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My wife and I flew to PHX last week, rental car to Tucson and met with the sellers (husband and wife).
Did the deal, then went to a nice B&B downtown, where we kicked off celebration of the purchase (and ST. Patrick's Day) at a Guinness pub.
My wife and I got married in Como Italy in 2000 and the ceremony only occurred thanks to a nice couple that ran a Guinness pub in Como, so we have a soft spot for the pubs, but that's a different story.
The drive home went well with no real issues.
I did have to fix the sunroof enroute.
The rear of the sunroof would lift 2 - 4 inches off the chassis when trucks drove by.
Turned out that the 2 metal "cams" that insert into the sunroof brackets were below the bracket and not inserted into the brackets.
Simple fix, my wife pushed the button to retract the cams, I pushed down on the sunroof from above and my wife pushed the button to raise the sunroof which allowed the cams to go into the brackets.
(In retrospect, that should have been my first clue that the seller was not a talented mechanic).
The car got 32 mpg while averaging 85 mph across the desert (RTE8).
I may have tested stability at a sustained 120 mph and may have gone as fast as an indicated 138 mph before losing faith in the tyres....................
The drive home also taught me that the car has a lotta rattles, even though I specifically asked the owner about this and he said no (he was quite elderly, so hearing acuity may have been an issue).
I fully expected to have to fix things on a 30 year old car and put a few items on the fix immediately list.
Troubleshoot and resolve nasty rattle in year decklid area = simple fix, the fastener for the spare wheel was loose allowing metal to metal rattle
Troubleshoot and resolve nasty rattles in the drivers side dash area = planned
Troubleshoot and resolve nasty rattles in the rear hatch area = planned. I'm pretty sure this is endemic across 924 / 944 / 968 chassis, so hopefully well know path.
Well, as I stated above, I fully expected to have to fix things on a 30 year old car . I was not planning that one of things may likely be a replacement or rebuild of the transmission.
Apparently the previous owner chose to not disclose a problem. When I asked him the other day if he wanted to discuss "functionality or lack thereof of the transmission", he just replied, "No".
I know the car was bought sight unseen, as is, caveat emptor, but I would not do such a thing.
Nearly every time I sell a car the new owner comes back to me and says, "this car is better than expected".
Certainly not the case with the 968.
I did a search in the archives and not much info on tippy 968s.
I'll start a new thread and ask some questions.
That's really a bummer. I pretty much disclose 100% of absolutely everything when I sell a car. I don't know if that helps me or hinders me.
I recently sold my 07 Audi S8 on Cars and Bids and the guy thought it was so much better than I advertised it as. It was super clean, I had owned it for 11 years and always garaged it.
Best of luck. Buying through an online auction and never seeing the car in person is a crap shoot.
Very sorry to hear about the transmission trouble @cgfen .
It sounds like it didn’t start acting up until you got home?
If it were me I might post my experience as a comment on the Bring a Trailer auction. It’s a warning to others to not trust that seller, though in this case he may never do so again.
But others might have more to add too.
Sorry to hear of the transmission trouble.....to be fair the former owner may have known nothing about it. You openly stated that you drove the car 6 hours from Phoenix home with sustained high speeds and never had any troubles. A few days later the trans starts acting up on a 30 year old car?? Not what you want for sure.....but not sure what I have read so far deserves public humiliation and to be cancelled on BAT. I would expect the owners to be a little more sympathetic to your phone call for sure, but in all fairness they probably never had any trouble??
Ok, next steps. I was able to locate a used transmission at a breaker that has 44k miles but has sat on the shelf since 2002!
I take delivery today and plan to swap out the valve body as first step.
I've messed around with many auto transmissions, MOPAR muscle cars, so hopefully valve body swap should be easy.
Also trying to sort out uber annoying hatch rattles. Amazing how a car can squeak as soon as it accelerates to 2mph. I'm looking into old threads / remedies.
I'll probably tag onto or start another thread to work towards resolution.
I won't go into detail, but after discussion with the seller and BaT, we agreed on a satisfactory resolution to the transmission issue.
I will say that BaT far exceeded my expectations and I give them Kudo's for EXCELLENT customer service.
I took delivery of the used transmission last week.
No obvious issues externally or from transport.
My plan (was) to change out the "hydraulic control unit" from the newly delivered trans into the one in the car.
I'm pretty sure that the issue is a failing solenoid or wiring or something similar because when the car exhibits inability to shift above 2nd, I can always get it to work correctly by briefly shifting to neutral while rolling, then back to drive.
So, this is what the hydraulic control unit (HCU) looks like once the pan and filter are removed.
Sadly a bit more complicated than I was expecting.
To remove the unit, it looks like I'll have to remove at least one / two layers to get to the fasteners that hold it to the case.
I'm going to do a bit more sniffing around, but if that's the case, I'm going to divert to plan B and just swap trannies.
I'm concerned that as i disassemble the HCU's layers, I may frack something up which will defeat the purpose of buying the unit.
My next door neighbor used to run a transmission repair / rebuild shop.
I'll ask him for a bit of help to determine path forward.
03-21-2023, 02:29 PM
My first time 968 ownership journey
