Hello All,

I was wondering if anyone has had to repair their door check strap failure more than once, and what that was like. Is it necessarily more difficult?

If you follow the repair discussed on PCA, how long can you expect the repair to last, assuming one takes care of not misusing/abusing the new repair?

Did a second repair fail altogether?

I am currently considering buying a car that has already been repaired once, back in 2012. Apparently the repair has held up well since, but I wonder what are the chances it fails again, even if I take excellent precautions.

Maybe a member here has had this experience and can share some details.

BTW the car is far away from me to inspect myself, and a PPI states “Driver door check has been rewelded and has some surface corrosion on weld.”

The repair was done at Paterek Brothers in New Jersey. I called the shop and althought they do not have records of this car, they did mention “what a pain in the *** is to fix this problem the right way” and, understandably, shed no light as to how long could one expect ot to last.

I love the car, but it is not cheap, and the thought of a failed door check issue (no repair possible) obviously has me thinking.

First world problems…

cheers!
hector

 

As said, it all depends on how it was fixed the first time (preferably by a Porsche dealer body shop)..... ......I would think that at Paterek, who has a solid reputation, that it was done correctly, if it actually was done there, since no records......I had mine done by an Atlanta body shop opened by ex-Porsche dealer body shop manager in 2008, that also mentioned that it has to be done right, and have had no issues in over 40K miles.......he cut out an access repair window in the A pillar door post and addressed the repair inside of the door check mechanism and also added some weld strength on the outside of the door check opening........I paid over $1,000 then, so can't imagine what a repair would be today, probably closing in on $2K.....

 

Hi Hector,
I attempted to repair my driver's side stay pivot on the A-pillar jamb by tack welding the pivot to the fascia of the pillar. The weld failed due to fatigue shortly thereafter.
I then purchased a replacement A pillar as a donor, where a shop cut the pivot and the surrounding steel out of it, and a corresponding notch on the car's jamb.
Then the new pivot was welded in.
I also trimmed the stay strap's friction blocks so the pivot no longer experiences the pounding when it passes through the center stop position.
The shop repair is now ten+ years old and is holding up perfectly.
https://993servicerepair.blogspot.co...eck-strap.html
Some shops go from the footwell to get access for repair, and some remove the quarter panel. There are only a couple of ways to get a durable fix. One is to reweld and reinforce the pivot, the other, as was done on my car, is to replace the section, including the pivot.
Andy

 

Hi Hector,

I've had my car 23 years. I had the driver's side door check strap repaired 18 years ago at 67k miles. This is a known design glitch with this model.The repair work was done at a well regarded shop but I no longer remember what level of prior experience they had with this kind of repair or exactly how it was done.

The driver's door check has started to pop mildly when opening. I can see some movement so it's time (123k now) to fix it again. There's no reason this cannot be repaired soundly a second time, without extra difficulty unless someone really made of mess of the first repair. Using a shop that has experience with this particular repair counts, in my opinion. I wouldn't automatically assume a dealer shop is (or ever was) knowledgeable, particularly given the age of the car. A standard and arguably best-practice repair requires removing the fender to access the forward side of the A-pillar. Obviously, properly treating the area to prevent rust before painting the repair is important too.

FWIW, Paterek is highly regarded (they are 356 specialists and have rebuilt many basket cases into stunning examples).

 

I had mine done the "easy" way about seven years ago. The weld failed over the last year or so. I took it back in, and they are in the process of doing it the "hard" (read: thorough) way this time. Based on everything I've read, this should be a permanent, reliable solution.

 

There's no need to remove the front fender according to this video (skip to time 11:50):

All you need to do is remove the door and you have full access to the area that fails and needs repair. Note that I say "all you have to do", but removing and reinstalling the doors is not easy without the proper tools!
It could definitely fail again over time, but there's no reason why it couldn't be repaired again. Alas, I will soon be able to report on the cost for a repair in 2025, as my car has never had it done and the driver's side needs it

 

As someone who's been TIG/MIG welding for about 20 years and started in the motorcycle (choppers) world where a weld can literally be life or death, I've always been amazed that to fix these things the "right" way, no one ever fills in the voids to the left/right of the check strap, only the back and the top/bottom. All those welds are still under lateral shear as the door is opened/closed which will continue to stress all the welds over time. If the voids to the left/right of the strap are also filled in solid, it would eliminate that.

But I guess there's more focus on factory looks (or close enough in the case of adding the weld beads across the top/bottom).

 

H BoomBoomThump,
Very good point.
I also wondered why someone has not come up with a steel insert that fits over the pivot, wedging into the side spaces, and is held in place by the pivot pin. I bet, in conjunction with trimming the stay friction blocks, it would solve the problem for cars where the fatigue failure has not progressed too far.
Andy

 

Amen. I posted before about the poor-man/lazy man fix I did of JB-Welding a tapered SS pin into each of those voids to stop the lateral movement that occurs when the door opens. It's held up well for 8 years. (The internal weld was still in good shape so this was a proactive thing). At one time I considered making a two-pronged, 3D printed metal sleeve to slip over the arm that could be epoxied in place and painted, but unfortunately the location where the arm exits the slot is not a well controlled dimension, which rules out a "one size fits all" part. I hand-crafted my pins but McMaster Carr has a wide variety of tapered pins that would wok well.

 

Totally agree - in fact I find the whole design to be strange, and can't help but wonder why it wasn't done that way at the factory.
Perhaps the holes are there to allow the a-pillar to breath during seasonal temperature changes (of course I'm joking, but that would be a very Porsche-engineer thing for them to do!)