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Should I feel this anxious about my 996’s “will to live?”
Most of you have far more mechanical knowledge and skill than I. So I ask this long-winded question in search of your wisdom…
This, my second consecutive 996, is the perfect 911 for me. And yet, although what I have is a very well cared for, never once “rev limited” low mileage 996, I struggle with the low level anxiety of never really knowing if this car will catastrophically fail one day, leaving me with a $5,000 roller instead of a $30,000 dream machine.
Yes, it has the LN IMS and a new clutch that are both only 5,000 miles old, and each mechanic that has done minor repairs over the last eight months has told me it’s an excellent 996.
So the question: Should I be this concerned each time I start the engine and go off on my weekend drives, or should I be risk averse and sell it?
UPDATE - Thank you all for the great responses. It’s definitely reassuring and sensible feedback!
I think your car looks very clean. And if its got a clean bill of health, I wouldn't be worried. but you kind of have to trust your gut, right? I have a 44,000 mile 996 C4S myself, and I've been debating this decision too. I am on the fence of either flipping it for a profit, or dropping some substantial money it to it and really make it mine. For me it comes down to a few factors:
1) ownership history - #1 thing for me is that my car is a 2-owner vehicle from a hot dry climate. Recent IMS/clutch like yours, only range 1 overrevs, standard cam deviation, no misfires, a clean bill of health from the mechanic, etc. If the car was missing ANY of these things I would pass it on and look for the next one. Personally my forever 911 won't be a 996/997 that spent any time in a cold weather climate.
2) spec - I don't modify cars, so spec is huge for me. I would never put aftermarket wheels on, the most I would do is coil-overs, so the color and original wheels specced with the car are huge for me. If you don't mind aftermarket then this might not be a concern. In my case, I'm falling more and more in love with my particular spec.
3) what would you replace it with? is there a car that you think could be a better fit for your forever 911. This is the one I really struggle with. As much as I love the 996. I'd be lying if there wasn't a part of me that still sees a 997.2 or a 991.1 as a more appealing machine (for better or worse). Of course there are those who would say I would regret this "upgrade" but you really gotta follow your heart on this one.
Most of you have far more mechanical knowledge and skill than I. So I ask this long-winded question in search of your wisdom…
This, my second consecutive 996, is the perfect 911 for me. And yet, although what I have is a very well cared for, never once “rev limited” low mileage 996, I struggle with the low level anxiety of never really knowing if this car will catastrophically fail one day, leaving me with a $5,000 roller instead of a $30,000 dream machine.
Yes, it has the LN IMS and a new clutch that are both only 5,000 miles old, and each mechanic that has done minor repairs over the last eight months has told me it’s an excellent 996.
So the question: Should I be this concerned each time I start the engine and go off on my weekend drives, or should I be risk averse and sell it?
I haven't read the other replies but I'll give some advice. Stop reading Rennlist! Ok - that's a little facetious. It's a marvelous community and if you ever have a problem or need resources, it's the best place to come and learn. But most of the forums are about problems from broken sun visors to "my coolant is mixing with my oil and blowing smoke out the rear." That will just feed your low level anxiety. Enjoy the car. Stop buy once a week and read "What I did to my 996 today" thread and learn about preventative maintenance. Ignore the rest. Doom and Gloom from owners who have suffered misfortune. These engines are designed to be driven hard so do it! Be thankful you don't own a BMW.
How is your 996 any different than any other car? They are all mechanical machines and all have a form of failure. Even brand new cars are often recalled for major/minor problems. Is your anxiety about the car....or the money? Hmmmm...good maintenance is key.
The best cure is to self insure. That is, have a special fund set aside for catastrophic expenses.
Apart from that, you can minimize your expense with regular maintenance. You should also do periodic oil analysis. It's cheap and gives you some data on the health of your car.
The biggest thing is to keep on top of maintaining the car. "A stitch in time saves nine" still applies here.
If you can't afford a slush fund for your car, then you will quickly find yourself serving your car instead of it serving you. These are old cars with expensive parts.
After the EPS IMS install using a Vertex bore kit... my heart sank when I opened up the oil filter after the first oil change since the service. Honestly I bought the car with the understanding maybe at some point it would die. With that said, it ended up not being a factor but the nagging insecurity still remained. The car is probably not going to die catastrophically and it'll take awhile so you'll have time to figure out what you'd do if you needed to do a rebuild. Also a roller as clean as yours would be be worth a lot more than $5k!
I unfortunately had intermix last year which was very expensive to repair. It seems the previous owner had a water pump failure years ago that finally caught up to me. Regardless, I don’t live in fear of the car blowing up. If it happens, it happens. What’s the point of obsessing over it?
if you are continuously worried about a potential repair bill, it will take away your enjoyment of the car.
You really have two choices.
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1: sell the car, and find something that doesn't give you that sense of worry.
2: mentally accept that you may have a large repair bill in your ownership of the car, and either set aside money towards that future bill, or just be prepared to repair and then keep driving.
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I drive a 174,000 mile 996.. Yes one day I will have to rebuild the engine. I think about that with a little bit of joy, because when that is done, I will have another 100K+ miles to go.
What I have learned over the past 20 years of 996 ownership is that the car and it's M96 engine is durable as he'll. You can track it very aggressively, drive it across country and enjoy it driving around town locally without any worries.
But just like any other car, you have to take care of it with the proper service and procedures. The good news is that the 996 costs substantially less to service as a 20 year old classic than other marque names if you understand what to do, why to do it, and how to do it.
More importantly, I would argue that due to its wide and successful usage in the 986/987/996/997, more is known about the M96 engine, it's potential issues, preventative medicine and solutions than any other Porsche or any other marque named performance car.
The more you know, the easier it is to solve. And most importantly, the M96 engines have more cost effective solutions than any other classic car, many of which are discussed in great detail on this forum. This is important because collectively, the M96 community has solved for EVERY issue with cost effective procedures and bolt-on solutions that prevent the issues from occurring.
Bet there isn't a Ferrari, McClarren, Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Lamborghini, Corvette or other classic performance sports car owner that wouldn't want the equivalent solutions for their issues, and they all have issues, and all their engines will need to rebuilt someday. And that rebuild will be boatloads more expensive than any top of the line M96 engine rebuild.
So here you own a 996 with a low mileage engine that all of the potential issues are well known and has a solution that prevents every issue known to man over the past 22 years. Whats not to like about the 996?
There is a very quick and easy way to clear your head. I just went thru the same exercise over the past two months as I was about to begin my second 10-YR refresh.
I wanted to analyze the condition of my 57k mile engine before I refreshed parts. So here is what I did with my Indy.
1. Oil analysis to see what was floating around in my oil to determine what internal parts may be failing. All was good.
2. Dropped my oil pan to see if I had any bits. All was good. No bits. Same with oil filter.
3. Scoped the bores from the oil pan. All was good. No bore scoring.
4. Scoped the bores thru the spark plug holes. All was good. No bore scoring.
The engine was running great, no signs of borescoring or problems, but I wanted to be sure before I went to my next phase of replacing parts in my 10-YR refresh. If I did have problems identified by the analysis, then I would go into prevent mode to prolong engine life and work towards a rebuild. Yep, everything check out. So I have completed my 10-Yr refresh of replacing key parts such as my IMS retro with a new one and upgrading others such as replacing my Porsche Motorsports AOS with the UAOS. Many other things were done but you get the idea.
I highly doubt with a low mileage car in the condition it's in that you have anything to worry about or lose sleep over. But it would certainly make sense to go thru the same procedures I just went thru to see what you have in your engine. When you get back a positive result, you will breath a sigh of relief and then start thinking a bout what you have to do with the car to keep it in such pristine working shape for the next 20 years.
Most important thing you can do is change your oil at least 2x a year.
05-24-2022, 01:41 AM
Should I feel this anxious about my 996’s “will to live?”
