sorry to rant so much, but to answer your question, no your "928guy" is not normal.
his passion/addiction to the 928 is 'normal' round here.
his decision making skills, budgeting abilities, possibly general reasoning skills are not.

 

Hahahaha!

Yeah, I have been there...

I really think that you are a little too late in the game to really change
the situation. He has already spent the money, and gotten the car
up to snuff. The problem people get into, is buying a car that needs
a lot of work to begin with. If you start with a newer 928, that has
been well-maintained, then you will just have to spend a few thousand
on a new timing belt, and some minor maintainance, and off you go.
But if you buy an old euro, or a beaten up OB, then you will have to
spend a lot of money to make the car perfect. And that is what people
do not realize. Once you become obsessed with a car, you will want
it to be perfect. So if it's 20 years old, that will end up meaning a
new engine, new transmission, new interior, new paint, new suspension,
and it goes on and on. You can easily drop $100K if you totally restore
a 928 to "like new" condition, if it was in bad shape to begin with.
You just have to decide if that is the best thing to do.
Often it is a lot cheaper to buy a newer car, than to restore an old 928.
But people need to know what they are getting into, and know their
financial limits.

For me, it became a situation where yes, I could afford it.
But I am a practical person, and it just makes no sense to
spend $100K on fixing up a car, when I could just save
that money, and buy a Viper or Ferarri or something...

Anyhow, good luck!
Hopefully he can leave well enough along, and just enjoy the car.
But I suspect that is not going to be the case.
If I had kept my car, I am sure it would have had a supercharger
by now, and a body kit, etc... The spending would not have stopped...

 

OK. I up my offer to $6k. $7k if it is a 5 speed.

 

I can’t decide if this would make a better reality show, “shark-u-drama” or addiction series for A&E. But I do see potential. Are the option rights still available to this?

Seriously, $60K is a lot of money for this project unless perhaps it was a late 95’ GTS manual. I too have a hard time not thinking about 928’s all the time but I don’t spend non-disposal income (if there is such a thing) on a hobby.

Best of luck.

 

He freely admits (now) that he was a stupid bungling idiot when he bought the first car. At the time, he really had no idea what he was getting into. He saw the car, it was the same model and even color as the pic he'd had pasted to his mechanic's tool box for years, and it was the exact price we were looking to spend on an SUV at the time. Sigh. Once he got a peek at the car, there was no talking to him. He HAD to have it.

So, my thinking was, "hey, this guy stays at home and watches our two troublesome small children, and he's not having a good time of doing that, and I feel a little sorry for him since that's really stressing him out. He also has rebuilt our entire house from the ground up, single handedly, adding 125% of its original purchase price in value in three years for only $25K in expenditures, and all I'm doing is paying the bills, not any of the work." I thought, "what the hell, the guy deserves a little something for all the hard work he does and everything that he's brought to the table, let him have it." So I did.

The sticker price didn't really seem that bad to either of us, considering what it was. But, of course, back then we didn't know about Rennlist, or any of the many resources we could have looked at before we bought. So, we bought in an expensive county, at a dealership, and I thought I was doing good getting them to come down from the $14k asking to $13k with tax, title and registration included for that price. It needed it an exhaust system, which had to be done right away for inspection in NJ, so we dropped $450 on that. Then the next week we went to give it a tune up and got hit with that first real sticker shock and we started to realize maybe we'd bitten off more than we could chew. But, still, my husband was a mechanic so he could do his own work and we figured that the car ran, so how bad could it be? Surely it wouldn't need too much more?

Problem was, every time it went out, or so it seemed, something would break. A bit of rubber, a sensor, a switch, something. Then the suspension and steering started showing troubles. The exhaust system was not terrific, frankly, and it was very very loud. We were real unhappy with that purchase, the first of many with which we have become dissatisfied. So the next thing you know, we'd put another $10k into the car by the end of the first year of ownership, and that was before we realized that it was going to need WAY more stuff to keep it on the road.

Four years down the road, and here we are. It's been quite an adventure, I'll say that much!

 

928 Gal,

First let me applaud your attitude in this matter. You are a saint. I think you share quite a few characteristics with my wife (CarChickZ06 on this forum).

Now, to the matter: The obsession is normal. However, the overall expense and trial and error(s) you have described are not normal. From the little you have described I think it likely that the fundamental issue is that your guy is trying to do everything from whole cloth - reinventing the wheel, not taking or looking for advice, and in general working as if "he knows it all." Forgive me for that possibly too harsh assessment. But, some of the things you describe - murdering a car with mods, exhaust systems that don't fit, replacing sensors three times in a row - are not the type of occurrences that we read about from a single source on this forum. Sure folks (me included) screw things up from time-to-time and sure we see mods that don't work. But, we trade our experiences with each other with the goal that once a mistake is made by anyone we as a community don't make the same mistake twice.

We certainly have some pioneers on this forum. Folks who have at great expense pushed the envelop of their cars far, far past what the factory did. Sterling's one of them. There are a number of others. When I first saw your post I myself wondered if your were Sterling's SO.

Does your guy frequent this forum? Does he order parts from the "Big Three?" Does he involve other 928 folks in this obsession for advice? Ideas? Or past experience? Or is he doing this all by himself? Is he getting parts from dealers at 110% of Porsche list price? Is he getting his mods from companies that mod pickup trucks and civics? Is he trying to cobble together a supercharger system from bits and pieces?

Is your 928guy a pioneer? Or is he going it alone reinventing and relearning?

 

well put dave c.
928gal, you are indeed a saint for your great attitude in this matter. get your guy on here and we'll straighten him out! as it has been said before, i could not imagine owning my car without rennlist, and i guess this is what happens when you do.

 

All valid questions. As I mentioned in my previous post, a few minutes ago, when we bought in 2002, we didn't know about Rennlist. In fact, we really only found out about it recently, in the past few months or so. He's spent some time lurking around here, as I have, but not asking questions, really, because hey, the damage has been done and the money is spent.

Yes, we deal with the Big 3, or we have at one time or another. Now we deal pretty exclusively with only one of them. We haven't bought anything from the dealer....yet. In the early days, before we realized the Big 3 existed (took us a few months to discover that), we used to get special order stuff through our local parts store. Our parts store sold us several Standard Motor oxygen sensors that the 928 ate. Very quickly. We never did figure out why, but when we finally bought a good one from a Big 3, that stopped happening. We tried Nology wires...they kept breaking. Finally, Nology gave our money back. We tried someone's cross bar...it broke. We have no friends with 928s, so he has had no one to talk to about it. The mods were all bought from perfectly respectable sources, none here could quibble about their provenance, and were made for the 928, not a truck or something. They just weren't everything they were cracked up to be. A rebuilt water pump that had just been put in went bad unbeknownst to us in less than 500 miles. That contributed to the murder of the first car, but was only the final straw, not the initial problem.

My guy is a bit of a pioneer. But he's not one to TRY to reinvent the wheel. Unless he thinks the wheel looks too square! On the other hand, having never had a 928 or even a foreign sports car before, he has had to teach himself everything on this car, most of which he learned through the manuals. In his younger years, he used to build his own street-rods which he would race in street races and win big bucks. No one could ever touch his cars. He didn't suppose even a Porsche had anything he couldn't handle. Over time, he has turned out to be right, but in those early days, OUCH.

 

Thanks Airflite.

That, sir, is a very succinct summary of my post

But, 928gal, if what I and others write is true and you can get your guy to share in our collective experience you need to prepare him for what is likely to be a very large serving of 'humble pie.' Few of us have had any sensitivity training or professional-level education in 928 intervention. So, he's going to have to expect and be prepared for some not-too-kind responses from this crew from time-to-time. Under the assumption that he's not pioneering new 928 territory and that my premise is true, he's going to need to shrug-off some jabs, own-up to his past and move forward. He may have a long road to full recovery. But, we'll do our best.

 

This is all good, thankfully. There are plenty of folks around NJ with whom your guy can begin to interact. If the 'forum' isn't the right forum he can still get involved in actual non-internet communication with folks in your area.

 

You've got a problem for sure but at least he's got all his body parts -

Dr. Frankenstein: "Who's brain is this?"
Igor: "Abby."
Dr. Frankenstein: "Abby who?"
Igor: "Abby Normal."

 

Oh boy, oh boy... an intervention.

928Gal... looks like you're Hanging in there ok. Good for you
... and him. You said he learned from the manuals. Do
you have the 9-vol. (WSM) Workshop Manual ? If not, a
CD version is available through here. Paper versions are scarce.


G'luck

 

Uhhhhh....I don't think he can handle too much intervention, quite frankly. He's already pretty freaked out about how much this car has cost, not only in terms of money and time, but also in loss of self-respect and peace of mind. Having a bunch of strangers pound on him for being too headstrong will only get him more upset. I know for a fact that he doesn't like "humble pie" at all. LOL. Honestly, I'll never get him to come here if he thinks you all just wanna show him how wrong he has been.

Anyway, in his defense, it's not really all his fault. If he takes a perfectly respectable vendor's word for it (one that all of you have trusted in the past) that something they are selling him will fit and will work, and they are supposed to have already done all the science on it, how can he be at fault when it then blows up his motor?

I really love my husband. I know it seems like I am at the end of my patience with him, but I truly want him to be happy. I'm not comfortable with the idea of throwing him to the wolves. He's not much of a people person, really being more comfortable with his car. So if you guys are gonna give him a hard time, I can't bring him here. You'd all have to promise to be NICE.

928Gal

 

Yup, he has the 9 volumes...he bought them on CD and I printed them out and put them in 3-ring binders for him. 928 Specialists showed him the way early in the game, thank goodness. Life would be much harder without those books!!

 

Airflite is being a little harsh about the money. A good 928 still sells higher than he seems to think especialy if mileage isn't bad. Most 928's selling cheap are in lousy condition with ratty interiors, dirty engines, slipping trannys etc..... Some examples even get passed around here.

Read here https://rennlist.com/forums/928-forum/299840-buying-a-porsche-why-it-s-so-hard.html

Airflite and other are right about tips that can help about how to go about things that you will find here and NOTHING will help more than the WSM on cd from Mr. Morehouse.