Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Sentiment in the Trad market.

I always found that odd, the 996 was known for some of the cylinder problems. It is not as if they had no experience with a water-cooled car before. The 968, 928 engines were rock solid from my experience. At least if we look at Porsche the chances of knowledge and parts are very good compared to most other marques. It's the knowledge bit that scares me. Ask someone about servicing a Monteverdi or Iso and you will get a quizzical stare never mind a recommendation. I do worry that the Aero is going that way.

Which is worrying since the service documents have mostly gone computer based now and the old pile of paper to review during the qualification is missing. I do see the benefit of it only being accessed by known partners but a requirement to be able to inspect the cars history is missing at a public level. It would be good if you could access this using a key provided on the V5 or dealer network in some way.

I used to like the pile of paper as it provided a guide to what the general upkeep of a car was. I looked at a Maserati once, only once as the out of warranty paperwork was a foot thick and the average bill had four figures without the decimals.

I always liked his other film "right turn clyde".

I think this will benefit the Trads a lot in the future. Some electronics but not rocket scientist level.

I hear you... while the Aeros are fundamentally a V8 5 Series BMW, the independent garages and the blokes in oily overalls that hang out there are becoming a rare breed. The mews behind us used to offer up an indy Saab dealer + 7 pr 8 works, specialising in 'everything', VW, BMW, and more. Now we're down to 3, with the sites for the rest being rebuilt as homes, or converted to yoga studios (welcome to Hove!)

The independents are I guess faced with buying ever-more complex diagnostic kit, or working only on older cars.

Will

It will not take too much especially for more modern cars with greater electronic and emission control systems to be forced off the road by eg manufacturers instructed not to hold stocks for cars say not say Euro 6 compliant or for the MOT emissions testing to be come more demanding and failing cars not meeting original emissions standards when new, especially with the widespread cheating that went on by most vehicle manufacturers in recent years to achieve lower emissions.

Doesn't take too much to clear the roads of ICE, eg force the fitment of catalytic convertors to older pre 1992 vehicles to clean up their emissions, so many ways to go about it.

Indeed. A simple application of whole life carbon tax on a litre of fuel would do it. If you tax the emissions not only of actually using the fuel, but add in the costs of extraction, refining, and transportation, you get around 3.3kg of CO2/gallon of fuel, which would make it enormously expensive.

https://innovationorigins.com/en/producing-gasoline-and-diesel-emits-more-co2-than-we-thought/

So even if ICE cars aren't legislated off the road, it won't be long before we can't afford to run them anyway.

I doubt EV would come out squeeky clean from a similar whole-life audit ... far worse in some stages of their life

K

Indeed. It's a bit easier to clean up the fuel source for electric vehicles, and they are great for getting rid of tailpipe emissions in cities, but their environmental cost is still uncomfortably high. To me, they represent an attractive stepping stone for those able to take advantage of their benefits, but a universal solution they most definitely are not.

I don't think that the scrappage stage of EV's has even been considered. Where do you pile up old batteries and how do you achieve an environmentally safe disposal.

Within a few miles are several used tyre sites, and inevitably they catch fire, and send a huge plume of toxic gas and carbon particles into the atmosphere. Just one example of badly thought through, and badly policed end of life disposal.

During my time with Customs, there were containerloads of defunct fridges being sent to Africa, and it doesn't take much imagination to figure out where all the cfcs ended up.

While Porsche were ever better engineered than Morgans, also that Porsche do have a considerable spares back-up for older cars and there seems to be independent Porsche expertise covering many large cities and towns, those who service and repair Porsches even outside the official dealership are likely to charge a rather high hourly rate... So much so that the term "Porsche tax" seems to be accepted relating to the price of any costs connected to the marque by those paying out of their own pocket to maintain their cars....

Cheap Porsche...? Yeah well no matter if the car might be an old 924 or a new 911 derivative, the hourly rate will likely be the same.

From 996 through to 997.1 there was ever the chance of bore scoring, which was perhaps in some part put down to enthusiastic driving before the engine was up to temperature, there were also potential IMS issues the interweb has plenty info on such things... Though it seems there may be some older regularly used high mileage water cooled 911 derivative Porsches still going strong... Lengthy lay-ups seem to be unkind to any ICE car..?

BTW, if looking for a cheap Porsche, Perhaps best not to go back to look at pre 996, as the prices of air cooled Porsches rise considerably, and by my judgement seem somewhat ... NUTS..? No point in arguing with the market though..?

At least it seems Porsche may still be prepared to look after their older products, whereas it seems JLR and perhaps others may not wish to work on older machinery, perhaps to avoid all the corrosion that can extend repair times considerably, let alone create piles of rust on the clean workshop floor...?

As for comparing a early water cooled Porsches to pre-digital (mid 80`s..?) carb fed Morgans with their pseudo vintage simplicity....Hmm..? I do understand that modern "technicians" may not like to get their hands dirty and may be somewhat lost in terms of understanding old tec issues given the lack of an OBD port, but I also suspect there will ever be those born with some collection of mechanical understanding chromosomes, a real interest in the way things might work, and with basic computer skills can beam up TM, GoMoG and other Morgan mechanical resources, where they will find answers to just about every Morgan question ever asked, though finding folk with those skills might become ever more difficult to the extent that they end up in time charging more than Porsche type tecs.... (-: ?

There's no such thing as a cheap porsche.
A simple widget, if it was for a ford etc etc, would cost £1, for a Porsche it's £20.....and you'll need 6 of them........+ the fitting kit, new gaskets etc etc..! You'll have to drop the engine out.....and while you've got it out you might as well do..................

Before you know it, with labour and vat, a simple job has cost £3000...!
If you need body work, kidney bowls etc, on air cooled cars you're looking at considerable expense......🤷🏻‍♂️😱

I know all this to be a fact because I've bought a couple of 'cheap' Porsches...!

A cheap Morgan is a far better proposition.......!😆

When I worked with EDF they had a plan worked up with Nissan to re-purpose end of life EV batteries into grid storage arrays, packing loads of them into shipping containers to allow storage of solar-generated electricity. It wouldn't matter that the batteries were less efficient than they needed to be for an EV because they weren't going anywhere.

The idea was sound, the problem was that they couldn't get enough end of life batteries because they were lasting far longer than the predicted lifespan. It was thought that after 10 years or so the batteries would be no good for use in cars, turns out they were hopelessly pessimistic and the actual life of vehicle batteries is turning out to be far longer.