I took my one year old, 30k miles, 997 to the body shop today. The rear lid Carrera sign was missing the C and I had backed into a pole causing a nasty scrape on the rear bumper. I also asked for a detail. Another $1200 to the cost of this great car.

Now my dilemma: The car dropped a tiny, really tiny, drop of oil in my garage. It has been doing this for a few days now, although I only confirmed it this morning. I placed a clean towel under the engine last night and found the smallest drop of oil on it this morning. The warning lights have not come on.

Do I take it to the dealer on Friday, when the body shop will be done, and risk ruining my weekend or do I wait until Monday?

 

If it's an RMS leak it's not going to cause your engine to explode. Just keep the car the weekend and bring it in during the week.

 

Carlos,

Sorry to hear that... hopefully, the painter will do a great job for you and she'll be as good as new.

On the oil leak... look at the direct trajectory of the oil spot compared to the position of the P-car while park. It might be a loose hose clamp. Check that the oil leak is not coming from the engine (between engine and transmission); if it does it could be a different story. I'll keep my fingers crossed!

Check the oil level, if okay go ahead and diver her until you have time to check the leak if you can not locate and fix.

Best of luck!

 

I think you meant to say to project vertically from the oil spot to determine the location of the leak, though not necessarily the source. A trajectory is a curved path followed by a free-falling body having a horizontal velocity component in a gravitational field, and is parabolic in shape. ... An oil drop falling from a moving car indeed follows a trajectory; one from a stationary car just drops straight down. ... Sorry, not trying to criticize just clarifying.

Btw, that's an excellent suggestion for helping identify the location of the leak and thereby possibly the source.

 

Thanks Ben... You must be a rocket scientist. hahaha

Appreciate the clarification

 

It COULD be a trajectory if air movement was a factor....

Dan

 

Absolutely. It would then have the necessary horizontal velocity component. But I think it's safe to say that, unless he had a shop fan blowing inside his closed garage, air movement would not have been a factor.

 

Depends on your frame of reference. If you are moving along with the car the trajectory of the drop is straight down also. You've effectively "negated" the horizontal component of its velocity. The physics can't be different in a "stationary" vehicle and one that is moving in a straight line at constant speed--the principle of relativity guarantees that.

Didn't know I was an old physicist did you Ben? it was my first love.

 

Take it in.

 

That would only be true if the car were being driven in a vacuum. Wind moving past the leak will cause it to move.

Flash

 

The point is that there is no fundamental difference between parabolic motion in a gravitational field and strictly veritcal movement. It's just a matter of your frame of reference. (I should add that the air resistance for an observer at rest witnessing the movement of a projectile will retard the horizontal movement as well--so the principle of relativity guarantees that the physics is identical, i.e., there is no different in air resistance).

Either way he should take the car in. We can agree on that.

 

I should never have to read something like this on a Porsche forum, it's bad for my motoring mojo.

 

Sorry. The devil made me do it.

 

Uh...this is bad, right?

 

Wow, Boo, I had no idea! ... You've been holding out on us!

And you're absolutely right. Inertial reference frames is a fundamental axiom of relativity theory. Excellent observation.

And Flash man is correct as well:
Yes, air resistance, which imparts a drag force on the drop of oil, will cause the drop to move in a trajectory relative to an observer in the car. This is what WWII bombardiers had to take into account when trying to hit their targets.