This past May, I bought a 2006 Cayman S and had it shipped from California to Wisconsin. I’ve put about 4,000 miles on it in that time and noticed some smoky startups and oil consumption in the range of a quart every 500-1000 miles. After trying some easier fixes and diagnostics, this past weekend I used a borescope to take a look through the spark plug hole to look for bore scoring. Sure as shit, my cylinder 6 has fairly significant scoring.
This now leads me to the predicament of what to do with the car. It still runs quite well with exception of consuming oil (and likely spark plugs) and the oil consumption. A full rebuild to machine out the cylinders and fit sleeves is $8k+, replacement engines are $10k+, and I got a quote from Carmax to buy the car for $14k (about $8k below a good condition car). So pretty much every scenario I’m losing at least $8k.
I did have the car inspected and they gave a clean bill of health. I’m trying to figure out if I have any recourse concerning how they didn’t catch one of the most prominent failure modes of the car or note the smoky startups. I’m also trying to figure out if the dealer that sold me the car knew of any issues and failed to disclose them. I can’t imagine I have a leg to stand on but still curious if there’s any sort of consumer protection I can claim since it feels like I got pretty screwed. From service records included with the car, I have the previous owner’s contact information so I’m going to reach out to him and see if he knew of issues and disclosed anything to the dealer that sold me the car.
As far as what to do with the car, I leaning towards selling it but of course would have to disclose the bore scoring. I’m considering bringatrailer, because that seems like my best chance in someone paying decent money for a project. It’s also basically winter now which definitely complicates things as well. Maybe I’ll keep it to spring and try to trade it in on something else then.
