EPowers

I'm a first time Porsche owner, so please feel free to give me any suggestions or comments!!! I just bought a 2005 Carrera S with ~42K miles from a dealership in the Southern California area and absolutely love it! Haven't gotten enough miles in yet, but the drive back to my area was entertaining for sure! I got a pre-purchase inspection at Auto Werkstatt in Manhattan Beach (Fantastic shop, by the way) and received the following information:



To sum it up:

• Need New Tires soonish
• Pollen Filter from 2011?! Does this mean the previous owner missed a minor/major service?
• The battery is under-powered.
• Need new wipers
• RPM Range Stuff (below)

Pertinent Maintenance History:

• 20K mile service completed (1/17/2009)
• IMS update 2/20/2013 (33K miles)
• Rear Main Seal leak fixed 2/20/2013 (33K miles)
• Oil change 2/20/2013 (33K miles)
• Oil change 5/26/2015 (38K miles)
• 1 qt oil added 8/12/2016 (42K miles)

So it appears to me that the order of items to be taken care of is as follows:

• 40K Mile Major Service
• New Tires
• Replace battery when it dies.

I'm curious if any of you are familiar with the RPM Ranges... The mechanic who did the inspection told me he's never seen a car come in with a tick on the Range 6 section. What sort of concern should I have over those high RPM revs? Ultimately, I'm not planning on driving the crap out of this car, it's in awesome physical condition, and I want to make sure the mechanics match it.

Also, the owner of Auto Werkstatt told me that HE always buys warranties for his Porsches, even though he owns the shop... Any idea what a proper price point is for a 2-3 year warranty? Should I get a bumper-bumper warranty or just powetrain??

Thanks!!
-EP

ADias

Since you already purchased the car... I should not comment, but since you asked - Zones 4 and up mean a money shift, i.e., the engine ran beyond the redline. The number of Zone 1 hits shows that car's red limiter was hit regularly, but that is OK. If the car runs fine, do not worry about it.

Those cars last longer if you drive them routinely and the tach visits 4-6kRPM periodically once the oil is at op temp (200F).

EPowers

Thanks! The car runs excellently as far as I can tell. The mechanic who did the PPI seemed pleased with it too. I guess I just want to know how seriously I should consider buying a warranty.

-EP

OKB

I would have only bought a car from a dealer with a cpo warrantee , not worried about it after I bought it. they can be awfully expensive to fix and aftermkt warrantees cost more than the repairs will cost

EPowers

I've never been a fan of purchasing a warranty, but when the owner of a shop suggests that I do, it makes me wonder.

-EP

Jfisk

I noticed they changed the IMS bearing at 33k miles when they also fixed a RMS leak. That's really nice to know and should make you feel good about the car you purchased. You won't have to wonder which bearing the car came with and whether changing it would be fairly easy or involve an engine tear down.

I purchased a 2005 997 a year ago and it hasn't had the bearing changed. Although the M96 engine serial number is fairly early in the production year (04075) which should be able to switch out with a clutch change, my porsche mechanic says all 2005s have the newer improved larger bearing. Is he wrong? From what I read on these posts, m96's before 07475 are the smaller ones that can be switched out.

gpjli2

Yes your "Porsche mechanic" is wrong. Not a real confidence builder in my book. In any case you really need to lower tranny and look to be sure. The retaining nut is different. Do a search for the pictures, and maybe for a different mechanic?

Hunt3R

Yup he's wrong. I changed the IMS bearing on my 05 997S with an M97 engine. Like gpjli2 said you won't know which bearing any 05 has until the tranny is dropped. Looking it up by engine # or build date is just a hint as to what the car "probably" has in it.

Ben Z

I bought my '05 with a bit over 20K miles on it and CPO, then purchased a 6 yr bumper-to-bumper exclusionary warranty when CPO ran out at 32K. I paid over $4K for it, so far it has paid that back plus almost another $3K in covered repairs and it still has 6 months to go. I'm not sure you could get anything other than a basic powertrain warranty on an '05 at this point, but I could be wrong.

awfilms

Boy this guy prior to you drove this thing like A MAN! lol Especially it seems like on his last drive!

You'll live. Hopefully you didn't overpay for it though. There's a lot of Porsche's out there but you already bought this one.

Petza914

If the total engine hours note on the left is 4897.0 hours, that means that the last "money shift" occurred only 27 hours ago. The consensus seems to be that once an engine has seen revs this high, if it makes it past the next 50 hours, you're probably safe, so the range 6 overrev at 611 hours is long enough ago that I wouldn't worry about that 1 and it's also almost impossible to have one 1 overrev in a range so we'll call that one a statistic anomaly, but you should still have some concerns about the overrevs logged most recently in the other RPM ranges, at least for the next 25 - 50 hours. Watch your oil levels to see if oil usage is increasing or staying about the same at 1 qt/4,000 miles from what you stated in your synopsis (that usage is fine - great even), look at the soot build up on the tailpipes to see if it's even on both - if more on one side than the other, that's reason for some concern. I might also drop the oil pan to look for any debris in there that's stuck in the corners, outside the swirl pot area, and check the filter media at your next oil change looking for any plastic or metal debris. My concern would be that when the last overrevs occurred the owner didn't like something that happened during them and decided he should trade the car, rather than risk an engine replacement. It's a bit late now, but PPI stands for PRE-Purchase Inspection, and that's really when they should be done to uncover potential issues such as this.

To the others questions, late '05 is when Porsche started using the larger IMS bearing, but it doesn't seem that all late '05s got them, so as others have written, the only way to be sure which bearing you have in any '05 is to drop the tranny and visually inspect the bearing. Any Porsche mechanic that doesn't know the proper cutover date is probably not one I want working on my car or one I'd take advice from.

Torq5teer

On the next episode of 27 operating hours ago theater...

Dave: "So, Bob, you trading that porsh in next week?"
Bob: "Yeah. And it's pronounced Porsche."
Dave: "Hold my beer, watch this."