944 Barn Find, Need A Bit Of Help

[speno 239 2 Cars]

Got a chance to buy a 944 2.7 1990 car ( non turbo )

Basically one owner, low mileage , been kept in a garage all its life and not been used for at least 5-6 years may be more

What kind of things am I best looking at when viewing the car ?

I've done the old google search , but you cant beat first hand experience

anyone know roughly how much its worth too ( i know this is kinda hard ) but with being stood for ages i guess it needs tyres , brakes ( overhaul ) and engine service / cambelt

Cheers Folks

[kyepan 291]

jay on here the owner of my old car had one.. see if you can get his email add from his profile.

[speno 239 2 Cars]

http://forum.205gtidrivers.com/index.php?showuser=2960

This Jay ?

cheers

[Baz 421]

So it hasnt actually been found in a barn then?

 

Pretty sure Justin has or had one too.

 

 

[stu8v 68 1 Cars]

Not that sought after and not worth a great deal TBH.

 

I was looking at an MOT failure 944S2, just balljoints, tyres etc

 

That was only worth £1500 tops

[GLPoomobile 958]

jay on here the owner of my old car had one.. see if you can get his email add from his profile.

 

Completely off topic, but I didn't realise your 205 used to be Jay's. I met him a couple of times, when he replaced the lower engine mount on my old Graphite 1.9, and we went out in his 944 on what turned out to be a ridiculous hunt around Reading to find someone who could actually press the bush out and in of the mount. Nice guy It was him that inspired me to get my own tools and start working on my 205s myself instead of being intimidated by my lack of knowledge.

 

The Miami looked quite nice back then. What went wrong

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

Spen, a good mate of mine has a 944 which he has completed a full nut and bolt rebuild on. I'll drop him your first post in an email and let you know his thoughts.

All I'll say is that if you are expecting your arse to drop out with brute power then you will be very disappointed, they are a good handling car though.

[Anthony 1,003]

A good 944 S2 (with an MOT, obviously) is worth rather more than £1500 - two to three times that, minimum.

 

I'd argue that if you had a failure sheet confirming that it was only comparitively minor faults, then even without MOT it was worth more than that. Big MOT worry as I understand is rust despite them being galvanised, and certainly I've seen a few with sills that resemble a colander.

 

Standard 944's aren't worth huge money though even in good order (£1k-£3k or so), and from what I understand, whilst comparitively hardy and cheap to run/fix (in Porsche terms at least) they still can be a money pit if you buy a bad one. The 8v variants (such as the 2.7) are fairly tough and largely problem free as I understand providing that servicing intervals have been adhered to, in part thank to having a cambelt rather than the sometimes troublesome/costly chain on the 16v's.

 

No direct experience of owning one, but I did consider one for a while and hence looked into them. There's quite a few buyers guides out there if you do a search that would be worth reading.

[Paul_13 212 1 Cars]

The Miami looked quite nice back then. What went wrong

That made me laugh hard!

[TT205 42]

I had a 1984 2.5 944 Lux for about 4 years back in the early 90's

 

I loved it - to this day it was the most comfortable car I have driven - 200 miles and get out as though you've got to the local shop

 

0-60 times aren't very impressive, flooring it in third from about 50 always felt good though

 

So long as you know it's fairly quick but nothing special but does handle well you won't be lead up the garden path, I loved the low driving position

 

My favourite was power slides on every right turn from a junction

 

Only rust on mine was on the 'join' at the sides of the rear hatch where ?the rear wings join to the body work

 

Front arms (ball joints) don't seem to last long (or rear tyres )

[welshpug 1,657]

few guy's on Retrorides know them very well, theres a specialist about on there too IIRC, have a project thread http://retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=readersrides&action=display&thread=90280&page=1

 

I think they can look awesome.

 

[Justin 9]

I had a 944 S2 for a while and loved it - was an awesome mile muncher and rock steady on the Autobahn,as well as being good fun on a damp roundabout;

 

 

There's no such thing a a cheap Porsche. I had mine for three years and did about 15000 miles using it as a third car. During that time I did the basic servicing and things like discs and pads but got the cambelt, tensioner pad and balance belt (they have a contra-rotating balancing shaft to counter the vibrations inherent to a big 4 pot) changed by a specialist and didn't get much change from £900.00, but it's essential that it's done right. IIRC they're all belt driven, but the S2 16V also has a short chain and tensioner pad linking the camshafts which is often over looked.

 

I also had to deal with leaking fuel lines. They run above the rear axle and are a pain to get to. Rather than change the complete lines I used some braided hose that I had made by Pirtek and threaded it over the axle and connected to the decent pipe either side.

 

I also had to deal with rust. Generally they're not too bad, but the S2 particularly suffers from rusty sills as they're a bit of crud trap; there is a plastic vent in the shut of each door that you can pop out to squirt Waxoyl into. For mine I had the rusty metal cut out and new sills grafted in. Again this was done by a specialist who charged £1500.00.

 

They also benefit hugely from a decent geometry set up; everything is adjustable (usually will be seized). Mine was set up with negative camber when I got it but I had Promax spend a day freeing everything off and setting it up right which transformed it an was well worth the £300.00 it cost.

 

I guess you might expect this from any 20+ year old car. Mine had 130k on the clock when I sold it and felt like it would do that again. Rust aside, they are built like a bank vault. And pop up lamps are just cool.

 

As has been suggested, a ropey one would be worth buttons. If it's rust free and just needs a mechanical refresh it could be worth doing - there's a very tidy 2.7 on Pistonheads for £3450 at the moment, although IMHO that's a bit steep.

 

Justin.

Edited December 7, 2012 by Justin

[matt.f 16]

I think they are smart

[speno 239 2 Cars]

Cheers for the input so far folks All appreciated good or bad

[Baz 421]

Tbh ive always had a soft spot for them since i was a lad.

 

A good friend of mine got lucky and bought an earlier 2.5 a couple of years ago for about £800 iirc and it actually turned out to be a fairly decent one. Tidy in black with a set of cookie cutters that were apparently worth a fair chunk of that alone. Was a fun car but wasn't mega quick, we had a bit of fun in the snow in it though!

[TT205 42]

we had a bit of fun in the snow in it though!

 

I once got stuck on a relatively gentle hill in mine with only an inch or so of snow on it, everything passed me. I was on a country lane and didn't fancy abandoning the car there so let the rear tyres down in the vain hope it might help - it did - it just drove out and when I got to the corner at the top where everyone else had then got stuck - I just drove straight past them - not bad on ?225's ?235's I thought!

 

If you are into physics - this really shouldn't have worked as well as it did but hey ho!

 

I had a Mk1 MR2 after the 944 and that was brilliant in snow with the engine over the back axle - but if the snow was deep it would 'surf' and lift the front end up and veer off, so you had to come off the power, let the front drop - steer, back on the power ..... and repeat

Edited December 8, 2012 by TT205