Porsche £500 bangernomics

Another small update.

Changed oils – engine, front and rear diff, and transfer box. Couple of plugs were tight and needed some heat on the casings.

Cleaned up the front subframe and applied Fertan (will do for now till I have time to do it properly).

Stuck replacement Alibaba badge on bonnet.

Insured (£460) and taxed and went for a spin in it!

OMG! What a machine! My daily driver is a 20year old Berlingo so this is somewhat of an upgrade!

The autobox is dimwitted though – I don’t know if it needs it’s adaptations resetting but it changes a lot unnecessary. I’ve been driving it in ‘manual’ or shifting up using the tiptronic wheel buttons.

There’s a whine on the front end, possibly either the diff/propshaft/wheel bearings. Not a problem will sort it👍

Amazing bargain for £500!

How long do you think all of the work you’ve done would have taken at a garage?

I love the idea of a £500 car, I absolutely haven’t got the skills to any of that diagnosis or fixing.

How long do you think all of the work you’ve done would have taken at a garage?

I don’t know to be honest – some of the things I’m doing are standard service stuff but other things are restorative and not the type of work usually done by a normal garage.

Cars at this point are ‘beyond economic repair’ hence why I have this and my £500 Xc90, luckily – I don’t subscribe to that but I’m fortunate to have the space/tools/skillset.

3.2 V6. Is that from the R32 / TT / A3 family?
Mostly a glorious noise and poor consumption.. engine share across the VAG group?

@rickmeister

Yep it’s the R32 / VW VR6 lump with 250 thirsty horsepowers.

It did 26mpg on the hours motorway run bringing it home and it’s done 20mpg clacking around locally.

I said earlier in the thread – I know these cars are dinosaurs in a world of EV’s, this Cayenne will only be used very occasionally for roadtrips/camping/snowy weather commuting.

How long do you think all of the work you’ve done would have taken at a garage?

I don’t know to be honest

Ah well, I’ll “park” that dream 😀:⁠-⁠)

@tall_martin

I’m approx 3 or 4days tinkering into it so far.

I’m planning to put a fair bit of time into it to halt the corrosion on the rear subframe, the exhaust needs dropping and welding and I’m potentially changing the front diff.
Also bare in mind these are only £500 cars because the friends who owned them know I’m going to rebuild and keep them running. Book value for this Cayenne and the XC90 are far higher than £500.

Bangernomics can work though if you can find a decent cheap well looked after car, run it as long as possible whilst doing the absolute minimum of work on it and scrap it when you need to employ the services of a mechanic/garage

Bert appears to need convincing it’s ok!

I had a Peugeot 605 for 17 of its 20 years. I agree with your strategy apart from the “doing the absolute minimum of work on it” bit. I like my cars to be safe and reliable. It eventually drove to the breakers in perfect working order except for the fuel injection system for which I could no longer source parts and all the bits in the breakers were knackered too. If I’d kept it I’d now be able to get all the parts new online.

Oh oh! It’s broken!

I knew the exhaust was knackered and had been bodged with some repair tape – hence why it was cheap. It completely failed last weekend.

Luckily I have 9apart Porsche breakers a few miles away. I had a chat with them previously about running an cheap old Cayenne and to get an idea of parts prices. They have row upon row of bits for them, all properly removed and labelled.

Paid £200 for the silencer, exhaust tips, bumper trim (mine has a small dent in it) and the elusive dash clock adjust button.
All in perfect condition.

Porsche prices are
Silencer £947
Exhaust tips £516 each
Bumper trim £190
Clock button £52

£52 for the microscopic 3d printed clock button seems very reasonable.

You really would have to be a fool to run one of these unless you were a bangernomics guru like the OP

It’s easy to see how they become ‘economically unviable’, parts are expensive and there aren’t aftermarket alternatives. And then there’s labour on top – Porsche specialists won’t be cheap.

Spend so far is ~£1000
Car £500
Service items ~£300
Exhaust bits £200

How long do you think all of the work you’ve done would have taken at a garage?

I love the idea of a £500 car, I absolutely haven’t got the skills to any of that diagnosis or fixing.

My Berlingo was £625 (at peak Covid prices when any other Berlingo with an MOT was £2k+). I think it too a day to tick off the “MOT-prep” list of jobs, and then another day to service and clean it to a state you’d actually want to drive. So over a weekend it went from scrap value to a decent car.

The issue with old cars isn’t so much the time/skills to fix them, the fixing bit is usually very straightforward, just follow the manual and bolt/unbolt stuff in the right order. It’s being able to identify problems, and then splitting them into;
MOT problems (i.e. needs fixing because it’s unsafe even if it has 364 days left on the certificate), serious problems that will cost money if not fixed (e.g. engine faults), and stuff that doesn’t matter (e.g. a rear seatbelt not working, if you don’t need to seat 5 people, just cut it with scissors as if it’s not there it’s not a problem).

“The issue with old cars isn’t so much the time/skills to fix them, the fixing bit is usually very straightforward, just follow the manual and bolt/unbolt stuff in the right order.”

I’m not so sure – I just had to have the front coil springs done on my 10 yr old leaf. An easy job you might think but apparently it was a total nightmare and took three times as long as expected, plus they needed a few tricks to get it sorted without destroying a bunch of other parts as everything was so corroded. Luckily it was a friend of a friend doing it otherwise I would have been charged an absolute fortune instead of a small one!

Small update.

Going aurora borealis spotting in the porker the other night reminded me that the tailgate struts needed changing (common Cayenne fault). It’s not very romantic trying to both sit on the boot lip with the sudden death of the clothes prop giving way and the tailgate decapitating us.

Removed rear C pillar trim and a small section of roof lining. Few clips and trim to access the struts. 30mins of fiddling and swearing had them replaced. Replaced everything – boot works properly again.

Cost for all 4 struts was £80 for Stabilus OEM.

The front differential is noisy – again it’s a common Cayenne fault. The official Porsche service schedule is 160k miles! The front diff only holds 1litre of oil.
I changed it a few weeks ago and went to a heavier gear oil (thicker) ran it for 2weeks then dropped it again. It was black with a shimmer so definitely on its way out.
Replacement diff sourced for £130, along with replacement Corteco seals. Plan is to change it in the next few weeks.

Fixed bulb dimmer switch that had been pushed through🤷‍♂️

Drug dealer spec rear window tints removed.

Cost so far ~ £1300

Isn’t the tax another £400 per year that should be counted? Guess it’s lucky it skipped the really penalty tax bands by a year or so

Isn’t the tax another £400 per year that should be counted? Guess it’s lucky it skipped the really penalty tax bands by a year or so

anything post March 2006 is £700, this is <£400.
A work colleague is looking to replace his tired Freelander2, there isn’t much pre 2006 that has okay MOT history or isn’t completely rotten. He’s offered me £2k for this Cayenne but I’m not selling.

anything post March 2006 is £700, this is <£400.

…. My 2012 is £365.

Have completed the top level of Man-Maths today!

£500 tow car
£16000 caravan

(Collect it Thursday)

He’s offered me £2k for this Cayenne but I’m not selling.

Having read this thread I’d happily hand over £5000 for it in its current condition. Not that I’d buy a Cayenne of course, interesting thread though, for a petrolhead thread. :)

Stuck for something to buy MrsRNP for her 50th I figured nothing quite says happy birthday like a caravan!

T@B 320, German made 2 berth. Collected from near Gateshead, campsite booked for this weekend near Bala.

Porsche did 32mpg on the way to collect and just over 20mpg with caravan attached.

That looks a plush way to overnight 😃

Are you still going down the over landing route on the car?

Thanks for the update. Great thread.

That looks a plush way to over night take

FTFY

I have to say that you look more thrilled than the missus with her birthday present.

Looks great though!

Loving this thread – and happy birthday to Mrs RNP!

That’s a neat little caravan.

Sixteenthousandpounds? Blimey.

Old people! 🤪

Oh, and Happy Birthday to Mrs Bangernomics… 👍🥳

Snap

@onehundredthidiot

Yeah! STW caravan buddy’s!
(How have you got on with it?)

@RustyNissanPrairie pretty good had it for over 10 years now. No complaints only issues the front seal around the window needs the seal taken off and a squeeze of silkaflex to keep it waterproof.

Sixteenthousandpounds? Blimey.

You could buy 32 Porsches for that.

Re. Bangernomics and our caravan;

All caravans are mental prices for a bit of cardboard on wheels. We looked at Eriba/Hymer and they are £30k+ (new).
This T&B is ~£20k new when specced up.

We did miss a bargain T@B earlier this year but didn’t move quick enough.

We’ve worked out that depreciation alone is £800 a year on it (IIRC they first made them in 2005). We went with a caravan as we have 2x tow cars – this Porsche and the XC90 that im rebuilding. The fact our tow cars each cost £500 means we can spend what would normally be car budget on a nice caravan instead (man maths!)

Surely with your interest in overlanding, and mechanical abilities, you should get a unimog or pinzgauer motor home conversion!

“neilnevill
Free Member
Surely with your interest in overlanding, and mechanical abilities, you should get a unimog or pinzgauer motor home conversion!”

I once went to buy a radio/command bodied Zil 131 as MrsRNP was half listening when I blabbed on about multifuel and being free to run on petrol station mis-fuellings. She went bat shit mental when we arrived and she saw it. We bought a roof tent for our Defender instead.

Can’t imagine why Mrs RNP had a problem with the Zil; just the job for popping down to the shops!

Surely with your interest in overlanding, and mechanical abilities, you should get a unimog or pinzgauer motor home conversion!

Where can you realistically make use of them in the UK/Europe?

What’s that matter?!