MAINTENANCE
TIPS FOR BUYING A 928
With the rest of your budget you can start shopping. You can buy a 928 in the price- range from 2.500 up till 35.000 Euro. The variation is especially caused by the age. The 928 is produced between 1978 and 1995. The younger the car, the less problems you can expect. Porsche has carried out quit a lot of improvements through all those years, although they sometimes introduced (temporary) unnecessary things. You should always take a person with knowledge of cars with you on your bargain-hunt. If you do not know how a catalyst or a ABS unit looks like, you really take changes when you go alone. At the time you have found a nice specimen, try to gather as much information about the car as possible. Try to collect all information about the history and the maintenance. A complete maintenance book and bills do help. A 928 needs regular maintenance and a good garage. If you can forbear buying the car at once, write down all names of garages that maintained the car and ask a connoisseur if he knows if there are worse garages on your list. Believe me, there are and they are sometimes well known. At least you should find out when the timing belt was replaced for the last time and what else was replaced at that moment. The engine of a 928 will not survive a broken belt and therefore the belt must be replaced every 60.000-100.000 kilometer. If you can not retrieve this information , your car is virtually a bomb. Replacing the belt will cost you about 900 Euro. Also check the manufacturing date and the origin of the car. You will often find the wrong information in an advertisement out of pure attraction. You will find many imported cars, especially from Germany, so you have to do your best to retrieve the right information. By the way, cars from Germany are not necessarily worse. A 928 is build to drive very fast, so actually it is designed for the German autobahn. The engine of a 928 will last for 500.000 kilometers. So when you find one with 200.000 kilometers on the mileage recorder you should not worry too much. What is more important, is what has happened to the car all those years. When a 928 is maintained well, you can notice that. First of all, the cars exterior and interior look nice. Especially the interior is often forgotten when purchasing a car. But when the seats and the covering looks good, that will tell you something about the previous owners. A nice looking engine too, but don't be caught by the seller, who has cleaned the engine with a steam-cleaner. A good engine feels a little fatty, but is not greasy. You should also take a look at the wheels. Less damage points to normal driving. And then the test drive. Be sensible and make more than one. First of all, let the seller drive. The engine is cold at that moment and when he can not control himself the first quarter, be warned. A 928 needs time to warm up and pump all that oil around. If you do not drive for yourself, you can also listen. Strange noises are a bad sign. But you should also take into account that a 928 has lots of gadgets. So when the dampers of the ventilation system are operated by the heating system there is nothing to worry about. So again, take a 928 scholar with you. When you drive for yourself, or what I did, let a scholar drive, test everything. And I mean everything. Windscreen wipers + (headlamp) washers, cruise control, air-conditioning, (both cold and warm!), the electric seat adjustment in all positions, sliding-roof, illumination (do not forget the interior lightning), opening the hood and the trunk, etc. etc.. You should also shut down the engine and turn around the ignition key half. Almost all dashboard lights should shine. Ok, there are not all that important, but when the indicator of the fuel tank or the timing belt warning light does not work, you should take into account that you can hardly replace them. Some 928's leak water in the trunk. Sometimes through the window, sometimes through a bad assembled rear bumper. It is easy to check this, just remove the carpet in the trunk and look for yourself. When you removed the carpet, you can straightaway look if all accessories are present. The spare wheel will be there, but is the compressor to fill it up too? On the inside of the trunk, to the back, there is a large store compartment. You should find the red warning triangle and various tools. When the tools are complete (you will very easily notice that), the previous owners were neat as a pin. Well, this is quit a story, but I hope you can profit by it.
I will end by mentioning the facts I and my scholar, did not notice, but in some cases should have. There was a ticking sound at low speed, especially in corners. This turned out to be worn out driving shafts. They had to be replaced (±900 Euro).
The rear windscreen wiper did not function (±20 Euro).
The gear-box leaked a little oil and needed a new packing (±90 Euro).
A speaker of the audio system did not function (±115 Euro).
If you need to know more, please feel free to send me an e-mail.