It’s now been a month since we purchased our 2005 Porsche 911 C4S. This blog should be a summing up of a month’s worth of Oregon Club Porsche tours, with praise pointed at how easy the car is to use, how much I appreciate the climate controls, and even an explanation of why I decided to spend $10 on some classic oldies CDs instead of $3,000 on an Apple CarPlay head unit.
Alas, that’s not the way things have played out.
First and most important, I still don’t know the status of the IMS bearing.
We’ve kept Matt Crandall and the Avant-Garde Collection (911r on BaT) busy selling our 1971 Jaguar E-type for a healthy $52,763, including buyer’s premium. Now they are prepping our 50,000-mile narrow-body 1975 911S Sportomatic with its original tweed and tartan cloth interior and freshened engine. It will be offered at no reserve in the near future.
But there have been other issues besides investigating the IMS status. I left to go on a Porsche drive a few weeks ago, and on the way to the staging area heard a loud “pop” from the rear of the car. We were on a four-lane highway, so pulled over as soon as we could.
The left rear tire was low, and we later found out we had picked up a nail.
There was a chain tire store five miles ahead, so we drove there at a reduced speed. However, we still managed to destroy the sidewall.
The shop was pleasant enough, and said they would give us a “friendly price” on a pair of 295/30ZR18 Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires.
I was not exactly in a position to price shop. “Will you hold for a second while I call a few other shops to see if they can beat your price?” didn’t seem like an option.
My invoice came to $1,513.94. When I posted that on social media, the immediate response was that if I had gone to Costco or even Discount Tire, I could have bought four tires for the price I was being charged for two. Other comments suggested that the Pilot Sport Cup 2 might not have been the best choice of tire, since it’s a pure summer tire.
But again, my car was broken. It was at the tire shop, and I didn’t have to call a tow truck to get there. I could leave the 911 there while they waited for the tires to arrive. To my mind I was just lucky that it wasn’t worse.
But the bad news doesn’t stop here.
We discovered that when the tire went flat it damaged the rear driver’s side rim, which now has a slow leak.
I’m waiting to hear back from Avant-Garde’s service manager John Harworth, as he keeps finding solutions to my problems. I’m hoping that maybe he’ll have a line on a source for a good used wheel. I’ve looked on eBay, and solid-spoke rear wheels range from $400-$600 with shipping.
In any event, I’ll likely be out another $2,000 above what I paid for the car, and I haven’t driven 20 miles yet.
Needless to say, but this is not the way I expected this “relationship of convenience” to begin.
But I’m a big boy, and used cars are used cars, and this is just the beginning of the tale.
Would you have made different decisions in this case? Do you have a spare rear 996 wheel you’d like to sell?
I look forward to reading your replies in the comments below.
Read my previous blog posts here.
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