STL | Bought Last Night - Coolant Pipes Blew This Morning!

[Todd Gilbert]

Bought a 2004 Cayenne S with 60,000 miles last night (for $17.5K). I thought I was being pretty diligent paying $250 for a PPI at a local porsche shop (Reid Vann) to look it over before I committed to buy. They said they couldn’t tell if the coolant pipes were plastic without taking the intake manifold off. The rest of the car though checked out great - so I decided I'd just do them myself in the spring when it gets warmer. They wanted almost $4K for a warranty so I skipped on that as I've done all of my repairs myself on my BMW.

Last night I bought the car and drove it ~3 miles home. On the way to work this morning (~15 miles) I got a low coolant warning - pulled over and smoke is just billowing out of the car. Crap.

Reid Vann quoted me $2,550.

Parktown Porsche quoted me $2,300.

Plaza Motors hasn’t gotten back to me - but I presume its in that ballpark. All the posts I've been reading through today tell me to expect $1,000-1,700.

Few questions for you all:

1. How much should I expect to pay for this job?
2. Anyone know of a good shop or indy in St. Louis?
3. While this is being done - should anything else be done at the same time?
4. Before all this happened - I tried putting the car in neutral to try out low-range. I tried holding the switch towards the mountains - nothing - nada - no lights - no warning - nothing at all happened. Any ideas?

No idea why the site has the photo upside-down - nor do I know how to fix it =(

Edited January 30, 2013 by Todd Gilbert
fixed photo

[txhokie4life]

In some states you have a 3 day no questions asked cancel of sale.

might apply,

Mike

[Todd Gilbert]

In some states you have a 3 day no questions asked cancel of sale.

might apply,

Mike

Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case in Missouri (see page 20).