964 problem oil leak question.....

[rcwaldo]

Hello all. I am curious what the fix was/is for the early 964 cylinder oil leaking problem that some of them had? Also, what was Porsche's update for the 92.5 and later cars?

Just wondering......

Chris

[Bill Wagner]

To fix the cars that had the cylinder leakage problem Porsche replaced the cylinders and pistons. The new set of cylinders used gaskets. Some mechanics can circumvent this by remachining the cylinders and (maybe??) heads as well without doing the full update (thousands of dollars cheaper...I don't know how good a fix this is or how involved it is). This leakage problem appears to me to be highly over blown....I have YET to see a car with this problem, but I know it did exist...particularly on the '89 C4s. The "fix" became a part of production for the '91 model year in the January production run (anything made after that has the updated cylinders and pistons with the gaskets). You need to check serial numbers of the engine to verify this.

As far as your "92.5" change goes, you're probably referring to the change from the Freudenberg to the LUK dual mass flywheel.

Good Luck,

Bill Wagner

[emcon5]

I have a friend looking at a 89 C4. The engine just had some major work to fix an oil leak, and one of the heads was replaced because it was cracked(!!).

The seller says that the heads were machined to accept a head gasket.

I know the factory fix was to replace the P&C's, but I never heard of adding a head gasket to existing parts.

Is this a common and accepted fix?

Thanks,

Tom

[orbmedia]

I looked into this. If you don't want to splurge for the P/C set ($3000) you can get the parts machined for the "935 style" head gasket ($600 including the parts). This is the way to go in my opinion. Get it done by a machine shop that knows about the fix and has done it many times.