merlin's glasses

Hi all,

I'm looking in importing a 997 turbo USA car to europe, the seller has sent me carfax report with no mention of any regular maintenance (oil, filters, etc) only (Title or registration issued, Emissions or safety inspection performed)
When I ask for the porsche booklet for performed maintenance, he says it doesn't exist in USA :S

Any advice on this?

Fined

I would ask for details about the previous service from the current owner. He should have documentation to provide about what work has been done. I do most of the maintenance work myself on my cars, but have a big folder with all the receipts and even some photos here and there of the parts I've replaced or the process of me doing the work. In the absence of having documents for the work done on the car I'd pass.

As an aside, I don't keep notation of the maintenance/upgrade work done to my cars in a Porsche booklet, just a file folder for each car full of receipts, shipping invoices, and an occasionally Porsche dealership invoice if I had them do anything.

Skwerl

The Carfax won't necessarily have all the work unless the shop/mechanic voluntarily submits it to them. I agree that keeping everything up to date in the official Porsche booklet is rare and something only the most OCD of owners (and usually just the first owner) ends up doing.

jhbrennan

And since Porsche has no consolidated database for maintenance you won't find the info from Porsche either except maybe for warranty/recall service. Local dealer may (or may not) provide you with any history they might have but usually they are reluctant to do so citing "privacy issues". Good luck.

Astraelraen

I just went through this with a 911 I purchased. If you know where it was serviced you can call and usually get information that service was done. I called my local dealer and asked if they could pull service history by VIN, they said Porsche doesn't have a national database and the data is kept at the servicing dealer. (With the exception of recalls apparently)

I had to call 3 different Porsche dealers for 8 years of service history. Luckily for me, the car had never left a 100 mile radius for service. In the end, I have no paper records, but the dealership service department each gave me the information that oil changes, etc were done on a timely basis. Two dealerships were easy, one was a pain and didn't really want to talk to me.

merlin's glasses

C4SDayton

Plenty of service providers do not upload to carfax and do not put in Porsche booklet. First owners usually keep records, but later owners may not get them especially if bought from a dealer. It would be suspect if you are buying from an owner privately and they have no records if they owned for any real length of time. PPI makes sense regardless.

Fined

I just googled "atlanta ppi rennlist"


https://rennlist.com/forums/991/1055...n-atlanta.html

https://rennlist.com/forums/997-foru...anta-area.html

https://rennlist.com/forums/east-us-...tlanta-ga.html

Chicane5

I just went through this same thing - as a Brit expat living in California I was surprised/somewhat horrified to discover that the service stamps in a logbook aren't a thing in the US. When searching for my C4S I looked at multiple cars in many dealers across the country and they all told me the same thing - "we don't really do that here".

As others have said - Carfax is only useful if that service center participates, so its patchy at best. The best you can hope for is track down all the garages and call, but even then you'd be lucky to get what we know in the UK as an "FSH".

In the end I punted on a local C4S that had ~85% of service records I could get hold of, and took out an extended warranty. That dealer initially presented me the carfax report like it should have assuaged all nervousness about buying a car with patchy records.

Good luck.

captainbaker

All the above but......I would pull a carfax and call the local Pcar dealers in that area and try to piece meal a service history as much as possible. I would also google the VIN just to be nosy, Ive found previous owners from old for sale ads and asked questions about their time with the car.

merlin's glasses

I already have a carfax file, with only mentioning this: Title or registration issued on intervals about 6months. Any idea what this is? The car orginally comes from hawai.