AndrewLang

Hello everyone, this is basically my introduction to the forums! I've been lurking here for the last few months now reading and gathering information. I'm from California and flew out to Tennessee this week to look at a car I had my eye on. Good news and bad news. I thought the asking price was pretty reasonable so I came out here to do a PPI expecting everything to turn out fine since the top end was just done 3 years ago. Unfortunately we discovered cylinder number 4 had 27% leakdown so I thought I'd shy away from the car. I decided to give it a shot and make the owner a significantly lower offer that I thought would be fair to get me into a very clean 964 plus the cost of the rebuild and he accepted after I explained to him the situation his motor was in.

Needless to say the PPI was worth it.

I'm here in Nashville right now and I had Wicky over at Renntag Motorwerks do the inspection. I can't say enough good things about him, it was a pleasure spending the afternoon with him. After we discovered the leakdown problem (which was leaking through the bottom end through the crank case) he gave me an estimate of what it would cost to do a rebuild out here at his shop. the 6-8k he quoted sounded pretty reasonable considering I've heard some higher numbers out in California. I'm very tempted to just bring the car to his shop and ask him to do a rebuild since he's already been so helpful and has earned my trust.

That being said I don't know much about potential independent porsche shops in southern california but I'm sure there are plenty that are good and also reasonable.

My question is this: Should I have the engine rebuilt in California or Tennessee? I'm worried that if I get the car transported to California I won't be able to find a shop that I trust and that will also do the rebuild for an affordable price.

Second question: Although I'm almost 100% confident about the accuracy of the leakdown and inspection, would it be worth it to have another local shop do a quick leakdown test of cylinder number 4 and confirm that its above 20% before I go ahead and have the engine torn apart?

Any advice would be helpful. I admit that I am no Porsche or 911 expert and that I may be in over my head at this point. That being said, I have had an e30 M3 for many years that has turned into my track car and I've been through alot with that. I do have a strong core understanding of cars/engines, just not this one as much as others.

Tomorrow I'm going to wake up and give Wicky a call and let him know I decided to buy the car and hear out their suggestions. Hopefully I'll have some good advice tomorrow from all of you as well.

Thanks,
Andrew

springer3

I would certainly take the car on a long drive (Tennessee to California?) and then re-check. A quick test for a low cylinder is to pull out the DME relay and crank the engine. It will not start because the DME stopps the fuel pump. As the engine turns, you will hear "chugs" each time a cylinder does its compression stroke. If there is a regular chug that sounds faster than the rest, and it seems to be every sixth one, that is the low cylinder. If all the chugs sound even, the compression is even across all the cylinders.

I cannot speak for the relative cost/performance of shops in Tennessee vs. California. I would think both locations have good ones and bad ones. An engine rebuild is the wrong place to save money, so I would go with the more reputable shop.

xeps

Not sure about the rebuild issue, having not done one (yet!).

I can, however, reiterate your comments about Wicky. I purchased my current c4 out of Nashville and imported it to Calgary two years ago. Had him do my PPI, and he also let me store the car at his shop for an extended period while I worked out the shipping details.

Further, he provided me some incredibly helpful assistance over the phone once the car was landed in Calgary.

After my experiences with Wicky I would absolutely have my engine rebuilt there without hesitation. If it doesn't influence your travel (were you planning to drive the car back?) I would probably get it rebuilt in Tennessee, personally.

911Jetta

That's a great nugget of advice!

nekbet

Did they do the leakdown twice on every cylinder? Were the numbers comparable? I've heard of people getting into jobs that didn't need doing because A) the leakdown tester was faulty or B) for some reason they didnt have a good seal at the plug hole (how does that happen?) and showed bad but was really ok..

Unless it is eating a ton of oil - I'd say drive it home. When was the last time it was really driven hard and hot? Did it sit for a while before it was up for sale?

just a thought,

-Mike

AndrewLang

To answer everyones questions, the leakdown test was done on 4 cylinders, the first 3 came out with good numbers, between 5 and 9 percent. Then when we got to cylinder 4 we got the high number. We redid the test atleast 3 times and when he put pressure through the cylinder the air started coming out the crank case.

What's odd, and what Wicky was also confused about was that the spark plug seemed good and the car wasn't consuming a lot of oil. I'm going to give him a call this morning and see what his thoughts are now.

Another big issue was the car was only driven about 300 miles in the last year, it sat most of the time. The previous owner showed me a compression test result that was done about a year ago with 300 miles less on the car. The results were something like:

1- 155
2- 155
3- 150
4- 135
5- 145
6- 155

I pointed out that maybe cylinder 4 had some leakdown at that point as well although it didn't show up as a huge problem in the compression test.

nekbet

I'd drive it some and see what happens. Could it be a stuck ring?

mnmasotto

I had a similar situation with my car. I opted to drive the car a while and the leakdown significantly improved in that cylinder. If the car has been sitting a while the rings can stick and give you a low number. There are plenty of good shops here in CA. But whether or not they can do a rebuild with a bottom end for 6-8 thousand is a another question.

Bearclaw

Wicky did a PPI for me several years ago. He was great to work with and an easy choice, since he seems to be something of a local legend. I ended up not buying the car, but based on what I've heard about him, I would not hesitate to have him do a rebuild.

The No.4 cylinder is troublesome because even on a simple comp. test, it's more than 10% below the average, and the result seems to be consistent. If you're committed to buying it, I think I would get it back home, take some readings again and then decide. If you get it rebuilt in TN, I would transport and not drive back, as I don't think many hours of continuous freeway driving would be a good break-in routine. If you don't have time to drive it back in its present condition, truck it home and wring it out a little, take readings and see where you're at.

race911

I'd drive it home, and go from there. I've raced on engines that have had a low cylinder (granted 2.7s, where there was zero financial impact from it blowing up).

elbeee964

heck, w/ regards to its stock state financially - blowing up a 2.7 would be a net benefit.

race911

Surprisingly robust, actually, when you keep them to "stock" RS config. Good powerband, not too much worry about overrevving, didn't need massive oil coolers, wouldn't blow apart a mag case 915.........just needed to keep the car around 2300 lbs.

elbeee964

hmmm... that whole Damocles sword of "tearing down to install headstud helicoils" (for pulled threads) always left me cold re buying into the 2.7's mag case.
But, different strokes for different folks!

Hope this guy finds his balky compression finding are the result of some debris temporarily compromising his valve's seat seal.

race911

It's Timecerts. But if you've got an engine apart anyway, it was only maybe 2 1/2-3 hours to do a case. Even if you're track/race prepping a 3.0, consider how long it takes to just unscrew the studs to replace with steel. You're already 50% there, time-wise, at that point.

AndrewLang

I think something important that I neglected to mention was that the was about an hour and a half open freeway drive from Nashville. The previous owner let me drive the car by myself all the way to Nashville for the PPI. On that drive, knowing the car hadn't had much run time for a while. I slowly warmed it up and progressively gave it some load. Wicky then drove the car a good 20 miles when we went to lunch before the compression and leakdown test. I thought this driving would be sufficient to take care of this problem. Wicky also mentioned another strange issue. When he investigated the leakdown compressed air would actually turn the motor, which shouldn't happen. Apparently it would indicate the rod was not perfectly lined up to where it should be. I'm sure I'm not explaining the last part well.

Since the leakdown I've driven the car a total of about 3 hours on the highway. Its at Renntag Motorwerks now and I've asked Wicky to do another leakdown and any other troubleshooting to see if he really is 100 percent certain the engine has a bottom end problem.

I'm at the airport now waiting for my plane to fly home. I guess my next course of action is to do my research here and find out what I want to put into this motor while I'm there. Ill definitely be having it see track time so this might end up costing much more than I initially thought.

Fortunately though I think finding a car with a bad motor is a blessing in disguise. At the end of the day I'm going to have a very clean body with a new motor for less than it would have cost to buy a clean car with a high mighlage engine back home.

Suggestions appreciated everyone!