Most of you know the story so far but for those that don’t here is a little back story, about 9 or 10 weeks ago my car (1999 911 Carrera 4) developed a problem with oil and coolant mixing in the header tank. Knowing I had caught the problem fairly early I booked the car in to be looked at, stripped down and repaired. For months I have been eagerly awaiting parts one in particular a metal pipe of all things was taking forever to come from Germany, but last week everything was here and the rebuild began.
Fast forward to today approximately 10 weeks in. Last night I had a call from my mechanic, the car is ready to be picked up, all day at work I had been thinking about it. Finally my baby will be back where she belongs, so I leave work early and head down to my mechanics. I get there at about 4pm and there she is sitting out in the sun looking all shiny and pretty, they had even washed it ready for me, my face lights up and all I can think about is getting her out on the open road.
I get in the car fire it up, huge smile as she begins to purr, I put the roof down, look in the rear view and I can see what looks like steam coming from the engine at the rear. We pop the boot open and sure enough there is a small amount of smoke coming off the engine, my mechanic at this point tells me that he has taken it on about 3 test drives and it has been fine. I glance at the millage and he is not lying there is an extra 20 odd miles on there than when I put her in, that and he is a family friend, totally trusted with more than 30 years of experience with performance cars, specifically Porsches.
After a small amount of stripping down everything points to spilling a small amount of hydraulic fluid. So she goes back together and my mechanic tells me to take it on a test drive and keep an eye on the temps, oil pressure etc. This is where everything starts going wrong, I get less than a mile up the road and the car starts to feel like its losing a bit of power low down in the rev range, a few seconds later its only running on 5 of the 6 cylinders, I call my mechanic and he tells me to nurse it back. I get it back and the problem is still there and you can hear it sounds like utter rubbish.
Anyway we turn her off and do some digging, turn her back on and the misfire is nowhere to be seen and the engine check light on the dash is no longer illuminated. At this point the diagnostics come out but the car is showing that there are no fault codes. At this point we go on another test drive get to about the same place and all of a sudden she is misfiring again, so again I nurse it back and the computer again was reading zero faults.
At 7pm we gave up, my mechanic drove me the 10 miles home and said that it will be looked at as a matter of priority before he leaves on holiday at the weekend. I now sit here totally deflated and depressed, to rub salt into the wound I’m sitting next to a bill which tells me that I’m about 3k into this and when I go to get her she appears to be in a worse state than when I dropped her off, with an extra nice new scratch on the rear bumper to boot (This I have been promised will be repaired by my favourite sprayer so I’m not really all that fussed, after all accidents happen and there was some light surface scratches on there anyway)
I don’t know what to think really, it is amazing how a day which promised so much can turn around and slap you in the face. If anybody is still reading this now then quite frankly you are doing better than me, normally when I see a wall of text like this I run a mile. I guess this post achieves nothing really other than gives me a place to vent so thanks for listening.
Fast forward to today approximately 10 weeks in. Last night I had a call from my mechanic, the car is ready to be picked up, all day at work I had been thinking about it. Finally my baby will be back where she belongs, so I leave work early and head down to my mechanics. I get there at about 4pm and there she is sitting out in the sun looking all shiny and pretty, they had even washed it ready for me, my face lights up and all I can think about is getting her out on the open road.
I get in the car fire it up, huge smile as she begins to purr, I put the roof down, look in the rear view and I can see what looks like steam coming from the engine at the rear. We pop the boot open and sure enough there is a small amount of smoke coming off the engine, my mechanic at this point tells me that he has taken it on about 3 test drives and it has been fine. I glance at the millage and he is not lying there is an extra 20 odd miles on there than when I put her in, that and he is a family friend, totally trusted with more than 30 years of experience with performance cars, specifically Porsches.
After a small amount of stripping down everything points to spilling a small amount of hydraulic fluid. So she goes back together and my mechanic tells me to take it on a test drive and keep an eye on the temps, oil pressure etc. This is where everything starts going wrong, I get less than a mile up the road and the car starts to feel like its losing a bit of power low down in the rev range, a few seconds later its only running on 5 of the 6 cylinders, I call my mechanic and he tells me to nurse it back. I get it back and the problem is still there and you can hear it sounds like utter rubbish.
Anyway we turn her off and do some digging, turn her back on and the misfire is nowhere to be seen and the engine check light on the dash is no longer illuminated. At this point the diagnostics come out but the car is showing that there are no fault codes. At this point we go on another test drive get to about the same place and all of a sudden she is misfiring again, so again I nurse it back and the computer again was reading zero faults.
At 7pm we gave up, my mechanic drove me the 10 miles home and said that it will be looked at as a matter of priority before he leaves on holiday at the weekend. I now sit here totally deflated and depressed, to rub salt into the wound I’m sitting next to a bill which tells me that I’m about 3k into this and when I go to get her she appears to be in a worse state than when I dropped her off, with an extra nice new scratch on the rear bumper to boot (This I have been promised will be repaired by my favourite sprayer so I’m not really all that fussed, after all accidents happen and there was some light surface scratches on there anyway)
I don’t know what to think really, it is amazing how a day which promised so much can turn around and slap you in the face. If anybody is still reading this now then quite frankly you are doing better than me, normally when I see a wall of text like this I run a mile. I guess this post achieves nothing really other than gives me a place to vent so thanks for listening.
