Do you service your Porsche at the dealer?

[TripleTrophy]

I bought mine with the thought I would do some, but probably not all, of my own work. For the first three years I was too busy to do much, retirement will hopefully be better. So far, I replaced the rods for the convertible top after foolishly breaking them, and just finished servicing the front brakes. Balance has been done by the dealer, and I will have them do an upcoming inspection before PCA DE in August. The dealer labor rate seems high, but parts, while expensive, aren't too bad compared to the import costs from US websites since the exchange and shipping kills the cost advantage. Plus, the parts manager told me he can drop off any parts orders I have to my house! Going forward I will probably review the tools and parts required, along with the amount of effort and degree of crawling under the car and weather (concrete can get quite cold and I'm a wimp_ before deciding.

[bwdz]

The strangest part about this forum is how many people actually take their 15-20 year old car to the dealer or a shop and don't do the wrenching themselves. I have several "enthusiast" vehicles in that age range and on all the other forums that I belong to the only posts are about how to modify or repair the vehicle yourself and few if any people would even consider going to a shop to work on their old car. I think part of the charm of owning a car that is old but you find interesting or in my case couldn't afford when they were new, is wrenching on it yourself. It's like a "hot rod" now, not really practical and not really worth anything so you wrench yourself to make it something reasonable. Thanks to a good buy and repairs performed by me I have under $2k into my Boxster including the purchase price.
I can totally see why the dealers mentioned that seem to provide poor service to owners of these older, not worth much, cars do that. It is probably their experience that a person who has a 5-8k Boxster does not want to replace 10k worth of worn out parts. Mechanics typically work on commission, they get a percentage of every labor hour that is charged and a dealership is in the business of selling parts so as noble as they should be they still have to worry about keeping their doors open so it only makes sense to allocate your resources to the cars that will keep the lights on.

[JFP in PA]

Originally Posted by bwdz

The strangest part about this forum is how many people actually take their 15-20 year old car to the dealer or a shop and don't do the wrenching themselves. I have several "enthusiast" vehicles in that age range and on all the other forums that I belong to the only posts are about how to modify or repair the vehicle yourself and few if any people would even consider going to a shop to work on their old car. I think part of the charm of owning a car that is old but you find interesting or in my case couldn't afford when they were new, is wrenching on it yourself. It's like a "hot rod" now, not really practical and not really worth anything so you wrench yourself to make it something reasonable. Thanks to a good buy and repairs performed by me I have under $2k into my Boxster including the purchase price.
I can totally see why the dealers mentioned that seem to provide poor service to owners of these older, not worth much, cars do that. It is probably their experience that a person who has a 5-8k Boxster does not want to replace 10k worth of worn out parts. Mechanics typically work on commission, they get a percentage of every labor hour that is charged and a dealership is in the business of selling parts so as noble as they should be they still have to worry about keeping their doors open so it only makes sense to allocate your resources to the cars that will keep the lights on.

The principal reason people continue to take them to the dealer is two fold: A dearth of available and/or reliable technical information, and the incredible number of "single use" special tooling required to do serious work on these cars. General maintence is not really an issue, but if you start to get into the deeper stuff, tools get real expensive very quickly.

[bwdz]

Originally Posted by JFP in PA

The principal reason people continue to take them to the dealer is two fold: A dearth of available and/or reliable technical information, and the incredible number of "single use" special tooling required to do serious work on these cars. General maintence is not really an issue, but if you start to get into the deeper stuff, tools get real expensive very quickly.

I get that on internal motor work, most people who have no experience have no business in there anyway, but I was referring to simple straight forward jobs like brakes and clutches, water pumps etc...

[itsnotanova]

Originally Posted by bwdz

I get that on internal motor work, most people who have no experience have no business in there anyway, but I was referring to simple straight forward jobs like brakes and clutches, water pumps etc...

It's becoming a world where less and less people want to get their hands dirty. Or should I say know how to get their hands dirty.