Sharper than what ?

 

It's a very young company in Jacksonville Florida and so it's very hard to say what kind of engine you'll get compared to other dismantlers. The company sprung out of their parent company - AutoPartMax, which is a network of salvage yards similar to CoPart. Both companies have a good BBB rating and so you may find it's a good business to deal with if problems arise.

 

@NuttyProfessor I looked at the BBB ratings and thought the same thing. I didn't know about AutoPartMax before now. I requested a quote from both sites and got a response from the owner with both site names on it. So it seems they aren't separate companies so much as separate websites for the same company.

They advertise a 6 month warranty on engines, but fine print says 90 days and excludes "high performance" motors. I'm going to dig into that and see what they are really offering.

 

How much are they asking? Used or rebuilt?

 

Closing the loop on this old thread.

I called them and talked to the owner/manager a while ago. They source from salvage yards around the country, but he says he has a particular source for high-performance german engines. Those engines are claimed to be compression and leakdown tested, bore scoped, and come with a 1 year warranty on the engine (doesn't include labor). They're stock rolls over quickly, but they generally seem to be offering used engines with 50-75k miles in the $6-8k range. Includes shipping and requires core exchange.

I also got a quote from a place called SW Engines (and their twin site, GotEngines) for a 71k mile used engine for $8,900 shipped. That seems pricey, but it comes with a 5 year warranty on the part and labor.

 

Sounds like they are just a salvage yard/business for Porsche engines. Salvage yards ALWAYS claim low mileage on EVERYTHING they sell. Since there is no way for the buyer to know if this us true, they can get away with it.

 

So, then what's the best way to go about purchasing a used engine? There is just not a lot of stock available for the 3.4 motors. Are there questions you can ask to get more confidence?

If you're going to assume they're lying about mileage, is it better to just buy one that's listed as high-mileage and pay less? Another version of their site has used 3.4s with ~100,000+ miles for only $2k, with a 6 month warranty. https://autousedengines.com/1999-por...1-used-engines

 

Try and get the VIN of the car the motor came out of. It's a crap shoot and the odds aren't that great in my opinion. Contact the dismantlers and see if they have anything coming in that's still running vs one that's been sitting.

 

As Bill says ; Total crap shoot! If you want to make a $10k gamble go for it. I'd rather spend twice as much, but actually know what I'm getting, and know that weaknesses have been addressed with better parts (which you don't even get with a Porsche short block).

 

@dporto That's certainly an understandable point of view, and there are lots of people here who agree with you. Porsche's attract people who with an affinity for perfection. However, a $20k engine replacement is not going to make sense for many cars or owners. In those cases, it's going to be a choice between a used engine and taking the car out behind the shed to put it out of its misery.

 

Yup! Different strokes for different folks...It all depends on what your long term outlook for the car is. If you don't plan on keeping the car long term, it certainly doesn't make sense to pay more for an engine than you did for the car. Conversely, if you want to/plan to keep the car "forever", and you have the money, it's really a no brainer...

 

If my engine blew up tomorrow I'd love to say I'd could spend $20K for a solid Flat Six rebuild, but it would not be in my budget. I also agree with the posts above that a used junk yard motor is a crap shoot and just as likely to have not been cared for unless somehow you luck into a car that you could get some service history on.

I would probably split the difference and get a Porsche rebuilt short block (which as discussed in other threads is not actually rebuilt, but is a new short block) for $5200. If you shop around you can find them at that price, maybe even less if you scour the web..

https://www.porschesandiegoparts.com...4l-996100951tx

Then spend about another $4K swapping over your good parts to it and assembling. Even if you throw in an L&N IMS bearing and freshening the heads and new injectors I think you'd be in the $10K range or maybe a little more for everything- especially if you can do some of it and source the parts yourself.. Yes, it will have all the vulnerabilities of any M96 and there are a few ways it could fail. But as much bashing as the M96 engine gets, Porsche probably built 200K or more of them when you add in the Boxster variants as well, and the failures (which can be catastrophic and expensive, I know) are relatively few in the grand scheme. For me, it would probably be the gamble I'd have to make - or just sell the car as a roller and roll the dice on another.

 

"I would probably split the difference and get a Porsche rebuilt short block (which as discussed in other threads is not actually rebuilt, but is a new short block) for $5200. If you shop around you can find them at that price, maybe even less if you scour the web.."

https://www.porschesandiegoparts.com...4l-996100951tx



^^ The problem with that is that you still have an M96 with it's inherent problems (do a web search for the various modes of failure) - albeit new... I was faced with this precise scenario (although my engine hadn't blown up - yet) and I decided on the FSI route... It certainly took some serious thought, but ultimately I think I did the right thing...

 

You got scared from reading the internet too long.