jschiller

My 89 S4 will soon get a timing belt/water pump job as well as new motor mounts. I have all the parts for those jobs on hand. But since parts are going NLA at a disturbing rate, it sets me to thinking that I should be buying up spares now that I will need sooner or later. If you had a budget of $2k now, what would you buy? I'm thinking I should get a spare MAF, LH and/or EZK but maybe I should sent them out for rebuild now and forgo getting spares, I'm not worried about the routine replacement ignition items like caps, wires and rotors, I think there's no danger of those going away but there are a ton of other items in these cars that will fail and leave you stranded with no replacements in sight. And what about suspension parts? Are any of those likely to go NLA that I should be getting now?

So the question is: "What would you be looking for if you planned on keeping your car on the road for the next 30 years?"

jcorenman

I would put MAF on top of the list and have it rebuilt as a spare, those are unique to the 928 and do age with use. And get the LH rebuilt if not already done. EZK's rarely if ever fail, I would put that pretty far down the list.

Rubber parts all age, and some are special and may be at risk. Replacing with new is arguably a better option than squirreling away spares. Roger or Mark track this stuff and are probably your best resources.

And fuel pumps and lines. Especially with modern fuel these seem to be a more common problem. And clutch parts-- everything including flywheel. Those are unique to the 928, do wear, and are going away. (But that will also wreck your $2K budget...

Shawn Stanford

This should have been brought up in the 'reliability' thread!

Kiln_Red

Depending on what the interest and responses are in this thread, I think it deserves to be a standalone. A thread idea like this could become 'sticky' worthy. I am interested to hear responses by 928 vendors. Our 3 main vendors have all been around a long time and have a data set that would pretty much mirror Porsche's with regard to sales volumes. The unknown for those guys is the expense for manufacturing. Manufacturing expenses tend to rise as sales volumes slow. The maintenance required for the tooling and the material expenses for whatever the composition of the part can make things uneconomical fast.

Roger, do you have your crystal ball handy?

GregBBRD

Transmission parts.

The MAF can be rebuilt. The LH computer can be rebuilt. Worse case senario, you have to wait a couple of weeks, while they get rebuilt.

Clutch parts are getting "thin", but I'll have a modern street clutch solution...very soon.

I make replacement fuel lines that are better than the stock pieces, so that isn't an issue.

They ran out of 5th gear input bearings, for several years (they remade some, finally, but we struggled for several years.) If you don't have one of those and you need one, you are dead in the water.

I've got better synchros than stock (cheaper) so that isn't an issue.

Eventually, they will run out of gears, but knowing what gear will fail first (or ever) is impossible to predict.

NoVector

Does anyone in the States rebuild MAFs? I think mine has never been touched and you're kind of worrying me.

GeorgeM

Injection Labs in Colorado did mine.

jschiller

Isn't Louie Ott still doing them?

voskian

electronikrepair@earthlink.net

Rich Andrade ( electronik repair) in Tempe does both LH and MAF repair.

jschiller

Thank you, I had forgotten about Rich.

GregBBRD

I send all of mine to England.

I get cars in with rebuilt MAF's all the time.

No one does them better than John Speake....hands down better at this than anyone else. Some are so bad at this job that the cars will barely run, without O2 sensor control.

John Speake

Thanks Greg. To the list I would add almost anything supplied by Bosch, who are rapidly dropping older products from their catalogue.

So add ABS sensors; fuel pressure regulators and dampers; maybe Hall sensor, TPS, throttle switch and knock sensors to the list.

GregBBRD

Truthfully, since a MAF can be rebuilt a anytime, that would not be my priority.

Getting those other pieces from Bosch would seem to be more important....I believe that Mary mentioned that even Porsche was out of the fuel pressure regulator.

belgiumbarry

i would tackle the problem when there is one…. you can easy buy 20 $0.5k parts , so for $10K boxes on the shelf…. first part you will need won't be there according Murphy.
For shops this is of course total other story , the more customers, the more diversity in "problems".

GregBBRD

Although I seriously doubt that anyone would ever loose money on Bosch parts that become impossible to find (way better investment that any 401K or any return on the stock market.) Fuel pressure regulators were ~$200 when Bosch still had inventory (buying from aftermarket suppliers.) Once Bosch had none and Porsche had the remaining inventory, the price was over $400.

......Now, I'd be thrilled to be able to buy them, although apparently Porsche has asked Bosch to make some more. (I'm guessing that the "new" price will be even higher.)

The same thing happened with GT and GTS clutch pressure plates. Used to buy them for ~$400, through the aftermarket. Now, Porsche is the only one with them and the price is now $1600.) Wouldn't be a bad return on your money if you had an entire shelf full of the $400 ones. (Currently, a GTS clutch replacement with flywheel is over 3K worth of just the parts.....and I can guarantee that Porsche is "down to" just a few flywheels.)