love this forum,but!!

[Daniel R]

One must remember that what one reads on these boards is a heavily biased sample.

For a start, we have seen many single-digit posters on here with catastrophic failures, those people would have never joined the forum if their car was running well.

The experts that post on these boards also greatly bias the sample. These guys have generally been around for some time, long enough to see just about everything and to create very good names for themselves in the Porsche community. This leads to them getting more and more work because of their reputation, then because they are so busy they will tend to increase their prices. Your average Joe will not pay a higher rate for a simple job that any mechanic can do, so they use the local guy for the simple stuff. When things go seriously wrong though, they hunt out the expert, money no object. This means that the experts will see far more than their fair share of serious failures. Also, when an expert shares their knowledge in a forum regarding IMS bearings or D-chunk failures or broken crankshafts or whatever, forum members actively seek them out when such a thing happens to their car, further compounding the sample bias of forum members.

All of what I am describing is completely innocent by the way. No one is out to scare you for their own benefit or anything like that, it is just that the statistics can be very deceiving without looking at where the sample data has been collected from.

My personal belief is that we are very fortunate to have this bank of knowledge as a reference point, just about every common and not so common failure is described somewhere on these boards, most of the time with a solution. Just like in every other aspect of life however, certainly in this "information age", we are bombarded with "information" and "mis-information" and the most successful people are those that filter out the noise from the message and more importantly interpret that message the correct way.

Just my 2c

[Daniel R]

By the way, I have a 2000S with 130k miles. Original IMS bearing, original clutch and flywheel until 3 weeks ago. I bought a new RMS to replace when the transmission was out but the mechanic refused to change it since the original was still such a perfect seal (no oil at all, completely dry) and he felt that the risk of creating a leak was not worth changing the part.

Total maintenance:

Oil and filter changes every 10k
2 AOS's
2x brake pads, 1x pads and discs
3x brake fluid change
1x water pump and coolant flush
1x clutch and flywheel (only 3 weeks ago)
4x tyre change

[johnsimion]

Reliability is not a problem. My 08 Cayman has been very reliable in 4 years and 17K miles of ownership (naturally, while under warranty). The problem with these cars is the risk that the engine breaks. On most cars, they might have a bad water pump or alternator or something like that. Easily repairable with a few hundred or maybe a thousand. Most people can handle that. I never heard of ANYONE with any other model of car whose entire engine blew up -- until I started reading this forum. Then, when the engine does blow, it's five figures to replace it, unless you just get another used engine with the same problem, and I know at least one person for whom lightning did indeed strike twice. And that five-figure repair bill -- together with the risk of accident and requirement for a tow from God-knows-where -- IS a problem.

I am fortunate that the 06-08 models seem to be statistically reliable in the IMS department. Good thing, too, because the IMS isn't reasonably replaceable from 06-08. If I had an older model with the replaceable IMS, I'd get the LN replacement or "IMS Solution" and just drive it moderately maintain it well, and there should be very little risk of big dollar repairs after that (I personally would never track my street vehicle, that is asking for trouble like scored cylinders or overrevs and the like, but to each his own). In fact, the older models with the LN IMS are probably one of the safest bets around. Not perfect, but close.