Tone

My 2006 997S purchased new has 33,000 miles.
These days I am only able to put about 1500 miles per year on the car. It is garage parked in Northern California with a battery tender. Gets driven about once per month in the winter more frequently the rest of the year but not much.

My extended warranty is about to expire and I've read in various mags that this may not be enough miles to keep he car reliable // seals dry etc.

I have all schedule svc done at dealer.
car has been extremely reliable and my driving patterns unlikely to change. Is this something I need to worry about?

Wayne Smith

You might be able to hire a high school student to drive the car for you!

Travel 28 days a month forced me to sell one of my Lotus cars. It took five days of constant driving for the leaks to go away, and that did not happen often. That destroyed the fun a bit. I viewed it like a wooden boat needing to stay in the water to maintain swell.

That being said, I don't have first hand experience with letting a 997 sit.

KNS

Are you retired? Is it a second car? If you're driving around enough in another vehicle take the 997 instead, letting them sit is such a waste.

jeffrec

I have a 2009 C2S that I bought CPO in 2012 with 19K miles on the clock. I currently have 30K on the clock after three years of ownership. My Indy shop and dealer told me that I should be driving her at 500 miles per month in order to keep the proper specs on the engine and drive train. I'm not sure if that is fact or fallacy, however, I do know that the more frequently I drive the car the smoother she seems to run. Gears shift change better, easier starts, etc. I often struggle with the "keep the miles" low vs. drive and enjoy your investment. Since I have 30K miles now it's not like I have low miles for a 2009, so I plan to rack up the miles this summer.

Schpee007

My feeling is longevity of the motors and related components is improved by being driven regularly. Longest I have ever let my car sit is three weeks, and that was the dead of winter during a cold/snowy period. I'm in the camp of 400-500 miles a month keeps your car well excercised if it's not a daily driver.

Mumbles

Just got my car out of storage after stored for 4 months. Still to frickin cold here to drive on Summers. -15 C tomorrow morning

Riptide

Funny I saw this.....just got mine out of the shop(2008 997.1 S) with 36K miles and the service manager casually mentioned that I needed to drive it more. His comment "drive it more, see ME less".

Robocop305

Time to move south.

Tone

nope I am not retired but this is one of four cars my wife and I have and she almost never drives it. Sounds like general consensus is to at least get a few hundred miles a month. Something for me to work on

Macster

I'll drive it once a week for $5/hour.

Ok Ok. You push a hard bargain. I'll pay you $6/hour.

Seriously, the problem is the oil used is not seal friendly. There are additives that help the oil be more seal friendly and I know from experience with regular and reasonably frequent use the seals will last and last.

But if the car sits too long between uses the seals do not get bathed with fresh oil and the additives can't help if they do not touch the seals, and the seals tend to dry and shrink. Once they shrink that's it. They won't swell up again.

I bought my 2003 Turbo in 2009 with just 10K miles on the car. That's around 1667 miles per year on average. The car had some issues which were best I could tell common to these cars pretty much regardless of how much they were used. These issues were taken care of under CPO warranty.

After 60K miles, when the CPO warranty expired on time, the car developed more issues as the car accumulated time and miles, issues that I have to believe were from the car's lack of sufficient use for the first 6 years of its existence.

The water pump seal developed a leak at around 115K miles. The one in the Boxster got noisy at 172K miles. The bearing wore out. The seal was fine even after all those miles although the bearing wear was starting to affect the seal, compromise its ability to seal properly.

At around 120K miles the RMS developed a leak. By way of comparison the Boxster's original 2002 RMS developed a leak at around 25K miles and not a bad one at that. The RMS was replaced. Now with nearly 290K miles, almost 265K miles on the 2002 replacement RMS the replacement seal is still oil tight. I expected the Turbo's 2003 RMS to be oil tight forever.

At the same time the car was in for the RMS, the tech found the front axle flange seals were leaking.

Now the transmission had been replaced at around 30K miles due to a leaking selector shaft seal. (Thankfully this was under CPO warranty.) Otherwise, I suspect the rear diff axle flange seals would have leaked too.

The spoiler hydraulic cylinders leaked and the spoiler hydraulic system was replaced.

Except for the RMS at 25K miles, the only seal leak my 2002 Boxster (now with nearly 290K miles on it) has had is the spark plug tubes, the o-rings. Not too long ago the tech did these and he reported the o-rings had just worn out.

If you can't or won't use the car more often that's your business. But I think you have to expect that if you keep the car long enough, that there are consequences to this lack of use.

These engines, these cars, are in their element when the engine is running and ht car is being used. When not in use these cars are like a fish out of water.

Ben Z

I had an '85 535i with 45K on it which around '90 I shipped south to use while we were there for the winters. It sat all summer and by fall the A/C compressor seals were toast and it was leaking oil from somewhere too.

OTOH I had a '74 450SL with 105K that sat through the winter and was only driven on weekends in the summer, and it never leaked anything. So it's hard to accurately generalize.

My 997 is my only car, drive it year-round, but I only put 6500 miles/year on it. So far nothing has leaked. Whatever has gone wrong with it has been from wear, not deterioration due to age or lack of use.

Mumbles

My mind has been seriously thinking about it. Looking for a decent priced house in Florida.

Robocop305

Good luck with the hunt. You won't regret being able to use your car all year around.

Carmichael

Florida.

I lived there for 10 years. There's a good reason why people make fun of that state.

Outside of the beach, the fishing, and the women (hot white girl capital of the US), you could do much better.

My family immigrated to California in '90 and I've been wanting to come back ever since we moved to Chicago in '95.

Robocop305

What else do you need beside hot women, beach and fishing??