Sports Cars, Muscle Cars and Customs!

[Mister Moo]

Originally Posted by MACS

Meh.... When that thing goes tits up (and it will, it's German) bust open the wallet.

Lets leave the tits behind and go right to nuts and bolts. Supercar engines don't come cheap - nifty alloys, insane tolerances, Fuchs wheels and titanium lugnuts all come at a price. And, like anything else over a 40-year run, there are 911's and then there are 911's; some models had problems built in, most not. Within the daily-driving community mechanically informed owners see engines go 300K or more between top end jobs. Double galvanized air-cooled Carreras with Getrag tranny (1984-1989 air/oil cooled 3.2l) are justifiably legendary for solid coachwork, tough engines, bulletproof clutches and magnificent transmissions.

The typical ways to break these older motors are: let them sit undriven in the mistaken belief they're sacred; failure to drive a warmed engine regularly to redline; repeated failure to achieve required operating temperatures before exceeding 3500rpm; and failure to use oil with high levels of zinc and phosphorus additives. The last three items, often ignored by uninformed owners, are killers on valves and valve guides. 14-quarts of 20W-50 in these so-called "air" cooled engines demands at least 15 minutes of low rev driving to protect the tolerances that squeeze big horsepower out of small, lightweight displacement - this is a long wait for a nincompoop. While the reliability of the mills is solid with owners who read the book, a lot of morons will drive the engines to a costly and premature failure. I don't see Porsche failures because they're German but, rather, because owners fail to know their vehicle.

When rebuild time comes around there is good new$ and bad new$ for old Porsche owners.

The bad news - sexy alloy parts are not especially cheap. And if you are going to hire Werner over at Das Porsche Haus (or worse yet a dealer) to do the 15,000 mile tuneup it turns into a $1000 WTF deal.

The good news - those sexy alloy parts don't often fail. Older air-cooled cars were made simply for regular spirited driving on no-limit highways, unimproved roads and track. They allow for a car owner/hobbiest to drop and engine and rebuild without need of a lift. The old fuel-injected air-cooled flat sixes are easy to repair with little more than standard tools, a couple of jackstands and a floor jack.

If a prospective buyer reads the owners manual and enjoys automotive hobbycraft I'd say the scare value of engine work (or recurrent engine failure) is as legend as it is wrong. A once per 15,000 major tune is a six-hour job that costs a couple of hundred bucks if you do it yourself.

The older Porsche is reliable and, wisely owned, not especially expensive. And unlike the new rice burners that easily outrun the older 911's, their value continues to increase.