Considering the age of the 986 series, it’s a pretty safe bet that the vast majority of the folks who patronize this website bought their cars used.
And as we’ve gone thru the process of fettling our cars, I’d also bet that every now and then you’ve come across a bodged makeshift repair of some sort performed by the Previous Owner (P.O.) – the sort of thing that makes you scratch your head and say “Huh? Just WHAT were they thinking?”.
So I thought that it might be fun to document these buggered repair and screwed-up maintenance works performed by our P.O.’s here in this thread, for the amusement of the rest of us.
I’ll start.
When one works on or around the engine underbody plastic shroud, one will soon discover that a portion of it is held to the chassis of the car via a pair of brackets, one located just in front of each of the rear tires.
And so, the Question: What do you do if one side’s bracket does not seem to quite line up at all with the bolt holes in the chassis and the plastic shroud?
Answer 1): Easy – You just simply cut away the parts of the bracket which hit the chassis parts and which interfere with the fit. The fact that one portion of the shroud is then left flapping and unsecured was seemingly not much of a concern, apparently, to my P.O.
Or else, Answer 2): You buy the correct part (as I’ve just done) and turn it the right way around. Notice the front pointing directional arrow stamped into the part, which my P.O. must have thought just did not apply to them.
The bit which boggles my mind is that the owner’s history of my car shows that almost all of the past maintenance work ever done on the car was performed at their local Porsche dealer’s service department. I appear to be the first owner of the car who does their own DIY work. Now, wouldn’t you think that a ‘factory trained’ mechanic, as employed by an authorized dealer, could have figured this one out?
Anyone else have any similar stories (and pictures are always helpful)?
Cheers - DM
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