Hi -

I think I am following into your footsteps with my 997tt. Did the repair ultimately fix the leak problem?

Tomek
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wow.. what side was the leak on? Driver or passenger?

 

They do not know yet. The leak comes from atop of the engine block, though, and the only thing one can easily see is a puddle of coolant under the car between the rear wheels.

 

this is what I discovered few days back, major coolant leak!!

 

my car is still under dealer warranty though, should that be covered completely guys?

 

I had the same problem on my 996 Turbo and the dealer's price was about the same. Luckily I had an extended warranty so it only cost me a couple of hundred bucks.

That's what a warranty is for isn't it?

 

so that does fall under warranty, glad to hear so

 

Yes. I was lucky that my CPO warranty took care of my coolant leak.

 

Your car looks more like water pump failure to me. Have you heard any noise from the back lately?

 

Oh... I still have one year of CPO on my 997tt left, so I hope it will be declared covered by warranty as in the SWC's case. Or else, we are at $2300 as of now and still counting.

By the way, here is a pretty good article covering coolant leaks,

http://sharkwerks.com/porsche/techni...urbo-cars.html

Any experience with replacing original plastic pipes with one's made of stainless steel?

 

I don't recall any noise from the back, the leak was from the right back side (passenger side), is that where the water pump is?

I wonder how reliable porsche is if we get all those major problems and it is only 30k miles

 

It's close to 60k miles in my case, but I had a numerous issues (main power cable corrosion, window motor failure, two various sensors failed, at least one valve replacement, and two or three vacuum leaks) in less than a year. Now it is likely that coolant elbow pipe. It has to make one wonder about Porsche's reliability indeed. On the other hand, I bought a used car. No accidents reported, but the car had some exterior upgrades/changes (front bumper, rear bumper) for no obvious reason. Well, the previous used 996tt had seen less frequent visits to the shop, but it was not problem free either.

 

70 quarts of Mobil1 0w40 to repair a coolant leak...?

 

Not sure where the water pump is located but when my water pump failed, huge amount of coolant was leaked on the floor and I had a little noise before it happened.

They put 7 quarts of oil, not 70.lol It's a typo. They had to remove oil coolers in order to access coolant pipes.

 

I think there is an obvious reason. The bumper covers are one of the most replaced items as an appearance mod, especially the front bumper cover. If you look just at this forum you'll find the bumper covers on many, many of our cars have been changed (including mine!) for no other reason than appearance.

As with any car, some examples have very few problems, and some have many. A forum like this is where people come to get help, so you're always going to see a lot of problems posted about. People don't come here often to say "I have no problems with my car and everything works great!"

All of us have bought Porsches at least in part because of their reliability versus other sports/luxury/exotic/supercars. Just look at Ferraris. They're much better than they used to be, but in general they break down WAY more than Porsches and require WAY more maintenance!