High mileage turbo a good idea

I've just come across a high mileage 996 turbo with 120k on the clock, what are people's thoughts on this sort of thing?

Hi Colin buy on condition, mileage everybody seems obsessed about, I know I was when the cars were much younger, hard experience owning one of these tells me otherwise I personally think it is less important now what you really need to see is a big fat wallet of maintenance documents with all the know faults /problems dealt with personally i dont hold as much store in a FSH from porsche over a detailed work schedule documenting all the replaced parts but you will need to see work done and on a high mileage car lots of it usual checks MOTs etc as well and depending on the age of the car DME mileage correlation and overrevs personally i think a cheap car is going to give you lots of problems i can tell you these are expensive cars to maintain properly you will need to suss out the owner to get an idea of care and attention lavished on the car if that is good i would not overlook a high miler it will almost certainly be a car you will not be fearful of putting a few miles on and i think they need to be used and enjoyed buy a good one and drive it I think you will never look back

Is a turbo though much more expensive to run than a normal 996?

It'll need to be priced accordingly. This buy on condition is all well and good (ok lets face it its what you should do!) but the next bugger won't and will want it cheap as its been to the moon. If you hold out for a decent amount it simply won't sell. Its probably a cracking car though if its what you want.

Not really much difference as its the usual maintenance items, radiators, a/c condensors, water pump BUT NO ENGINE REBUILD or IMS, the extra irtem is the spoiler rams now cost £1250( not a problem if you have the factory aero kit)

Unfortunately the intermediate shaft can fail and it does necessitate an engine rebuild it is not the same failure the 996 and boxster has,it is much less common but there have been increasing occurences of it(not just in the states ),It has happened to me,it has little to do with how well the engine has been looked after the only warning signs are non ferrous fragements in the engine oil,which is why the americans have started to move towards oil analysis with every oil change to check for an increase in wear components, which at the very least gives you an early warning before the engine lunches itself.Mine was picked up by the keen hearing of my independant mechanic when the car had been taken in for a completly unrelated problem a noisy PS pump which had gone porous and needed replacing! again this is not a high mileage car circa 45K. the failure is the bolts hold the main gearwheel on back off.why because and I assume it is penny pinching by Porsche no other form of locking was given to the bolts not even locktite! this problem doesnt occur in the 993 versions the solution would have been to apply 10 p's worth of schnorr washrs to the bolts but hey the engine will hold together long enough so that it is out of warranty so it isnt Porsche's problem.To my simplistic view of the world this is a technical enginnering failure.However I would not expect Porsche to take any interest as they have ably demonstrated in the past acknowledging a problem means you are liable,it is only in america where the lawyers are a bit more savvy that they have been made to capitulate on a couple of class actions noteably around the IMS in 996 and boxster engines.If that was not enough they are still at it with con rod bolt failure in the 991 GT3, you couldnt make it up.Rant over WRT to the OP in the main if you get a good one for the usual sundries these cars are of the same order of expense as a 996 these cars have somehow developed a mythical status of being virtually indestructible this is not true the crankcase may be indestructible the internals however are not they have differant failures (tappet failure on variocam plus cars,coolant pipes debonding ,chain failure,and of course IMS problems) to the much better documented 996 and the 997 failures they appear to fail much less,but there many less sold though than the 96 and 97 engines.I would add and typical of Porsche the 96 turbo problems have carried through to the 97 turbo's as well!(which is why I assume for example the inlet tappets were redesigned in 2010/11.though variocam plus is used much more widely than just the turbos) to balance that if you decide to buy a car I would buy from a well recognised indy(ie 911 virgin) and get some form of warranty longer term I am not sure if hartech do it for the turbo but that sort of thing certainly takes the uncertainty out of owning these cars look on Rennlist there is plenty of good information about the problems these cars get and that way you will not get any nasty surprises for example http://forums.rennlist.com/rennforums/996-turbo-forum/600739-error-code-p1325-2.html because i now have timing issue only picked up by datalogging and I am sure many will disagree with me get a datalogger and find out what your car is really doing so you can anticipate problems and just for balance throughout all my troubles this car has never thrown a CEL code or logged a fault on the DME

Went out in the car and it wears the mileage well. It was very quick but I think it was just to good as a weekend toy, the speed you need to go to make it fun where to high for my license ( god I must be getting old). Think I may go and have another look at a 996 targa, at least you had to work it a bit.