Riccardo

Hello,

I have been quietly searching away for the "holy" 964 and finally think I might just have found it.

Saw/drove the car last week and it seemed the nicest one so far. 1991 C4, 55,000 miles, on sale at OPC. The car will come with a full 24K service (brake fluid & gearbox oil changes requested too), new tyres, new a/c recharge and 6 month warranty.

It has had 2 owners, new dmf, vent kit installed, and appears to have no oil leaks.

All in all seems good, but I wanted to know what kind of problems people out there had with theirs in the first 6 months of ownership? Seeing as my budget is quite stretched, I would like to know the worse to expect (OK, engine rebuilds I am excluding).

Thanks for any help

wmtt140

Have you had the car inspected by an independent mechanic? I'm not very knowledgable about cars and wouldn't trust my own evaluation of the car. There are numerous potential problems that a trained mechanic could detect.

Good luck,

Wayne

Planter91C2

sounds to me like a great car and you shouldn't expect any trouble. i bought mine with similiar miles and have had no problems for 2 years now.

Richard H

30k miles. Impossible to predict! Worth using this in discussions on price (try and get them to replace as part off the deal).
I would say it's impossible to predict what could go wrong, I've heard of piston rings needing replacement at 50k and heard of engines with 3x that and still going strong!
Good luck.

Richard 1990 C2 90k miles

Richard H

Only got some of my reply in the above!!

Buying from an OPC should protect you a bit. I believe they give a 12 month warranty?
My first 6 months were problem free (except 1 oil pipe, replaced under warranty)the next 6 have been problem free also.
My clutch was replaced as part of the deal when I bought mine 86K miles. If this car has not had it replaced I would expect about 10k to 30k miles before it could need a new one. Impossible to predict! Worth using this in discussions on price (try and get them to replace as part off the deal).
I would say it's impossible to predict what could go wrong, I've heard of piston rings needing replacement at 50k and heard of engines with 3x that and still going strong!
Get a good indie to check it even though it's from an OPC.
Good luck.

Richard 1990 C2 90k miles

Drew_K

Riccardo,

The 6 month warranty sounds like great piece of mind, but I would still have the car checked out by another Porsche mechanic if possible. First of all, the car sounds pretty good from your description and has reasonably low miles.

As far as potential problems, the first thing that comes to mind is the clutch. If it hasn't already been changed, I imagine it will need one within the next 30K miles, but that's only a guesstimate.

Another possible problem is the distributor belt. Even though it's vented, I would be curious to know WHEN it was vented. If it was vented recently, the car ran for a fair amount of miles without the vent kit and the belt could have deteriorated to some extent. You can address the distributor issue by having it replaced ($~600 parts & labor) or having it sent out to have just the belt replaced (~$150). If the vent kit has been on there for a while, then I wouldn't worry about it. I've heard that that the engine can be damaged if the belt breaks, depending upon where the second rotor sits when the failure occurs.

As far as my own experience with my 92 C2 coupe, I had to replace the battery ($100) and transmission ground strap ($15 part) because the prior owner didn't drive the car often. I bought it with 36K miles last year. I've had to replace the rear tires, the rear deck lid and trunk shocks (not the suspension shocks), and I bought a Porsche battery maintainer since the alarm seems to need a lot of juice.

The car now has 49K miles, and thankfully it's been a very uneventful 1st year in terms of maintenance. Good luck with the search...

Drew

Bill Wagner

The biggest problem (in my opinion) is the dual mass flywheel. Yours has been replaced (presumably with a LUK) so it shouldn't be a problem. Check the serial number of the engine to see if it has the updated cylinder/gasket set on it. The "leakage" problem associated with the cylinders seems to me to be grossly overblown, so much so that I'm beginning to think it applies to only '89 cars, but I have no real proof of this. The vent kit is the sign (in my opinion) of an aware owner who took care of the car...yet another plus. I think I'm jealous...and you seem to have a decent warranty to boot. No, I AM jealous! How about a valve adjustment and changes to the tranny fluid, fuel filter, etc. The car is old, so these might be things to check out carefully.

If it were me and I got a PPI done and the car passed and the price was realistic, I would buy it.


Good Luck,

Bill Wagner
'91 C4