Servicing

{mosgoogle} Servicing is vitally important for your 928. It not only enables you to keep the car running smoothly and reliably, but also helps to maintain the car’s resale value.

Service Intervals

Porsche recommends a full service every 12,000 miles or 12 months - which ever comes first. Therefore, even if the car has only covered 6,000 miles in a year, it should still have a full service. (This is necessary for a "full" service history - i.e. at least one full service for every year of the car’s life.)

Official Porsche Dealer or Independent Specialist?

This is a decision that every owner must go through - although the answer is usually determined by the wallet! Please remember that a 928 is a very complicated car and is quite different from a 911.

Offical Porsche Centre

In a perfect world every owner would take their car to an Official Porsche Centre (OPC) to be serviced, the theory being that the technicians would have been correctly trained and have all the right tools and manuals at hand to do the job. However, there are three problems with OPCs working on 928s:

• Like every garage, OPCs have a turnover of staff. The 928 ceased production in 1995, so any staff employed after this time will not have been fully trained on it.
• An ever decreasing number of 928 owners take their cars to OPCs for servicing. The technicians, therefore, have a corresponding decrease in their experience of working on the 928.
• OPCs charge very high labour rates and full rates for parts. Work can typically cost over double that of a good specialist.
• OPCs charge very high labour rates and full rates for parts. Work can typically cost over double that of a good specialist. (Repeated. Read again until this sinks in)

Having said all that OPC's use state of the art equipment, have factory trained technicians, and use original Porsche parts and should follow procecures to the letter. If you find an OPC with 928 expertise and you support them they can be a decent option. Ask them and they will give you a list of all the other things they notice. You never need to feel they are doing work for the sake of it. They will tell you if work MUST be done. Just ask them - and tell them your budget if you can.

They are also the only place to keep up to date with factory recalls.

Independent Specialist

There are several 928 only specialists in the UK - Paul Anderson, Martin Dunks, and Adrian Clark. Others have a great 928 reputation - Chris Sanderson, Northway Porsche, Gantpeed Engineering , RGA and Strasse. See our links pages for details.

But just because someone has set themselves up as a Porsche specialist does not mean that they are a Porsche specialist or that they have had the relevant training and are sufficiently competent.

A good specialist will have Porsche trained technicians (meaning they will have worked at an OPC). They will have the correct facilities and tools / manuals etc. They will also have years of experience of working on the 928.

Sadly some garages just see the 928 as a licence to print money. Watch out for the 'its got an oil leak' 'needs a top end rebuild' needs torque tubes' needs AC rebuild' 'needs brake caliper strip and refurb' - these are expensive and you dont have to do them immediately and can do some of them yourself.