So a friend of mine has gotten very serious about purchasing an MKII cab.

She found a car at an indy dealer in Houston.

Porsche of West Houston is going to do the PPI, which they say is similar to that of the CPO process.

That said, I asked about compression/leakdown, and he said they don't do that.

so my questions are as follows:

1. Would you consider a compression/leakdown absolutely necessary on a 47k miles C4?
2. Anybody dealt with Porsche of west houston? Any experiences?
3. This is the car, do you see any readily apparent issues?
http://www.autoplazahouston.com/ (you have to scroll down to find it)

Thanks for any information you can provide.

 

I previously talked to two shops in the Seattle area who do PPI's. Neither said they did compression/leakdown tests on recent engines (ones with hydraulic tappets which constantly adjust valve lash). They felt it was expensive (could double the price) and they just haven't seen problems with rings/valves. So, they felt it was a waste. If you wanted to pay extra--ok. But they didn't adivise it.

 

When I bought my car from a used car lot a few year ago I had the Porsche dealer perform a compression test. The writer said it was unnecessary, but I insisted and the car checked out. I've had no compressions problems in 20K miles.

Flash forward to the present. I am looking at cars again and 3 different Porsche dealers all said that a compression test is unnecessary unless they find something during the PPI. They all said that with the modern computerized cars a compression problem would likely trigger some kind of code or the engine would run rough. In all likelihood you would just walk away from such a car rather than dig deeper. Thus the compression test would a waste of several hundred $ (there is a lot of labor involved as the plugs are crammed in there). This time around I'm skipping the compression test and spending that money on a 3rd party extended warranty.