chris walrod

Adrienne, glad to hear your car is back and running as new, again! Now your good for another 100K miles of happy driving..

lowblow

If your into the motor that much wouldn't it have been worth getting into the cylinders/ pistons and doing a 3.8 upgrade?

mike

DJF1

Same here... I've been very impressed with my H&R coilovers too...With the right setup the car is a dream to drive off and on track.

mnmblu

Sweet Adrienne.
The orgasmatron is lookin really nice. Your engine looks sooo nice, grrrrr, I love it.

Adrienne

Well, that upgrade is quite expensive in my book. The $$ per horse wasn't worth it to me. Others certainly have different opinions though, such as Joel Reiser on the Tech section of PCA nat'l. I was trying to find a balance between longevity and "if it ain't broke don't fix it." I think I found a good balance in that. I was considering doing lower end, but when the shop had the engine apart, the cylinders appeared in good shape, and my oil pressure seemed acceptable. From what I understand, the lower end in 993s are quite hardy and can go 250k miles no problem.

SCMomentum

Adrienne,

How many miles were on the car when this was done? Did the mechanic say anything about preventing this in the future? Just curious.

Dave

Adrienne

Dave - I had 110k miles on my car. Prevention is in replacing the valve guides with non-OEM guides. I replaced with silicon bronze guides, which is the same that the shop uses in all their race cars. They are well-tested and I should have no problems with guides again. As I've learned, apparently the problem is with OEM guides.

coltj

Adrienne,
Just curious about your aftermarket warranty. Did you purchase your car new and the warranty at that time? If yes, was it something other than an "extended" Porsche waranty? Also, what kind of documentation did they require re. the need to do the guides? TIA.

Adrienne

Aftermarket warranty, not a Porsche warranty. I purchased at the time I bought the car, at 80k miles. 3 year/36,000 mile. I can send you the link to their website if you like, but I'm not sure I would recommend them. Read on....

Documentation - A lot!! It took a letter threatening arbitration from my lawyer, and about 4 months not driving my car. That was tough since it's my daily driver. I sent about 2 inches worth of proof from Rennlist and PCA nat'l tech page, plus my oil consumption and mileage for the past 8 months or so, plus I had to get my shop and another shop to look at it with the warranty company's inspector at hand.

I think this was a testament to the strength of Rennlist. I used the search engine here and sent all that info to the warranty company to prove that valve guides on the 993 go bad. The shear volume of documentation swayed them I am most certain.

SCMomentum

It is one of the few things about Porsche NA that really gets underneath my skin. I looked at guy's C2 about 6 months ago. The PPI showed the P-codes of an impending CEL/SAI problem and the car only had 26k miles on it. Needless to say I walked away from the car and the seller went after Porsche NA. No luck, they weren't interested in helping the poor guy. I am very surprised that there has not been a class action lawsuit addressing this. Porsche should own up to this very problem and replace their crappy valve guides while they are at it.

Adrienne

Yep, I am surprised, too. However, part of the complication is that the SAI ports get clogged, throwing the CEL light. So is the carbon build-up related to guides, or carbon build up because of bad SAI port design? I don't think there is any consensus on that. Looks like good topic for a post, eh? I'll provide pics!!

At one point I offered my help with a recall letter to Porsche NA. I could still do it , but the proof is going to be really tough. Out of curiousity, what year car did you do the PPI for?

A few weeks ago we had a poll here asking how many people have had them replaced, and the numbers were surprisingly small, considering how much the topic comes up.

ceboyd

nope.. she is just one of the very few women like me who just loves cars!!!