DIY is dead, well, maybe dying.

The recent post on the 964 values brought up this subject. The 964 may be the last of the line as far as DIY. An example may be made of a Boxter engine failing by mixing the oil with the coolant. The dealer was instructed to remove it, crate it and return it to the factory. They were directed not to do any teardown. New engine was just plugged in in place. Are we getting to the point of modular engines and components even for the dealers?

Porsche likes to examine failed engines, so improvements can be made ASAP, instead of just getting the dealer to fix the thing.

Besides, (for example) it could very well cost more to rebuilt an engine, with a cracked block (using all new parts) than just taking the old one out, and putting the new one in.
Ahmet

I would kinda suspect that because of how new the product was (a Boxter), Porsche might actually request this of their dealers so they can try to isolate what the failure was and try to prevent it from happening on future revisions of the product.

One of the reasons Porsche is so great (and so expensive) is that, they actually invest a lot of time and money into R&D (more so than most other companies (on a $ per model basis)).

I would expect as the new product lines change, you will see less of the swapping and more repair.

GruvSyco
'74 911 Coupe

DYI is definitely dead. Killed purposely by all manufacturers. They make a lot more money charging you $$$$ per hour for repairs and simple maintenance.
Ever change the oil in a 993?

How hard is it to change oil in a 993?

Or adjust valves?

or change plugs?

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Bill Krause
'79 911SC Euro

If you're adjusting valves on a 993 you have way too much free time.

The other tasks (oil change and plugs) is a PITA compared to a 911; lots of stuff to move out of the way.

I've never seen a 993 except on the road or in the showroom, so I've got no idea what the engine bay looks like. To change the oil, you have to move stuff? Is that to get access to the oil filter?

Is the 964 really the last 911 that the average DIYer can work on?

Oh, valves don't need adjusting on a 993 (I forgot about that one).

It's still possible to DIY on the 993, it's just a tad more difficult. There are two oil filters on the 993 and the small one is underneath; you need to remove the undertray and some hoses to get to it. The 993 has 12 plugs and they also require you to remove some bits (hoses, lines, shields) to get them out. The 993 powerplant layout will be quite familiar to you if you are usd to a 911.

I think Bruce Anderson advises you to get a special "double hinged elbow" and a few extra fingers to do the 993 oil change...

Yup, my old beasts can be a major PITA sometimes, but even a semi-mechanical newbie like me can actually pop the lid and identify virtually every part. And even with 'normal' hand tools and a simple Haynes manual, I have half a chance of successfully DIY'ing a whole ton of stuff on the early cars.

Personally, I probably wouldn't even attempt much mechanical DIY on most cars built 1990- (not just p-cars). Brake pads and such, sure, but not much else.

I like the idea of Porsche wanting the whole engine back intact. Good for the customer to get a new engine rather than a rebuilt one. Good for Porsche to locate the real source of the problem.

I would suspect that dealers are to some degree making it hard on purpose for DIY-ers to do anything so that their service revenues increase. My dad just bought a 2000 TransAm WS6. When looking at the car at the dealer, he started to open the hood and the dealer said "what do you want to look in there for? You can't do anything." He was right.

Peter Egan wrote an editorial in last month's R&T about a number of the tasks which were semi-annual maintainance on most cars at one time; repacking bearings, lubricating chassis grease points, etc. Some years ago, my dad, who had been a mechanic in the '20s, told me about fitting babbit bearings on main crank bearings. Motor jobs were done every 5000 miles. I have a thirty-year old car in the garage I enjoy 'working' on. I think the mechanical communion which was required with older cars, now that we are not obliged to partake, has romanticized our outlook towards them. They 'need' us. And, in a way, we need them to make us feel adept and empowered. A car that requires fluid changes only when its onboard computer indicates it is beyond the "needing me" stage. That's fine for transportation, bad for romance.

My new 2001 911 Turbo arrived last week.

DIY? - Forget it! You can't even see the engine, let alone work on it.


Ed
'88 930S
'01 911 Turbo

It's not just the fact modern vehicles are more difficult to work on, but many *modern owners* choose not to learn how to work on them. Fear of grease, perhaps?




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Doug
'81 SC Coupe (aka: "Blue Bomber")
Canada West Region PCA
members.home.net/zielke/911SC.htm

I think that is one of the best things about newer cars - most of the time you don't have to work on them and you can actually spend your time driving them. I "like" working on my car, but more in an educational way because I am an engineering geek and like to figure out how things work. It's definitely not the most pleasurable thing to do and I'd much rather be driving it than be covered in grease. Most newer cars will easily run 100k or more with no maintenance other than routine oil changes and changing belts and hoses. Sure, a lot of those older 911's have a 100 - 200k on them, but I can guarantee that they get constant attention and pampering compared to most other cars(who has to do routine valve adjustments on their mass produced daily driver?) I love my 911. I've dreamt of owning one since I was probably five years old. But it is definitely not even close to being as reliable as a newer car, regardless of manufacturer. I've never owned any other car that was as difficult to shift, or that required frequent clutch, valve, shifter adjustments. I respect the car for what it is, a classic and a piece of automotive history. But it still is frequently a pain in the butt to own.

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'80 Targa

As these cars age, they will move into the DIY category. With more people working on them, there will develop info and tips and tricks (sure to be on this site).

As mentioned previously, the newer cars don't need much maintenance yet. Just wait until the cars reach 15-20 years old, and you'll see a whole bunch of DIY. I'm sure that everyone said that when the Motronic came out...

-Wayne

Just look at the DIY section at www.p-car.com Robin seems to know whats going on as far as DIY goes on the 993.

I used to own a Dodge Stealth RT Twin Turbo. This car was equipped with a Getrag AWD tranny that was similar in operation to that found on C4 993s. Getrag and Mitsubishi (the Stealth is nothing but a Mitsubishi 3000 GT VR4 with trim and name changes) for some reason did NOT allow any parts to be sold for this tranny. Mine ended up being replaced under warranty FOR A LEAKING OIL SEAL. If I had not had the warranty, the replacement would have cost about $5000.

The reason I mention this is because this seems to be a trend. I've read one post from someone some time ago who had his tranny fail on a 993 or 996 (I don't remember which) but he was put in the same predicament...swap out only...no parts available. For the Stealth, 3rd party vendors have stepped in but they usually only sell rebuilds made with used parts or the few parts they've been able to track down.

At a recent PCA meeting held at a local dealership they had a new 996 Turbo on display. I thought the Stealth was difficult to work on, but this thing looked like it was impossible to work on. Bottom only repair work from what I could tell. I don't have lift, and I'm not going to buy one! I suspect I won't be buying a 993 or 996 either !

I guess the target market for the new Porsche's is the yuppie crowd that DARE NOT get their hands dirty fooling with those over complicated things like oil changes, spark plug changes, etc.

Glad I bought a 964!

Bill Wagner
'91 C4

An uneducated guess as to why this is:

Car manufacturers have close financial ties to their dealers, so it should come as no surprise that they would not make maintenance simple enough for DIY-ers. Dealers make a lot of their revenue from maintenance and repair work. They don't make more money if the tasks are easier to perform, so there's no reason for them to encourage Porsche to make it easier to do in a shorter time.

Independent shops have no real pull with manufacturers, other than buying OEM parts. As such, I imagine they have to struggle to undercut dealer repair prices while also continuing to buy the specialized computers and other tools that manufacturers and dealers can use to further put the squeeze on independents' profit margins.

DIY-ers have no pull whatsoever with manufacturers, since they rarely are the cars' first buyers, and rarely even buy parts from dealers (why pay that much?). Unfortunately, this means there is no incentive whatsoever for Porsche to make a 996 easy to work on.

The fact that enthusiastic second-hand owners are an important part of what maintains the brand allure of cars like Porsche is far too intangible for the bottom-line-obsessed shareholders and management of a global car manufacturer. Porsche gets judged by its shareholders on a daily basis, and its report card is filled out four times a year, and it all boils down to profits. You've either got em, or you don't, and the shortest route to profit is to charge a whole lot to first-time owners, who generally lease the cars, and generally have routine maintenance performed by dealers. After that, the dealers can benefit from selling the cars second-hand, but that's where the money-making for Porsche and its dealers ends.

That means there's not much incentive for Porsche to make the cars even function, reliably, beyond this final point in the chain -- the one where guys like us generally step in.

Porsche's tradition of over-engineering its products explains why my 28-year-old 911 is still such a reliable car. But manufacturing systems have changed in the last 30 years, and manufacturing goals have changed right along side them. Porsches are a lot more efficiently put together now, by fewer workers, and a lot more technology (that's a lot less time-tested) goes into the current models. This leads me to wonder how long Porsche can resist succumbing to designed-in obsolesence and predetermined component failure. I think Porsche has been such a small company, through most of its history, that it relied on engineering overkill to get the cars reliably through their first eight or ten years of ownership. It's a much bigger company, now, and it's run as more of a capital-B Business.

Will today's Turbos be running like fine timepieces in 2040? I hope so. But in a world where profitability is the bottom line, I'd be foolish to think that 'decades of reliablility' is at the top of the engineering division's to-do list. It takes a long time to realize profits from a product's long-term reputation. Money comes much quicker when you hard sell the latest and the best to an undereducated batch of cash-laden consumers.

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Jack Olsen
1973 911 T (3.6) sunroof coupe
jackolsen@mediaone.net

[This message has been edited by JackOlsen (edited 05-15-2001).]

Second-hand car owners do, however, bolster the used value of a car which is vital in maintaining the perceived "value" of the new car. That second-hand value won't stay high for long if the cars start falling apart, require part swaps rather than repairs,and do not cater to the needs of the second-hand owner (which in this case we are saying is DIY-friendliness).