Age related engine wear and 996 values...

...I believe C4s values are unjustifiable,why? Many more available on the market; £20 ish gets you a 100k+ miler,£25-30k a 70k ish example. Hartech have indicated that age related engine wear increases exponentially after the 60-70k ish Mark with very significant crank bearings wear at 90-100k. I believe Baz has suggested bearings completely worn through at this higher mileage? I also, from experience, correlate mileage with general overall wear (exceptions will exist of course) my 1995 Mercedes SL with 56k is immaculate with regards trim,paint, door shuts , seats etc. Because of this low mileage. So given that most of us would not question Hartechs statements that the high miler (>100k miles) C4s (indeed any 996) will have very worn engines irrespective of maintenance history simply then C4s with higher miles as are not worthy despite their magnificent looks of the values being seen? I posit another view that it will be decent lower (relatively speaking) mileage C2s and 4s that will see values increase as there are demonstrably fewer decent quality ones on the market?

Any car is worth what people are willing to pay for it. I am sure they are being sold...

eh? There are loads of 996 around with 200k+ One on this very forum with 300k+ miles and had no engine work. Not to mention those that have had a haircut. Yes the engine will have wear at 100k, but that doesn't make the car worthless. They can be rebuilt!

An interesting theory.....however you say "bearings completely worn through at this higher mileage". The reality is many people opt for a rebuild at higher mileage (proven by the fact that Baz has plenty of custom and can make this observation). Once rebuilt, the engine, whilst high-mileage, should be ready for plenty more miles. So high mileage does not necessarily dictate that the car should be worth peanuts. Lots of people on this forum choose to buy a slightly higher-miler thats had remedial work done, rather than a lower mileage car that may have the potential to need this remedial work in the near future. Only my thoughts, as Tom says, a car is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. There are lots of cars out there I would suggest arent worth what people pay for them (I wont name them, for fear of offending people), but clearly they are worth it to the person who bought them.......

Are you in the motor trade OP? If not you should be. Your statements are true for certain cars - Ford Fiesta, Mondeo, Vectra etc. Those are cars with no intrinsic value. 911's however are relatively (compared to Ford/GM) low volume, enthusiast owned vehicles. These drivers float the market and mean that people will always be willing to pay a premium for the car against, say an Audi A3. Once they get to a certain age, history tells us their value bottoms and then climbs again. This is when the enthusiast picks them up, rebuilds them and cherishes them. It appears that the 996 4S has bottomed and is now on the rise. Good luck persuading sellers that their cars aren't worth anything :thumb:

How does time wear an engine? I always thought it was mileage :dont know: :wack:

For clarity - what I was report on is the average general statistical condition we find inside when we strip and inspect engines and related to their mileage. Crankshaft bearings have a thin white metal coating that does the "bearing job" and underneath either bare steel or usually copper plating. The expression "worn through" (if I ever used that?) would relate to the main coating but this doesn't mean they will not keep running. The loads on engine parts wear with a relationship to how they are warmed up, the throttle openings and revs typically used, the oil type, viscosity, usual ambient conditions and to a small extent a random quality variation of various internal parts. If a crankshaft is too worn to use during a rebuild it adds enormously to the rebuild cost so for those engines that in their lifetime may have been driven with spirit or at higher mileages with thin oils there is a good chance that if a rebuild is left for too long the costs may escalate unnecessarily. We also know that in earlier engines cylinders spread oval up to about 0.01" (0.25mm) and then crack and that in later versions pistons coatings wear off or delaminate and lead to bore scoring. Once again - how that influences their continued use depends a lot of how they are driven thereafter. So for those people who may want to keep their cars for several years there may be a time when it could be advantageous to consider a pre-emptive rebuild rather than wait for it to cost more than it needed to, especially if they already have symptoms of an emerging problem, high oil consumption or relatively low hot oil pressure. To make this consideration more attractive we have developed slightly oversized engines that could be fitted with little extra cost to a standard rebuild anyway. These convert a 3.4 to 3.7 and a 3.6 to 3.9 and will make a 3.4 perform more like a 3.6 and a 3.6 more like a 3.8. A 3.8 can also be converted into a 3.9 but with relatively little difference to the performance except a little more mid range grunt. We are also building our own 3.2 Boxster S into a 3.7 and our own 3.4 Cayman S into a 3.9 but we may not offer these for general retail sale until we have fully tested the outcome. We have built a number of 3.7's and 3.9's and all the ones we built ourselves are running and performing very well. This takes time and as we already are running 3 other versions is very expensive. Because most specialist pistons have been manufactured to a "racing profile" we have had our own pistons made - originally with different profiles until we found the best shape for the conversion for road use and these are a little more expensive than some others but run quieter and will last longer. It is always easy to find a few people who managed to get huge mileages out of these cars and use the fact to downgrade information provided by the likes of us about wear rates and resulting advice - but I can balance that by also pointing out that we have had to rebuild a lot more engines that completely failed at mileages in the 20 to 50K range. There are many known and some unknown factors that influence life expectancy and demand for rebuilds from those specialists with good reputations exceeds capacity - so any advice given is simply fact based and well intentioned - it is up to individuals to decide what they want to do about it (if anything) and we are perfectly happy for them to ignore everything they read, wait until it blows up and receive our share of the reulting market rebuilds that will then cost the owner even more. However we prefer to try and help them make informed decisions that will keep a rebuild within their financial resources and their faith in the marque. Baz

OP, GLWS of your 996C2, any interest yet?

I'm fairly new to the Porsche fold but am constantly amazed at the negativity with regards to 'values' by owners of 996s particularly! It's normally a standing joke on one make forums that owners constantly talk up the value of their beloved cars, but I've read so many owners bitching and bad mouthing when other owners post for sale ads at prices higher then they deem suitable. As a sensible few have said, a car is worth whatever anyone is prepared to pay for it, and you only need to look at the way that other model's prices has gone stratospheric to see that it's not illogical at all that 996s and then maybe 997s will do the same, whether they were made in bigger numbers or not. 911s have always and will always be aspirational cars and as the 996 was the entry point price wise, demand increased and then so did prices. People have access to easy and cheap cash these days for various reasons, so spending £25k on a car today costs much less in relative terms than it did when the 996 was new and SCs and 964s were the bargain buys.

For me, the relatively low value of the 996 is its attraction, I have a fantastic car that I can really use. Friends have cars that are now too valuable for everyday use, lovely machines but sadly underused. They bought them to drive but prices have got silly and they have become investments.

...not a trader just a regular jo new to Porsche ownership and the experience of navigating the treacherous waters of information vis a vis this cars particular pecadillos! Alex...Age doesn't,as you well know, wear an engine unless it has been stood for years in a field... ...and Baz with the greatest respect many of your posts have quite specifically and understandably aligned mileage with wear and to these eyes should provide a concerning correlation if one was considering a higher mileage example...and don't want an engine rebuild to resolve the mileage related engine wear sooner rather than later? I understand the nuances in respect of maintenance histories,previous owners mechanical sympathy or lack thereof and the connection with engine wear however advice has been offered often perhaps for expediancy sans caveats that suggests any 996 up on miles will have significant engine wear, I didn't suggest that the car wouldn't run simply that by your analysis will be well past its best vis a vis internal wear. Of course I appreciate that buyers dictate the values of things...and to these eyes as I said in my original post C4s are currently enjoying inflated value...

..I should say that my original post clumsily ,quite probably, attempted to.connect engine wear with mileage and C4s values because it is curious to me and I fancied a debate...I actually don't care about the values of any Porsche as they are what they are and buyers vote with their wallets...

Change your title then.

Yes some engines will wear their bearings. And some won't. But there are some pretty easy ways to get an idea. Oil pressure. I'm 2 bar at hot idle, dropping to 1.5 when I'm roasting in summer traffic. Running 0w-40. Worn bearings will reduce this. Oil analysis. I send off my used oil every year when I do a change and look at the wear metals. You can check for bearing material as it's specific to only that engine part. And I'm on <5 ppm Cu. Worn bearings will have high readings. So I'm pretty happy and chilled with my 112k engine. Would I like to rebuild with a 3.7? Of course. Do I want to pay more than what my high mile car cost me in the first place to do this? Nope!!

All a bit confusing, to be honest, GMG. You say C4Ses are over-valued, because their engines wear out. Fair enough; they're performance engines. Why you bring an SL into it, I have no idea (complex, heavy non-sports cars that they are). Then you think that C2s and C4s (with the same engines) will go up? C4Ses are mainly highly valued because they look good. They have quite a bit of Turbo kit, as well. C2s/C4s are lighter and simpler, but they don't have that ass (I have a C2, btw; it's my personal favourite). Are you selling a C2? If so, this is a poor-show thread indeed.