Pre Purchase Inspection

I am always preaching to people that you do not purchase a used car without having a qualified shop perform a pre purchase inspection to check for potential issues a new owner might be faced with. I helped out an old freind in Colorado who had found this car for a client. The intended purpose would be a Driver’s Education car.

A nice little example of a 964, with about 140k miles on it.

Standard engine bay with a K&N filter.

I found a pretty serious oil leak on the driver’s side underneath the car. This wasn’t good, and I couldn’t really see where it was coming from. The cars do have some lines up top as well as seals that can leak and cause issues like this.

Underneath the intake there was some oil pooling from a line that could easily cause the leaks on the driver’s side, but without replacing everything, you won’t know if the leak stopped or not. .

PPI’s will check for a host of things nose to tail on a car. Seat wear is one of them.

Owner’s manuals etc should all be present.

But they can also check for the internal health of the engine. Unfortunately, when doing the leakdown test and compression test, the 3rd cylinder did not have good results. I tried multiple different gauges and different testing on the engine after numerous rotations, but the numbers kept coming back 125psi compression and 75% leakdown….not good. Through the top plug, through the bottom plug, it just didn’t change at all. Since the car has sat awhile, could it be from carbon buildup on the valves? Hard to say, but a few hundred dollars saved a potential new owner from many thousands of dollars in repairs. Nobody likes to see results like this, but this is a good example of why you perform tests like this before purchasing a car. Unfortunately the buyer had to pass on this car and will keep searching for that example that fits his needs.

964Compression TestLeakdown testPorschePPIPre Purchase Inspection