" prices - just like any other car on the market. A few of us have gone this route on an initial purchase and been disappointed in the outcome. As a general rule, the cars are expensive to maintain and new parts are pricey. You can save some cash by using rebuilt parts, but my personal experience has been to avoid these as most of the soft costs are in labor - not the part itself. When a rebuilt part fails you still have to remove and replace it (the soft costs if you will). For me, it's not worth the few dollars I save. There are vast amounts of used parts out there as well, and with these you take a chance that the replacement part will also fail. Once again, the soft costs are more important here - at least to me. Time or labor has different values to each one of us, and if you truely enjoy working on your own car and it doesn't take time away from more important matters, then you can create a cost efficent Porsche by starting out with someones abandoned project car.
As PC 944 mentioned, it's best if you start with as good of a car as you can afford. Prices for a 951 will generally be in the $5k range for a "project car" and continue up from there. There were more 86 model year Porsche 951 cars built than the other years combined - so you'll find more of these available. If you are into modding the car, then an 86 may be the best year for you. Most of the higher performance parts the factory installed in the later years are replaced by even higher performance aftermarket parts anyway (I'm referring to the turbo itself here). SO there is little need to pay more for a later year.
Now, onto the autocross part of your post. If this is your true intention, then the turbo car might not be your best bet. Only the most skilled drivers out there can make a turbo perform well in an autocross situation - and even then they tend to get beat by the NA crowd. The low end on a 951 is virtually non existant in stock form (and not that much better when moded). You need to be in the 3k range in revs to get the boost, and that's pretty hard to do in a tight autocross. You'll have better times starting out with a NA. And that's speaking from experience too.

Finally - and this is not directed at you - post count is not indictive of experience.