It seems a lot of this is coming down to some variation of "unlimited life" or "they all will fail." Generally speaking, I think that line of reasoning causes much unnecessary stress and sleepless nights amongst Porsche owners frequenting these boards.

I have a spoiler - in the end, EVERYTHING will fail, including us. Don't get there any quicker by worrying about some glue on a coolant hose that MAY effect you at some point during your cars ownership. We have members here with over 350,000 miles and few major issues. These cars were amongst the finest pieces of automotive engineering money could buy when they were made. Yes, they have their issues, but for the performance, durability, and longevity, they have few if any peers.

I will borrow a oft used phrase from Fred's TDI board - Drive more - worry less......

 

Have any of these cars ever been tracked? Were any of these cars modified?

 

Gofishracing - Any word on this?

 

Dock, no offence but if you search through all the threads on all the forums talking about this issue there are a few people with TTs who only drove their cars on the street reporting that their pipes came loose.

At some point your TT might experience the same problem. It was a defective manufacturing process. Like the IMS bearings in the regular Carrera cars. Porsche screwed up and hopefully they will reimburse us for our trouble.

 

No offense, but when someone comes on the Rennlist 996 Turbo forum and posts that there were three new coolant pipe failures, I don't expect to have to go surfing into the other forums here looking for the answer to my question directly relating to his post. The guy who posted the information should answer up.

That has not been established.

So these are single owner cars and the owners never modified or tracked their cars??

 

Yes, the posters reported their cars were not tracked. There are reports of cars with less than 30k miles on them popping pipes. That makes it a defect.

Go to this site, put in the years TTs were made and read the stories. Everything I have told you is there.

http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/owners/SearchVehicles

 

your link goes to the same 10 initially reported cars...no record of how they were driven

seriously the thread should close until more information (with supporting evidence) can be provided....the rest is hear say

We get what you're saying dock no need to keep repeating yourself

 

I think it should remain open; it's how the "more information" gets posted.

You may get what I'm saying but apparently the rest of the "we" don't. When people stop attempting to make statements of fact without the supporting evidence needed to be making those statements, I'll stop repeating myself.

 

A Porsche dealer shop foreman in Germany (a large dealership) has said that he hasn't heard about 996 coolant pipe leaks/failures in Europe. Does this information cause anyone here to wonder why? Is it maybe because he's out of the loop (possible but not very probable at all), or is it maybe because there actually aren't many cases of coolant pipe failures in Europe? Is it possible that fewer 996 owners track or modify their cars in Europe? I don't know the answer. There is no doubt that the Porsche attorneys will develop this line of questioning.

There was a "welding/pinning the coolant pipes" discussion here sometime in the last year where one or more people opined that if you street drive only, then you probably shouldn't be concerned about getting you coolant pipes welded/pinned. I wonder why they thought that way?

 

Dock. I'm basically ignoring you and not responding to you directy anymore. You are not adding any value to this thread. One failure was in Connecticut. 2 were with UCR PCA which I am waiting for detailed information. The cars may have been tracked but that is basically irrelevant. It's a safety issue on or off the track. I spoke with NHTSA the other day and due the the ongoing investigation he could not tell me how many complaints were filed. The investigation is proceeding and perhaps in a few years we will get some reimbursement or action by PNA. In the mean time it is encouraged to get the fittings fixed - especially if you track the car- for yours and other's safety. If you don't want to call it a defect- perhaps it is a design flaw.

 

There are way more than just the original ten.

The link I posted takes you to a selection page where you can input a model year and then the manufacture and see complaint statics. If you go through and select each year staring with 2001 and then 2002 then 2003 etc with manufacturer "Porsche" selected all filed complaints for all models that year come up.

There are 15 complaints filed for "2001 PORSCHE 911 TURBO" eleven of them are for sudden coolant lose.

There are 12 complaints filed for "2002 PORSCHE 911 TURBO" eight of them are for sudden coolant lose.

There are 8 complaints filed for "2003 PORSCHE 911 TURBO" eight of them are for sudden coolant lose.

Do I need to go on?

 

Does the NHTSA site have information regarding how many of those had been tracked?

 

How can that be irrelevant? Porsche never designed the 996 series in such a way that they would warranty them if tracked. If cars are used in a way that they weren't sold for it seems it is entirely relevant.

It seems to me that if properly motivated about this coolant pipe issue, you would wouldn't be put off by the free exchange of ideas and data.

 

Well they sure marketed them as track-use able....
Fact is that Porsche factory races their cars, including 996, and having a Motorsports division makes for a tough argument that the cars should never see any track time....

 

I'd offer that they market their racing history for the purpose of letting people know that their street-only sports cars are also pretty good, but not up to the stresses of actual racing, as is evident in the warranty language (see a previous post of mine in this thread where the warranty for all 996 cars is partially stated).

Oh, Porsche doesn't at all care if you track your 911, they just clearly state what their warranty is if you do.