Quadcammer

also, plenty of guys use DE events as an opportunity to dawdle along on street tires and that isn't really gonna stress the engine.

Thats not to say Z06 motors are any better, but shoot, my buddy has beat on his 993 for probably 100 track days over the past three years and the engine is rock solid. never missed a beat, and thats in black/red

91K-Man

Hi , All , My suggestion to help the m96 engine is to run 10w60 weight oil. Mantis Deep sump , more oil takes a bit longer for the oil get Hot, some of the foaming to die down. Oil temps are some high, lots of chains foaming up the oil. Oil cooling is what is needed. Some guys can drive fast, some drive hard ,that can be the difference,

Andrew Stowell

This is true that LS motors have oil starvation problems too.

But you can get a rebuild kit for an LS for $500-$1000. It's easy to have all the machine work done and a full rebuild for under $2000-$3000.

The M96 is just an order of magnitude more expensive to rebuild. So even if they die at the same rate, it's easy to see which is a better track motor.

If the M96 was easier/cheaper to rebuild and upgrade, it wouldn't be a big deal. But people in this thread are saying the OP should have spent more than he paid for the car to rebuild the motor to race specs before doing a track day? That's crazy, he would be better off with a different track car.

Nickshu

LN's website seems to suggest that their Bilt 2 quart deep sump was equally effective as an Accusump. Consequently it appears they no longer sell their Accusump kit. Anyone know if this is true?

dporto

"But people in this thread are saying the OP should have spent more than he paid for the car to rebuild the motor to race specs before doing a track day? That's crazy, he would be better off with a different track car."

I didn't make any allusions as to whether it would be economically prudent - I was simply saying that if you don't want these motors to blow up on the track, there's quite a bit of work that needs to be done to them... Also, the op did way more than 1 track day with the car...I believe he said something to the effect that it would be his last track day of the season (just one more track day, that's all I need...)

Tbred911

they can certainly take it... the problem is the track 101 mods are done too late... the OP here certainly did his due diligence with great mods... but 90K on a motor and then doing all the track mods is too late.... track prep needs to happen very early in the engine's life to give it a fighting chance... the blown motors you are seeing fall into this category

high oil usage is the sign - it's signals the cylinders have gone oval and the end is near.

RngTrtl

I agree. almost none of the M96 motors had this done and people are buying them at 60k thousand miles and thinking that with some relatively cheap mods that they can track them which is not the case at all. The M96 motor may have stood a fighting chance back in the day with some mods at the track, but no matter what you do to an M96 with 75k miles on it, it will not last on the track unless you sink a ridiculous amount of money into it before you start. At which point you would be better off just buying a turbo that (motor wise) needs nothing to go to the track.

rogazilla

There are a lot of valid points but I am most interested to find out once it is tear down, if this is caused by the light weight flywheel.

Noz1974

I'm betting one of the cylinders has let go or a rod bolt which took out the cylinder, when you doing the tear down ??

DBJoe996

I'm guessing from all the coolant in the oil that the oil lubrication was compromised and all manner of "bad" stuff happened in there. Will be interesting to see what the disassembly reveals.

Ahmet

I don't agree with the "90k miles is too tired to do track work". I've tracked both an M3 with over 180k miles (20+ events) and a 996.1 with well over 120k miles maybe 14 times. The latter went onto a new owner who continued to track it, and daily drives it to this day without issues. Neither engines were modified. I've tracked turbos and GT3s as well. M96 seem failure prone, then again there's a selection bias to reporting failures on this board. Also, turbo motors fail also, I've seen it. No motor is bullet proof!

AWDGuy

Agreed no motor is bullet proof but most motors don't cost 20k to rebuild either.

B-ran

Posts like this certainly give me pause before taking the car out to the track more. But then I've also read posts from some who have literally put thousands of track miles on their 996s with no mods at all. One gentleman with a C4S specifically I believe claimed something like twenty thousand track miles without so much as a bafffled oil pan or IMS bearing replacement. I suppose no matter what car or engine it has a finite amount of time before it will go bang. Some live long and prosper and die with a whimper, and others live fast, die young, and go out with a bang. If used replacement engines were the same price as 986 2.7 engines ($2,500 to $4,000) I would track my car all day long and not care. As it is I love my car, but could not justify spending 20k to rebuild the engine on a car that I could barely sell for 20k. Unless I become Scrooge McDuck rich that is.

AWDGuy

You don't need to be rich to rebuild but you should be comfortable having a hover porsche in your garage for a few years while you save. Lol

cds72911

People seem to worry a lot about failure with these cars.

This doesn't seem like something to worry about. If you afford it, run it, and if it breaks, be prepared to fix it.

I haven't raced cars in years, but if I'm pretty sure I can't afford to race a 911 of any generation. If was going to get back into tracking a car and I wanted to run Porsche, I'd look into a spec boxster. That looks like a lot of fun and the motors are (relatively) cheap and readily available. I think it would be a lot of fun in a spec class, and make it more about the driver than the car.

If I'm on the road or at a DE and I grenade an engine, after doing the necessary PM, oh well, stuff happens.

If reliability was my primary goal, I'd just drive my Toyota and forget about owning a almost 20 year old Porsche...