dougs968

I can sympathize with the maintainance part for sure. From what I have see in my car, the previous owner(s) neglected a lot of stuff. I may be the only competent mechanic this car has seen in years. It's got many oil leaks that need fixing. To give you an idea, I thought the whole underside of the car had been under coated. Oil covered in dirt. Got a pretty good laundry list of parts on hand to do all of that.

As it stands now, I trust it locally, but not to Tulsa or Dallas. After I get everything sorted, don't see why it wouldn't be a reliable transcontinental ride. Good thing I like working on it as a hobby.

jax

My vehicles:
1994 968 6-speed Coupe
1995 Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer
2011 Ford Taures SEL
2013 Dodge Charger SXT

If there is going to be traffic on my 15 mile journey to work, I take the explorer.
If there is NOT going to be traffic (under the conditions that I go to work early and the car is not still on ramps getting the variocam fixed) then I take the Porsche no questions asked hands down the best most enjoyable ride to work.
If I am driving more than 50 miles I drive the Taurus, it is fast comfortable and trouble free.
I absolutely cant stand the wife's dodge and all the modern crap in it. There are hardly any buttons for controls and everything is on a damn touchscreen and the seats are for very wide people. It has an 8-speed automatic that the driver has NO control of, and is terrible under any driving circumstance. At least the 6-speed on the Taurus has paddles.

The 2 modern sedans are gigantic. You might as well not even turn around when backing out, you can't see anything anyway. I hate driving them, but they make sense in terms of... I know they will work without question.

The Explorer needs a new transmission every 80k miles (it is on its 3rd and final) but has a good engine and literally has every bell and whistle that a car could possibly have. For the price, there is no better luxury vehicle.

I am relatively new to the 968, but soon (and with the support of this forum) I will know everything I need to know to properly maintain this wonderful vehicle. For the price, there is no better sports car.

This post may not entirely relate to daily driving, but I have been drinking whiskey tonight and love to bag on the modern cars.
Bottom line: When I am driving solo, I go mid-90s. When Im with the wife and kid, I go modern crap.

Eyeman

I've had my '94 since '95 and daily drove it many of those years. I recently topped 170k. I always had a backup vehicle (actually the Porsche has been the backup vehicle all except maybe 5 of those years).

For sure a Porsche is a great car to drive pretty much anywhere except maybe really rough roads or stop and go traffic. A 968 is somewhat cheaper to maintain than a 911, but the maintenance is pretty costly. Basically any car with low profile tires and high end brakes is gonna be pretty expensive to drive. Add in our timing belts, starter, water pump, etc failures and the high cost of anything labeled German, especially Porsche then it's easy to see why not many can afford to daily drive a Porsche.

My car runs great but it's so beat up for all those miles that I wonder if it wouldn't be cheaper to just buy a much lower mileage 968. But then I hate to see things go to waste so I guess I'll eventually have to cosmetically restore my car. Just the body work, paint, and new convertible top alone will have to cost somewhere in the $5k range.

odurandina

i'm only halfway through and i'm with you. haven't read it through and I know you're right already. so i'll comment on what I've read so far..... the interior. the part you have to live in when you transcon the damn thing all over creation (add 2 more transcon trips just the past week).....

the steering wheel; no tilt is a real pain in the ***..... the rear seats need to go. I deleted and have two perfectly sized packs that fit wonderfully behind the passenger Sparco's. ahhh, lambskin Sparco's. life is good. the door cards and center trim need be re-done in leather. because it's not your uncle's 944.

but the seat delete is the really huge thing. just opens so much space for traveling, duffle bags, spare trannies, swap parts, etc.... (I've travelled vast distances with them all).... hell, with a seat delete, you can practically live in the damn cars.... a lot of stuff on the cars is improvable, but it takes effort and $$$... beginning with the sound system. mine was about $4 k.... and all the expense to fix things is the problem, because you're going to need plenty of money for the...... not a cheap car to drive far, long, endless miles, etc.

User 41221

I've had my 968 for well over a decade at this point, and am coming from a totally different perspective than doc, but I can fully appreciate what he's saying. I started with a low mileage one owner car tha had been maintained by Champion Porsche, kept it bone stock, stayed up on all the maintenance myself or with the help of my friend Karl, and while I have only put about 40k miles on it over that time and its admittedly my garage queen, it has been absolutely reliable and a joy to drive and own. I have driven it literally coast to coast, it's been to the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, and I wouldn't hesitate to have my wife or daughter drive it anywhere if they needed a car to go anywhere. To me, it's perfectly comfortable even when I drive it for twelve to fourteen hours in a day's time, it gets very good gas mileage (27-28 on the highway if I drive reasonably) and offers stellar performance in a very unique package.

However... It's not my daily driver. If I had used it that way, my experience might have been completely different. I have a feeling, emotions for the 968 set aside, that doc probably nailed it, except that I'd rate the ergonomics a lot higher.

odurandina

kind of off topic; but since we're on the topic of daily driving, what can you do in a 968 that you'd be hard pressed to attempt in a 911? you guessed it; so, how to sleep in a 968 on a long trip/Rolex 24/surf trips, etc. can it really be done? yup! first, you need seats that go all the way back..... next a queen-sized, egg-crate foamy folded over the seat... next, some cardboard to go over the center console. then, add about 3 memory foam pillows over everything, and i'll see you in about 8 hours.

on exactly 3 occasions in the last 5 years, I've been caught in significant snowstorms while traveling over 1000 miles (the most interesting, at the top of the Appalachian summit in Beckley, WV 2 days before Christmas at the end of 2010)... I stopped and tried to wait it out at a rest area. then tried again, but no good.... I was lucky to escape the interstate a second time just couple of miles down 64... but, after pulling into this truck-stop/travel-lodge setup, the snow got really bad... there was a cozy hotel right there (and cheap too), but what fun would that be? I just went inside the lodge and, warmed up.... talked with a few locals before filling my thermos with cocoa, and headed out to the car. plopped down and slept like a baby while the snow turned to blizzard conditions.... dropped from 15 degrees down to about 10 (but snow is a great insulator). all good. cranked the heat and turned the car off... woke up after about 3 hours, cranked the heat. slept 3 more. cranked the heat. slept 3 more.

sadly, most of the talk in the lodge surrounded the news of a family (in a minivan) that wasn't so lucky; they were involved in a crash with a semi-truck about 2 miles away from the lodge.... apparently, the impact had sent the minivan down a ravine. (I would find out the next morning that the family perished). one of the wrecker crews sent in, posted the bad news just before I turned in.... they expected to be out all night.


I'm at about 40 trips of over 1,000 miles. add about another 60 trips of 500~800 miles..... the car is now past 180 k miles with only a few interruptions; the cars offer serious reliability seldom reported by 944 drivers. but, hasn't been without expensive maintenance and a few repairs.

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bobt4945

excellent write up, hats off to you. although i do not have a 968 yet am hoping for one in the future. it would not be the DD so will be measure with a different yard stick. like many others on this board with p-cars you love and hate them. ever trip can be an adventure(will i make it?) but hey its a PORSCHE.

odurandina

I must nearly fully concur with your mildly scathing report of the 968...

don't get me wrong; I love these cars.. love owning mine... I've also been a loud critic of the too much cheap crap vs big sticker price (for a few years). there's no need to apologize. the history is a problem. the 17" wheels, LSD and full leather options fall under 'must haves,' imo, so you can raise the 'base price' even more if you want to be in the '90's Porsche neighborhood.

now, that's an expensive car - with high green fees to stay in! but if you really want to get hurt -- the sky's the limit with these cars.... but then you're flirting with blood money, time and effort.

adding leather bits to the trim is straightforward. if you're planning to keep your car until death, just about the time that your transmission rebuild comes around, you can add an LSD... doing stereo updates is about what you might expect to be doing with any 20 year old car. the 968 takes very kindly to bumping up with oversized transducers/amps/subwoofers. after modding my exhaust, changing to big wheels and running correct diameter tires, I'd left my old 944S long behind...

you might have a dead or dying cat. they clog up and slow the car down... add that to the stock muffler which has an egregious restrictor plate inside (a late change, after it was discovered the 968 was too loud for US DOT. as a result, the Euro cars were delivered just north of 240 hp and our cars closer to 230 hp). you could eliminate the cat and then run a resonator and a large glasspack, but in Tejas you can't really do it without serious problems come inspection time.

... run a 25.6~7" tire, like a 275-35-18, and you get 100.0 mph @ 4,000 rpm where you can go hours on your next trip down I-10 going west of Kerrville (which of course, will be about never). but this awards the 968 w/ junior GT car status.

as far as the looks of the nose section and interior, they definitely stayed way too much in the '80s a good 5 years past when it was time for a more appropriate update. but, Porsche was in financial trouble.... regardless, running 20 year-old pop up lamps exposes Porsche as being somewhat confused around this time.... (I long suspected they had ideas of fixing the fugly pop-up lights, and my suspicions were confirmed when we uncovered the Cabriolet with the improved interior and fixed headlamps... but these and (surely), other improvements were left on the cutting room floor. very decent car power wise, best handling car in the world.

conclusion; if ever there was an over-priced, mid-performance sports car in need of a makeover and a less disagreeable engine, the 968 was it... yes, the most annoying 4 cylinder engine on the planet (was contained only by an exhaust as heavy as a steam locomotive)...... and, this is most likely, what the Automotive world would have been sensing about the cars in 1992. perhaps it wasn't fully clear at the time, but the 1995~98 911s/Boxsters got the well-need facelifts (the 928s and 968s missed). once you arrived here, what the automotive world was flirting with in the subconscious, rose to the surface.

and the cars were all soon forgotten.

but all is not lost on these cars. there are lots of nice mods that can be done... like some of the things often mentioned; but guys who've done the Turbo S conversions, suspension mods, 997 brake/wishbone setups etc, deserve endless praise. other updates/and a few less meticulous turbo conversions seen along the way, have been met with mixed reviews.

.

docmirror

what's the deal on those headlights? Is that a bolt in application from a later model or does it require billions of hours of mashing and bending and fitting? If it's not a big job I might like to go that way. The lights on my car sometimes have a mind of their own. I've been driving at night and had the lights go down, then back up, I've had one go down, then up, I've had the lights come on, but the buckets stay down.

If this isn't too hard, I might look into it.

odurandina

i had the front end update in mind before I got the car. tore up the nose one day, so that project commenced a bit sooner than expected. turned out to be a great day.... late last spring, my mother took ill, so I stopped working and took a sawz-all to the fenders.... had front sections of these damaged 993 fenders (purchased from DC Auto for 300) welded on. then began the process of sculpting the finalized fenders with about a 3/8" coating of epoxy resin. then standard finishing resins.... so the result is technically no more than a mock-up. just the same, it was scary cuz I had no idea if I'd pull it off and be able to make something that was symmetric. but, looking back, doing it was just as fun as the result. I'm jonesing to do this to another set of 993/968 fenders. only this time by using the existing fenders to make a mold and then proceed from there.
same with the nose. that took a good amount of time as well. and it also is not a lightweight, final version.

.

ChatyJones

odurandina, I'm assuming the 4000 rpm is the tire rotation and not engine rpm? I have to ask, since I've seen this statement before... where are you getting your math from? From my calcs a 25.6" tire @ 4000 rpms puts you at about 300 mph. If you're getting that from your V8 install... SIGN ME UP!!!

Here's the math. A 25.58" diameter tire has a circumference of 80.32" (or 6.69 ft)
We know that one rotation of the tires would move the car 6.69 ft. So, in one minute, or say 4,000 rotations (per minute), the car would move 26,760 ft, or 5.07 miles. That's 5.07 miles per minute. 5.07 miles per minute translate to about 304.2 mph.

Working our way back, 100 mph would actually produce 1,315 rotations of the tire per minute.

odb812

I get where the OP is coming from for the most part, but I don't agree with the eval of ergonomics. The interior is laid out very well from a functional standpoint. Sure, the mirror adjuster is on the door and the switch to choose which mirror is on the console; and there are other goofy things like this. But how often does that really matter. The controls you need on a regular basis are where they need to be so you can use a good number of features without taking your eyes off the road. It's also very comfortable on long drives for it's level of performance. It's not as pretty as many cars in its class, even in its day, but that would be more an interior finish issue than an ergonomics issue. And yes, they didn't change much from the 944, but again, that seems like a negative for interior finish but a positive for ergonomics since there is a better chance the driver will have experience in a car with the same interior layout. It also goes to show you that Porsche didn't receive much negative feedback on the interior layout, or they would have changed it in those 10.5 years.

odurandina

that's 4,000 rpm (engine).

running that tire gives 150 mph at 6,000 rpm and 163 at the redline.

and the math is so straightforward a caveman could do it.

i'll be right back and post the math.


ok, I had to go get the exact tire rotations per mile for a Dunlop Sport 01 275-35-18.....

it's 818 rotations/mile.


so.... here it is;

3.778 (rear axle) X 0.778 (6th gear) = 2.939 (final drive ratio)....

1000 engine rpm = 60,000 revolutions per hour / 2.939 = 20,415 tire revolutions/hr....

divide that by 818 revolutions per mile for a Dunlop 275-35-18 = 24.96 mph/1000 rpm in top gear.


btw, once you're running the right tires, you can watch your odometer over 200 miles of interstate mile markers.

your odometer will read exactly 200 miles driven.

tamathumper

... it's been 14 minutes ... I don't think he's coming back ... <jeopardy music> ...

odurandina

I actually promised 911Crazy i'd take some pictures of the Charles River (massatoosetts) in my back yard near the top of it's banks.

it was getting dark, so I ran back to the river and took the pics. then looked up the tire rotatioins for the Dunlops.


btw, i'm now running Contisportcontact3 285-35-18s with about 3 mm of wear.

which amounts to exactly 815 tire rotations/mile.

I like 'em even more because I can get 'em used for about $100/tire in south Florida.