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Ronzi · 12-05-2005, 08:03 AM

Brucelee is on the money about the current general state of competence of independant Porsche shops to truly maintain and repair late-model Porsches, Box and Carrera both.
As time goes on, we will begin to see 986/996-trained Porsche techs migrating into the independant shops, but not a lot of that has happened as yet. Plus the independants usually will not have the diagnostic computer eqpt the dealers have to invest in. The $4,500 one the dealers have is NOT the same as the $80 one you can buy from Auto Zone.
I took my car to an indie for it's yearly oil change and check-over a month or so ago. The shop is well-respected in the area, in business for 20-plus years, works on everything from 550 Spyders to, well, Boxsters. Their bread-and-butter business is of course the '70s and '80s 911s. While they did as far as I could tell a decent enough job of that simple operation, I did not come away with a lot of confidence that they did, or could do, much more than look to see that nothing was falling off the car. While the cost of $135 was about half the cost quoted to me by the dealer, I think I got about half the job, too.

12-05-2005, 08:03 AM	#7
Ronzi Registered User Join Date: May 2004 Location: Denver CO Posts: 748	Brucelee is on the money about the current general state of competence of independant Porsche shops to truly maintain and repair late-model Porsches, Box and Carrera both. As time goes on, we will begin to see 986/996-trained Porsche techs migrating into the independant shops, but not a lot of that has happened as yet. Plus the independants usually will not have the diagnostic computer eqpt the dealers have to invest in. The $4,500 one the dealers have is NOT the same as the $80 one you can buy from Auto Zone. I took my car to an indie for it's yearly oil change and check-over a month or so ago. The shop is well-respected in the area, in business for 20-plus years, works on everything from 550 Spyders to, well, Boxsters. Their bread-and-butter business is of course the '70s and '80s 911s. While they did as far as I could tell a decent enough job of that simple operation, I did not come away with a lot of confidence that they did, or could do, much more than look to see that nothing was falling off the car. While the cost of $135 was about half the cost quoted to me by the dealer, I think I got about half the job, too.