What's Wrong With This Picture: Guess It's Not REALLY Air-Cooled, Then
My local Porsche dealer, Midwestern Auto Group, doesn’t bother to offer an oil-change special. Why should they? We all line up to pay $249 or more to have it done, since only a fool would give Porsche Cars North America a chance to deny warranty coverage. The 15,000-mile service on my Boxster S was $789, and from what I hear, that’s a reasonable price. The 60,000-mile service on my 993 was $2420, but since the old airboxer is out of warranty I had it done at an independent shop and saved a grand.
This newest special, pictured above, has me concerned, because it implies that someone is a bit fuzzy on how these German wundercars actually work. Does brake fluid really have anything to do with the engine? It could be a system like the one found in the Citroen SM. If the headlamps in your SM stop auto-leveling on your way down the road, it’s the first and last warning you might get that you’re about to involuntarily lower your ride height from now until the moment you end up in the Armco.
More by Jack Baruth
Comments
Join the conversation
People think I'm crazy when I often state "having a factory warranty is often more of a liability than an asset"
I'm not about defending dealers but it's easy to cackle about the price (which is really a screaming deal) in the ad if you drive a VW, Toyonda, Buick or otherwise have no idea what you are talking about. The properly bleed the Porsche brakes, you must cycle the ABS pump with the proprietary Porsche diagnostic software. Otherwise, old fluid, or errant air bubble will sit in that part of the system waiting for the day you activate it with a stomp on the brakes. That's probably 10 large for the machine and 5K/year for the software update..but you know that since it sits in your garage. Porsche calipers can have both inboard and outboard bleed screws (do you know which one to bleed first??) can you say "double the work". The master cylinder reservoir cannot be fully emptied, so you need to run a few cycles through which wheel first...I keep forgetting, but you know which one. ....and have you used the special low-viz (yeah, that's it, low "visibility"-not) factory brake fluid that insures maximum cycles/sec of the ABS pump which may mean missing some meatball that cut's you off as you bury your foot into the pedal and flail the steering wheel- but what's 15% more cycles/sec between friends? Not to mention (although it doesn't apply here), the liability you assume when someone comes in with ceramic brakes. Putting the wheel back without putting in the double guide pins first, risks banging the disk with the wheel and cracking or chipping the disk-but that's ok- since instead of replacing the $2k disk, they can buy your beater with the clean brake fluid for a few hundred. At least the Porsche guy can drive home. Can you bleed Porsche brakes yourself, sure can, but the factory procedure performed by the dealer is much more involved that blowing up a Motive with Pep-Boys SuperDuty brake fluid in it. BD
Reading this, makes me kinda wish Honda didn't stop building the S2000. That was the only sane alternative to Boxster on the market, and for 2/3 of the Porsche's price. Many people drive them for 100,000 miles without doing anything other than scheduled fluid changes.
Ah, the low spark of high-heeled cynics. No, you do not need to cycle the ABS in order to flush your fluid every couple years with fresh fluid. The tiny bit of fluid in there is meaningless when mixed into the rest. Flushing the clutch line and four wheels (yes, in order) is more than sufficient. No, don't use the Pep-Boys special DOT4. Simple enough to get Motul or ATE fluid for $18. Or the factory fluid for $25. No, the second bleeder screw adds no more than about ten seconds to each corner. And, if you track your car as I do (and, I suspect, BostonDuce does not), flushing fluid every 2-3 DEs would be insane at the dealer. From both a cost and a hassle standpoint. Would they even put in RBF600 for you? Or the boil-o-rama factory fill? Take yours to the dealer and pay the big bucks if it makes you happy -- that's the whole premise of owning a Porsche in the first place, it ain't the cheapest 300hp coupe you can buy. But don't let the "it takes super-special training" jabber scare you from doing it yourself. There's no magic to most of the routine maintenance they do at the dealer, as many of my PCA friends have learned. But if, in Boston, they don't go for that sort of stuff -- hey, good on ya!