Bruce In Philly

2009 C2S 132K miles

I am not referring to engine blow ups (2 that I can count)... but just things breaking in general. Why? These cars are starting to age? Are 2nd-hand owners more likely to be on a forum (in other words the failures were always occurring, we just didn't hear about them)?

Still, my car is about 10 years old..... I think the frequency of issues is really darn low... even for 10 year old cars.

Thoughts?

Peace
Bruce in Philly

Wayne Smith

I'll agree with reliability. I don't drive nearly as aggressively as I did when I was younger. But even taking that into account, this (2019 C4S PDK) is still the most reliable of the 50 plus cars I've owned. Other than front brakes and tires I've yet to have anything wear out during the first 120K miles.

997PT2C4S

2009 C4S with 48K miles, haven't been using my car much since the fall however took it out this week for a few errands. I've noticed some of my suspension components are becoming "tired", hearing some new noises mainly in the rear over bumps. I suspect after 10 years we all start experiencing degradation of components. I had lots of this with both my 955 Turbo and 957 GTS, however I was hoping that it was just because they were such pigs. My 997.2 has still been the most reliable (knocks on carbon fiber) Porsche I have ever owned.

cwheeler

I think second hand owners tend to be more value based, and therefore wrench more on their own cars and thus, end up on forums talking about problems....

Cw

TheBruce

We are all getting older :-)

voiceprint1

my main problem is my city, I have replaced two bumpers, a seat, a window and many other bits due to LA being so awful on cars.

TheBruce

In all seriousness, I noted last month it seems like we saw more issues this January than the last two years combined. The first batch of cars is turning 10 years old so I think wear and tear is starting to come into play as it did for the 997.1 a few years back.

The themes that ive been seeing are PCM 3 glitches, HPFP, and PDK gremlins. I don't see as many water pumps, ignition switches, expansion tanks or strut mount issues as we have in 997.1. Im assuming those have new part numbers.

Still a wonderful car. I had a silver C4S .2 driving behind me yesterday with a ski rack on top. I think wear and tear is part of the game. 997 drivers put real miles on their cars...

Tj40

After 10 years a lot of bushings in the suspension and other components are just getting old. my rule of thumb for cars generally is that between 7-10 years stuff just starts wearing out. Typically I've not run a car past 10 years because of this - I just got rid of the wifes BMW 335 as it was 10 years old, air con needed a 4K repair, engine developed multiple oil leaks from various gaskets and the interior has various minor trim pieces that were broken.

My Porsche on the other hand is a classic and I'll keep it forever ;-)

DesmoSD

Environment plays a major role in most of these situation but BMW and I'll even go on a whim and say Porsche have parts that tend to fail sooner then the Japanese cars. I have my 14 yr old daily (05 Tacoma 4x4) with 270K miles and my 20 yr old Supra that are built extremely well. There is a reason why Toyota's are so reliable.

Case in point, I've read an article with the whole BMW/Toyota Z4 and Supra platform and how Toyota sent back many OEM BMW parts back to Japan's Toyota R&D for QA analysis.

The Fundamental Differences

We've learned a lot from BMW. The task list of each step in car making they expended on R&D was impressive. I almost started to think if they had an infinite budget funding to the task of design. Each step just much more extensive (and expensive) than what we would normally expend in different areas. Just astonishing. I started to doubt myself if this whole thing can be accomplished in a manner that can profit as a product sold as a Toyota. But then as development proceeded into next phases I was comforted when I saw there were later stages where Toyota would be the exact opposite, and BMW couldn't believe how extensive some of our quality and efficiency studies were as parts came into shape one by one. We would take every bit down to a fastener or rivet, and put it through our stringent quality control and a dozen other testing, we'd ship thousands of parts back to Japan for analysis. That is normal to us. Each piece we test at our level, they were now the ones surprised.

http://club4ag.com/chief-engineer-te...ment-with-bmw/

Jeffblak

jbaker136

Having wrenched on vehicles of all kinds (don't get me started on the hell of wrenching on motorhomes...) since I was a kid and then spending a good part of the 90s wrenching for a living as a mechanic at Toyota I agree that in general the Japanese cars do a lot of things right. I was always amazed at how much bigger the wheel bearings where on a light duty Toyota pickup then they where on a 3/4 ton Ford or Chevy. And the transfer cases and 4x4 front and rear ends where damn solid. And when they did design something poorly they stepped up to fix it in many cases. With that said Toyota had plenty of large scale problems that we dealt with everyday. V6 head gaskets on the 3.0 and 3.4 truck engines were so prone to fail that Toyota recalled every one of them regardless of miles (ok not something Porsche would ever do) so they could replace them with a new design. If the owner drove that recalled engine for 20K smoke filled miles and the block and head were etched from the gasket leaking coolant into the cylinder; well we just replaced the short block and head under warranty too. Then there were the first run of Tacoma 2wd pickups where the front coil perch would crack (again a full recall were we welded special plates onto the frames) and of course the famous 22RE motor even had common failures like timing chains, exhaust manifold bolts and head gaskets. Oh, and FWD V6 valve seals were known to fail and cause oil smoke filled startups, the airbag sensors under the cupholders that would fail from soda and coffee spills (recall to install a plastic spill guard on top of the airbag ECU!), then there were the alternator failures we saw everyday on Corollas, always AC Delco alternator on US assembled Corollas BTW, never Nipendenso alternators. I could go on and on and on...

However, Toyota and Porsche or BMW have completely different design goals, customer demographics and philosophy about vehicle care and "acceptable" maintenance. Toyota expects a customer to buy a car and never think about that car as anything more then a reliable and comfortable way of getting from point A to point B. Porsche expects their buyers to think of their car all the time, join clubs because of their car, obsess over getting the next track oriented version of their car, and even read the owners manual! Different strokes for different folks.

Jeff

Jeffblak

yelcab

The difference between Toyota and the german ones is that Toyota will step up and do right for any design flaws.

I have a 2006 Lexus IS250 bought brand new. Five years into the ownership, a letter showed up from Toyota. It informed me that there was a reported condition on the engine that would cause the engine light to show up and a misfire. They extended my warranty on the engine to 9 years unlimited mileage so that if that problem ever shows up, they will fix it free. I could have driven the car 300k miles under 9 years and they would fix it free.

The problem occurred once, went away and never came back so I did not have to have it fixed.

Compare that to the 996 IMS issue.

Bruce In Philly

Surprise! Your M96/M97 engines are a result of Toyota! Yea boy.... true. When Porsche was failing, they hired a consulting firm of ex-Toyota engineers and executives.... One of the biggest of their recommendations was to move to a single-engine platform for all models... the M96. To be fair, I don't know how "deep" Toyota was hired to go... but as I read, it was pretty significant. Just some history.

Lotsa stuff written about it... here is just one: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/20/b...-the-pink.html


Peace
Bruce in Philly

carguy88

Absolutely no, they are not aging, and either am I. Not happening!