To save a little , buy one of these:
Suzhou Eagle Carrie

 

It is unusual, but I've seen the receipt and another Porsche dealer confirmed it. Only interior work. A flooded car would require work on the engine, no?

 

It's not about the price. It's unique. After a long, long, long search, even after significantly lowering my criteria, it took me forever to find anything that met my new, lower criteria. This one meets my original criteria, and more. So much so that I wondered if they didn't dress the car up with some parts from eBay, but it all matches Porsche's records. It has an impecable service history which I've verified, and I saw no issues during a test drive other than what I hope a PPI will tell me are worn rear suspension bushings.

There is just this one, tiny issue ...

 

Thanks by the way for all the helpful, and yes, clear advice! I may seem to be ignoring it, but I figure it can't hurt to at least see what the Porsche dealer says about the repair.

However, I'm unlikely to get any info from them until next week. In the meantime, some clues:

They needed to replace the alarm control unit. Is that someplace where it could get wet from rain?

They needed to replace the key heads (the black parts) of two keys. Is there any reason water damage would require replacing keys other than the keys being underwater? If so, what else would have to have gotten wet?

The car has wood trim (which does not meet my criteria, but it happens I already had most of the parts needed to replace it), and the wood was badly damaged by the water. One one side, the long, curved strip that follows the base of the windshield (probably called "defroster trim") is warped and has partly pulled away from the surface undernieth. On the other, it's missing. To a lesser extent, the wood on the lid of one door storage compartment is peeling up at one edge. (Everything else inside is perfect.) I presume this was caused by water, though it's said sun might do it too. One theory is that it doesn't take much water to mess up what some say is low quality, fragile wood trim. The other is obviously that there was a LOT of water. Would so much damage require so much water that, even if it was caused by rain, the car must be ruined?

 

RS10, there are a lot of electronics under the seats and back behind the back seat. But what we are trying to say is that corrosion travels, and it does. Ask anyone that has a boat. Wires keep corroding from inside. Since all sensors in modern cars work with impedance or voltage differentials, if the wire is corroding away the values read by the DME will be off causing errors. The only way to fix that is to not only change the affected controller but also change the whole wire loom. Trust me I have that problem on the BMW I mentioned, lucky the car has 82K miles and we will probably distract it next year.

Porsche parts are not cheap and you do not want to buy a car that you will be fixing the rest of your life. If you really like the car, ask for a warranty on the electronics for at least a year, that is the only way you can be sure they are confident the repair was well done, if they do not give you some type of warranty in writing, walk away.

 

So my car ('99 cab) lived outside for a short while thanks to the previous owner. There is a know problem with the drains under the front hood, they can easily clog and when they do, water collects and can come into the interior of the car which is exactly what happened. The Alarm control unit sits under the driver seat at the lowest point in the cabin so when water gets inside, its the box that usually gets fried. Mine had to be replaced. Unfortunately, this is the unit that holds the information about each of your Keys. I believe there is a unique identifier for each Key head that has to be programmed into the Alarm box by the dealer so that each particular Key head will work with your particular Alarm box. I think these Key codes may even be registered with Porsche. Anyway, the short of it is, the dealer replaced my Key heads when the Alarm box was replaced. They go hand in hand.

This is all, of course, fairly expensive.

I think that when the water comes into the cabin as I described, it comes in from pretty high up under the dash. When I was doing some work under the dash I noticed some surface rust on interior parts towards the top of the dash on the drivers side. You may want to crawl onto the drivers side floor (where you put your feet) with a flashlight and look around. I suspect your car may have been "flooded" as mine was. I dont think that much water came in but what did come in came from up high under the dash and made its way down low. Which may be why the car you are looking at has issues with the wood trim on the dash at the windshield.

You can also ask the dealer if the below TSB was performed on the car:

911 (996) 5 5/01 5093
Water Drains in Front Cowel Area
911 Carrera (996) / 911 Carrera 4 (996)
1998 (W) and 1999 (X)
Water leakage in passenger compartment caused by blocked water drains.

The above is the TSB that deals with this issue (cab only) and can be found on the RennTech site.

Hope this is helpful. Here are some related links.
https://rennlist.com/forums/996-foru...o-cabin-2.html
http://www.6speedonline.com/forums/9...cowl-info.html
http://www.renntech.org/forums/topic...drain-grommet/

 

Yes, super helpful! If I may ask three follow up questions:

First, was there a happy ending? After the initial repair, no further problems?

Second, to help me understand the likelihood the same thing happened here, what else did they do to repair the car? For the car I'm looking at, the dealer took out the seats, the center console (not sure whether the one with navigation or the one where the shift lever sits, but I can check), the main carpet (I think), and the door cards, let them dry, and put them back in. Did they do something similar with yours?

Also, when inspecting the VIN plate, the one next to the battery under the front truck hood, I noticed it was rather dirty, and I had to wipe some dirt away to see the final digit. It also felt like it might have a tiny bit of rust. And now I'm wondering if blocked drains in the front trunk could cause this. How is the VIN plate on your car.

Thanks!

 

And a question for everyone. The dealer didn't have to replace any leather or carpet, and it all seems to be in good shape. Would this be possible if the car was flooded?

Thanks!

 

really?

Four million people told you to run, yet you keep asking questions that indicate you want to buy this thing. What will it take to get through your skull?

 

If I were you I would really beat them up on the price over this. It seems you are set on buying the car, hopefully the issue was caused by the drain issue I brought up but it could also have been a flooding of the car.

With that said:

1) Yes there was a happy ending. My car is just fine. Once the repair was done there were no further issues. Actually, there was one issue. When they put in the new Alarm box, they also need to do a new "vehicle handover" procedure at the dealer with their computer. Most dealers dont even know about this so press them on it. If they dont do it, some strange stuff will happen in your car because it wont be in the right mode - it will still be in new car transport mode.

2) Did the door cards get wet? I dont think mine did. look closely at the leather on the door cards and see if you can detect water marks. the leather may lift from the door card where it got wet.

3) I did not notice any rust on the vin plate.

4) regarding the carpets - mine are original. i dont know if they took them out to dry it or not.

I actually agree with the others here - there are many 996s available, you should probably purchase another one. Also I would recommend not buying one from a Dealer, better to buy one from a Rennlist member.

If you are going to buy this particular car, beat the hell of them on price, use the fact that the car was "flooded" to get it down as far as possible.

If you gave us a link to the car you are looking at that would also be very useful.

Good Luck!

 

Please post every item on the receipt for the work done by the Porsche dealership. The water damage you are describing didn't just come from rain drops...as the title says...it is flood damage. Floods are the kind of mold damage that makes people tear down houses, not buy them. If you can't run from this car, try swimming for it.

 

If you post up the VIN or send it to me via private message I may be able to help you regarding its reported history as not everything appears on Carfax!

 

Thanks everyone for continued helpful responses, and sorry to have been a bit out of the loop. No chances to get online for a while.

To quickly follow up (I'll try to find time for more detail this evening), I could post the receipt from the dealer, but it's in German. I might write up and post a condensed, English version. And no, not everything is in carfax - in this case, presumably nothing. Sarki, you can't help with non US cars, can you?

 

Unfortunately I can only provide assistance on cars originally sold in U.S. With US history.....sorry.

 

I should ideally try to post the details from the repair receipt, including not just the big items, but also tiny little ones, whatever they are. But it's far too late tonight to deal with German technical terms and part numbers, so in the meantime, something easier ...

The seller just repaired something else and sent me the receipt. Seems he replaced the horn, though I haven't worked out if this means the thing that actually makes noise, or the part of the steering whele that tells it to do so. I think the latter.

Either way, sounds like an electronic problem, which would be consistent with major water damage, no?