Running Report 1 - November 2001

The Car's background

G990 BFC is my first foray into Porsche ownership. It is one of the very early Carrera 4's, being first registered in Solingen on 30th August 1989. It spent the first ten years of its life in its homeland, first in Solingen and later in Osnabruck. In both locations receiving regular services from the official Porsche centres as shown by the stamps in the service book.

In mid 1998 it was then imported into the UK by someone working in association with Josh Sadler at AutoFarm near Oxford. By this time the car had covered ~ 105,000 km.

Over the next two years the vehicle was serviced by both Arlington Porsche in Northampton and Protech in Harpenden. I have some of these invoices and they show service costs of £1000 for the major service, including discs and pads, refitting a window seal and misc other bits and bobs, and £280 for a minor service. At some point a Conlog cat 1 alarm was fitted and the stereo was upgraded to a Sony minidisk system.

There has been some respraying, carried out by Arlington at the expense of Northampton County Council, after an altercation with one of their gritters in the winter of 1999/2000. I think that this amounted to £2000 but I do not have the invoice, I have also had to have some of this re-done, so I am not too impressed with the OPC bodywork people.

The then owner took the mileage up to 124,080 km ( and his license up to 9 points ! - for non-UK readers this is one speeding ticket away from an automatic driving ban ). He then returned the car to AutoFarm, where I found it.

My background

I am a freelance IT consultant, based in a small village in North Yorkshire. We don't have a garage, there not being much call for them in 1800, so our vehicles need to be able to sit on the road in front of the house. I also do not believe in having cars without driving them, so they need to be usable everyday.

My previous car was a Subaru SVX, a fairly rare beast having a 3.6l flat six cylinder engine and four wheel drive (sounds familiar doesn’t it) but only available with a frighteningly unreliable auto box (a bit of an issue at £4000 a go). A very comfortable, easy car to drive quickly regardless of road conditions, but suffering from massive running costs.

The Hunt

After selling the SVX, I was looking for something fast, with excellent handling and brakes and importantly, cost effective to run. There wasn't much of a choice. I considered a 3.2 G50, or even a good SC, but with the horror stories 'backwards through a hedge' in mind I preferred a C4 if I could get one.

I quickly decided to go for LHD because of the much better seating position for a tall driver and also the significant cost saving over RHD.

I had looked at a few OPC's and specialists and found them in many cases not dis-similar to BMW dealers (arrogant and superior), and found many of the import companies difficult to deal with in terms of the clarity of their pricing, they would find a car (for a fee), import it and sort out the lights and registration (for another fee), then sell it to me (after applying a dealers mark-up).

In frustration I even went to Germany to tour a few cars which I had found on the web, but to no avail, two cars that had looked good were sold while I was on my way, one to France, the other to Belgium. And several others were not up to scratch, or had sunroofs.

Returning to the UK in disgust, I found a message on my answer phone from AutoFarm, they had a LHD C4 just in, without a sunroof and was I interested ?

Later that week my brother (who is an MOT tester and does rally prep work) accompanied me to Oxfordshire to see G990 BFC. We spent half a day with AutoFarm, who I must say were a splendid company to deal with. Friendly and helpful, after a test drive, they let us use their ramps, etc to inspect the car, were totally honest about faults ( a couple of minor oil leaks and some corrosion on the rear wing).

A coffee later and the sale agreed, I rang my insurance company and drove home in my new Porsche. To keep the cost of purchase down, I bought the gaskets needed for the oil leaks and did the rocker covers and power steering pump o-ring myself. As Arlington had recently serviced the car, and AutoFarm and my brother had inspected the car I also took a risk that the cost involved in a warranty wouldn’t be needed. All this giving a drive away cost of £16,500.

Ownership so far

That was 30th May 2000, so what has happened over the last 18 months ? The mileage (kilometerage?) is up to 166,000km.

The first six months was uneventful, G990 being perfectly behaved in all ways.

Things went wrong in November when I hit a patch of mud on the exit of a roundabout and discovered that the C4 is not immune to spinning. I was fortunate to escape with only a dented alloy, amazingly my wife who was in the passenger seat at the time didn’t seem to mind ! I think that either I overcorrected or touched the curb, because a fishtail was followed by an instantaneous 180 turn. I really must get round to doing a skid pan course.

Much of my driving takes place along the A1, M18, M180, which are quite exposed. I found that in the strong winds the car was very mobile at the front end which was a definite cause for concern. When the car was in a service at Specialist cars Malton, I had them lower the car - keeping the same components just lowering the adjustments, which has helped considerably.

I also had a few areas of the bodywork resprayed, some bubbling on the rear wheel arch, and a small patch on the rear wing just alongside the spoiler.

When I bought the car the tyres were PZero on the front and Dunlop SP on the rear on the original design 90's. I have previously had good experiences of Bridgestone SO2 and Michelin Pilot Sport, so when I came to replace them I used the Michelins (£85 front £95 rear), which were an improvement but still felt that the grip wasn't quite there. I suspect that this is more down to my needing to get a better feel for the car.

I recently received a broken fog lamp lens when the local roads were resurfaced, when I was trying to get a replacement lens I spoke to Simon Butterworth at Porsch-Apart who did the fog lamp for £69+vat, and as my Michelins were getting low I asked about wheels, it turned out that he had a set of 993 cup 2's in from an OPC for £625. As this included a set of almost new PZero N1's I thought that it was worth taking him up. I haven’t done more that a few hundred miles since fitting them but they are noticeably more direct and do hold the road better when warm. I would say that when they are cold they are a bit poor, I shall wait and see how they shape up. I may put a set of winter tyres on the old rims.

Thinks to do...

A/C needs converting to whatever the new gas is. I tried to get this done over the summer but all the local specialists were booked up weeks in advance - maybe in the winter it will be easy to get that scheduled.

Sort out the 4WD/ ABS warning lights which stay on until the engine speed is up to 3000 rpm. Several recent posts on this subject are interesting. I shall get this sorted and report back next time.

Do some driver training. Croft circuit will do a track day at £140, with an instructor for £130 for the day. I am trying to sort out a few friends who fancy sharing the instructor cost. I would also be interested in hearing from anyone with good experiences or recommendations for training.

 Running Report 2 - May 2002

Not a tremendously good six months.   G990BFC seems to have spent far too much time sitting around doing nothing.  This has been partially due to the arrival of a daughter which has limited the usability of the Porsche, I think when she is a little older and we don’t need to carry car seats, pram, nappies, etc. practicality will return.

So, apart from life getting in the way I have had a couple of problems with the car.

Oil pipes & thermostat

I noticed one morning as I was getting in,  a small oil patch just in front of the rear wheel, nothing much but the thought of oil dripping onto the tyres didn’t seem a great idea.  Jacked the car up and took off the rear wheel to find that oil was seeping from the long braided oil pipe which runs from the top of the thermostat up the side of the oil tank and around the curve of the wheel arch.

I couldn’t get a replacement pipe the same as the original, and I was told that the 993 part was to be used as a replacement.  When I got the new pipe it looked the same apart from being rubber without the braided metal casing, same little squiggle of metal pipe at the thermostat end, so it looked identical.  Fitting however turned out to be a real pain.  In the end we had the pipe fitted and removed three times, and the oil tank out still without successful completion of what had been expected to be a couple of hours work.

The problem was that the rubber pipe had a kink in it when fitted, just above the metal end at the thermostat.  We tried starting up when we had got the pipe as straight as we could and a problem was immediately evident.  The oil pressure at idle was almost at the top of the scale.  In desperation rang Strasse who supplied the pipe, to be told that they always had that problem and used a couple of cable ties around the pipe to hold the shape of the section round.  Fair enough, but why didn’t they tell me that when I bought the damn thing ?  While we were doing this we also replaced the couple of short pipes which were not in brilliant condition, but only a few pounds each.

A further problem was that the fittings on the thermostat were corroded and we had trouble getting an oil tight seal.  I did consider getting the thermostat machined, but decided that replacement was probably a sensible thing to do.  Thermostat replacement fairly problematic because the junctions to the long pipes running to the front oil cooler turned out to also be badly corroded and we couldn’t easily get in to undo them.  In the end the disconnection of the oil cooler and removal of the long pipes was necessary so that we could use a vice.

On the plus side I now know that me oil pipes are in good condition (apart from the short one on the bottom of the engine which looks a little corroded, but I don’t fancy the risk of that coupling being shot, I suspect that could be an expensive fix.

Rear window seal

My (aftermarket) alarm packed in over Christmas and I finally got around to getting a replacement siren. Looked an easy enough fix, trace the wires from the engine bay, through the bulkhead, under the carpet to the control box.  I started to lift the carpet and discovered that the soundproofing underneath was absolutely sodden wet.

I have had water in the car once, which I had thought was a leak from a bottle of mineral water, but have never had problems with damp. 

Anyway an hour or so of pulling up carpet and removing trim and I find that the sound proofing is wet from the rear parcel shelf down to the floor.   No sun roof in this car so that is ruled out , doesn’t seem to be from the side lights, must be the rear screen.  Given that I have a receipt in the history for the refitting of the rear screen I am not too happy.

This is still in progress, car seats and much of the carpet is out and I have a dehumidifier sitting in the car extracting the water.

I thought that since it was going to take time to dry the car, I didn’t need it as my wife had just delivered and was not using hers, I should take the opportunity to tackle the…

Clutch

This is I think the second worst thing on a 964 after the cylinder heads.  On this 89 C4 I have the original single mass flywheel and the rubber damped clutch, the arrangement being a continuation of 3.2 fitment I understand.  The clutch hasn’t been slipping and is actually in reasonable shape, but the release bearing was on the way out, with the action being poor and noisy, and we suspected the fork was worn.  There is no sign of an invoice for a replacement clutch in my paperwork, so it is possible that at 110000 miles this is the original. 

I ordered a clutch plate, cover and release bearing in advance from Simon Butterworth at Porsch-Apart at the rather frightening price of £600 – apparently not available as a nice cheap kit….

Getting the engine out on its own proved impossible, just not enough room, so the engine and gearbox came out as a combo, and is balanced on three heavy duty jacks.  Taking things apart the clutch showed some wear but was still Ok, the bearing was worn and the release fork was slightly flat contributing to the poor action.  Bert at Berlyn Services provided a kit including the fork, shaft and associated seals and was very helpful on the information front.  Apparently some of the early cars require some machining as an update, the guide tube and bearings on the fork have a different design.  Bert faxed me the appropriate Tech bulletins (which were not on all-data), but fortunately I was not affected – it may be that this only affects the 3.2 with the same clutch.

Bert also supplied me with some of the Swepco gearbox oil, which is rated highly apparently – I shall see.

All reassembled we were just about to refit the gearbox when we noticed a crack on the starter motor, which we didn’t see when removing, so maybe we knocked it, who knows ?

I thought that that at least would be easy….Hahahahah.

It turns out that the part number on the starter is listed as being for tiptronic cars (mine is a manual).   There are several different starters fitted, which look physically different although how they are different I don’t know.  I spoke to a couple of suppliers and the end result was that they all recommended using the Bosch part number to source a replacement directly from Bosch.

I spoke to Bosch using both the Bosch and Porsche part numbers and got confirmation of the fitment, and they were also able to confirm the other type of starter was not a direct swap.   Unfortunately no exchange part is available for mine, no new part is available in the UK, and the list price is £402+vat.

I negotiated with my local Andrew Page motor factor who have agreed £295+vat including express shipping from Germany (they say that normal shipping on odd parts can take up to six weeks!).  So I am currently awaiting a call to confirm that the starter has arrived.

I have begun to have sympathy with those who feel that these cars are expensive and time consuming.  At least the driving makes up for it.

I was very interested to read of Tony’s experience with driver training at Gforce / Bernard Aubrey, I suspect that I shall give this a go myself when / if G990 is ever back in one piece.

 Running Report 3 - November 2002

Upgraded Suspension

At the end of my last report G990 was in bits awaiting a replacement starter motor. The part arrived from Germany as expected and was quickly fitted.

The main thing which has happened since then has been the installation of upgraded suspension.

I had felt for some time that the handling was not up to scratch.  After a bit of investigation I decided to go with the Billstein / H&R combination. This seemed to be a fairly cost effective switch rather than going to the full race set ups. One thing to watch for when buying is that the early cars have different suspension on the rear. The rear mounting points were altered and the rear are different lengths - apparently this has caught some people out...

I sourced the combination as a Gemballa kit through one of the other readers of this board. I managed to get it for £800 which is quite a saving on the list price.  The installation was surprisingly straightforward. The one thing that caught me out being the need to get some replacement spring mount rings for the front. The kit provides mounts for the rear because the shocks are a different diameter to the originals, but the fronts, being the same size assumed the reuse. But they were seized solid. I ended up having to get a couple of replacements in from the local OPC in Newcastle - still only £10 each.


We did the rears first.
 

The fronts started quite well then ground to a halt when I couldnt get the old rings off, so the car spent the weekend up in the air waiting. Again though a very easy and straightforward process. One thing that I didnt do but should have done as suggested by Horst Ressdorf, is to cut away part of the brake pipe mount so that in future the pipe can be removed and therefore some flexibility will be available so that when the discs are being replaced
the brake lines would not need bleeding. I will probably do this sooner or
later - next time the disks need replacing.
 

Alignment

I had the alignment done at North East Tyres in York. They have one of the full laser/computer alignment machines. I took in the Specs and factory instructions, went through the adjustment process with them and then and watched them do the settings. I went for RS settings in an effort to overcome the understeer, which has helped. cost £140.
 

Corner Balancing

A friend of a friend races single seaters and had arranged to have his corner weights done. He did a deal whereby they hired the equipment for the afternoon and offered all comers a go for £20, seemed too good to miss.

They were very impressed by the balance as standard, the best they had ever seen on a production car apparently. The weights were all well within spec with the car empty (no more than 20kg variance across an axle - thanks Adrian!), I actually adjusted slightly to have balance set better with myself in the car. I am told that the corner balancing is not so critical for cornering but is very important for heavy braking performance. You can see the figures in the picture.

Running Report 4 - May 2003

Very little happening since last report.

Child seats.

I have met several of the technical experts at Britax. They say that they (Britax) do not supply seats to Porsche. However they own a German subsiduary which makes its own seats - some based on the Britax UK chassis, some of entirely their own design, and that that company may be responsible.

However they gave me a choice of two seats suitable for use in the 911, both for use only in the front passenger seat not the back. The models are the Elite and the Renaissance, I bought the latter for £121. The seat is shaped and fits quite well into the sculpted passenger seat of the Porsche.

I still have not advertised the car for sale - other than on the smartgroups page. I have managed to put it off a little, but the day is coming. I need to have the rings around the headlights repainted - Again. This was originally done by Specialist cars but they obviously didnt bother to clean them properly. It is also due a service. Once I have done the service the ad will need to go in autotrader.