LJpete

The article is in this (December) months Excellence magazine. It should be available on stands in the near future as subscribers are just getting their magazines. I got mine at the end of last week.

I look forward to Charles or Jake coming to this thread to answer some of the preventative upgrade questions posed earlier, as I'd like to know how to best shore up my motor preventatively and cost effectively.

juankimalo

I only want the last Issue (december)

http://www.excellence-mag.com/subscribe.html

As a live in Spain it's difficult for me to call to order a complete subscription.
Do you know if It would be possible to purchase this issue in PDF file?


This article is very interesting for me

Thanks

Tippy

I really would like to hear what comes of this......

SH || NC

I think you can order back issues, including this December one, from HERE

juankimalo

Thanks!

I've just sent them an application form to purchase this issue

ElTorrente

I like some of the points he said about driving the car.

He said basically what I've been saying forever about daily driving: Don't lug the car in high gear/low rpms (he said he always keeps his above 2800), and drive as hard as you want, without abusing it, and to not be afraid of high rpms. Also, change the oil every 5-7.5k miles.

I've always driven it this way. I keep rpms below 4000 and don't use full throttle until it's warmed up, but once it is warmed up - I hit redline just about every day.

I have 119k on my engine and it runs strong and doesn't burn or drip a single drop of oil between changes.

Barn996

Not meaning to hijack this thread, but your white C4S is beautiful Anderson!

SH || NC

juankimalo

I've reading some about this, and It's incredible.

Autofarm in the UK is one of the best Porsche specialist. They do the Silsleeve technology.

http://www.autofarm.co.uk/engines/water_cooled

I'm one of the 996 owners who would send my engine to be repared with this big bore technology.

I can see that Jake is doing something similar.

What I find terrific is what Porsche factory is making with the remanufactured engines. The only thing important for Porsche is the money...
Incredible to see this...

htny

It's this last pic here that scared me out of my socks. How could Porsche allow a motor to go into one of their vehicles with a sleeve on one cylinder? Answer: Outsourcing

smshirk

Seriously????? Man I thought it was so obvious. I am not disgruntled, hysterical, or any of those things. I have a 996 and a 986S, previously a 97 986. All three cars total have had more than 200k miles and no failures. I'm still excited and intend to sign up as soon as Raby can work me in for a 340 HP Boxster, with no engine issues. I am ready to upgrade both of them , although perhaps only one to begin with. The redesigned oil filter, cooler, and 160 degree thermostat sounds like a plan to me

smshirk

No argument from me there, but they could have fixed the 8k CEL issue with the top ends of 993s, pinion bearing of 968s, and the list goes on. The point is porsche is always too busy designing the next latest and greatest to resolve maintenance issues with development personnel. That's not much different than engineering departments in all industries, although the M96 may be one of the worse examples I can think of. Dealers had M96 motors sitting all over their shops, techs dedicated to swapping them out, and got so good at it, an engine replacement could be done in a day or two.

Miller_arch

Not to be argumentative but we are to conclude that this is a 996 engine straight from a 996 chassis straight from the Porsche factory...how can one tell?

Jake Raby

Long time lurker... first time poster.
I was invited here to shed some light on our program that was highlighted in the Excellence article, and I'll try my best to do this in terms that can be understood by people that are not engine savvy.

The following quote from salayc earlier in this thread concerns me, because it isn't accurate and is based only on presumption.

I will now break this post down line by line and address all of it's content directly.

Absolutely we have data, why do you think Excellence came to us when wanting to do this article? Data, statistics and other forms of trends have been monitored for almost 5 years by LN Engineering, I have been gathering data, researching and working toward understanding these engines and their shortcomings for 3 years. I have two in house engine dyno labs at my facility as well as a chassis dyno and a 28 channel data logging system, all of which have been coupled to extreme dedication and a desire to understand these engines.

My R&D is known worldwide from my previous ventures with internal combustion engines (mainly aircooled Porsche and VW) and this is the reason why my services are used by other companies who want independent studies or practical application testing completed for their own products. Trust that we have more data available than anyone outside the confines of Porsche on the M96 engine.

Nope- Just facts. I won't sugar coat the issues. The things we state on the site can be quantified by reading any Porsche forum as they are being stated over and over again by people all over the world that have experienced the issues. We have seen these things first hand and thats the biggest difference other than the fact that we are in business and today's typical mind set is to hate the Vendor as we are all stereotyped as evil beings from the bowels of hell that are just here to take your money. Thats not the case with my business or any business that can be found in our network and our past experiences concretely prove this.

Assumption. Where is YOUR data to prove that the M96 is no more problematic than any other Porsche engine? If you ask me for data and then make a statement like this one I will also ask for data- it seems only fair.

I am one of those aircooled fans that has built 356,914 and 911 engines and have been very impressed with the strengths of these engines as well as their longevity- even at extended power output levels.
I do believe that "Real Porsches" don't have radiators and neither do real VWs and also that a "Real" Chevy has a 327 under the hood and isn't built from plastic. The fact is that the past generations of vehicles made their Owners fall in love with them and today car companies sell their modern cars based on the appeal that was generated by these love affairs with the "real" vehicles. It doesn't matter if it's Porsche or Ford today they are all the same.

I appreciate the Boxster and 996 for what they are, but I don't compare them with my 912 or any other aircooled Porsche that I have ever owned or driven.

Thats partially correct. Today if a Boxster loses it's engine a replacement can cost more than the car could be sold for and the same will probably start occurring with the 996 in a little while. This is partially the fault of Porsche by not making the rebuild parts and references more commonly available to independent Porsche shops. Try buying a set of main engine bearings for your car, lots of places list them but see who has them in stock- the first set I bought took 3 months to source. I got tired of begging for parts, so we are just making it all ourselves right here in the USA, not dependent upon Porsche at all for more than a gasket set for some engines.

Aside from providing turn key solutions to this issue with fully updated stock and performance engines my main goal is to provide local independent shops with the knowledge to work on these engines through our own training program as well as making them accessible to a full line of service and update components as well.

This will allow shops to WANT to work on your car because they don't have to wonder how to do the work and don't have to search for days to find the internal parts to do the job. In our estimation this will make the M96 engined vehicles maintain their value since they can be worked with and can be made faster and stronger. This is already occurring as several clients have purchased cars with blown engines dirt cheap and had them shipped straight to us for an engine upgrade before they ever laid eyes on the vehicle in person.

As the Boxster and 996 become cheaper we are also seeing more of them being made into track only vehicles. With added performance and reliability these vehicles can be tracked with more grin factor over a longer period of time.

I'll close by saying that the program we have been honing is multi-faceted and most of it will be shared in 09. We want to help the owner of the car to do work on his own vehicle with support DVDs, the rental and sales of special tools as well as technical consultation via email and telephone. Offering a service that tracks wear metals in the engine oil of your car over each oil change will also benefit the user by helping to forecast the chances of engine failure that a certain car may have compared to others in our data base or the samples of oil that have came from failed engines that we have gathered data from.

This oil monitoring service will also assist with the future re-sale of a car that has lower wear metal compositions by proving the oil has been tracked and that no engine failures are probable based on the trend data.

I appreciate all the kind words that have been stated on this forum as well as 1/2 dozen others on the net. I also appreciate all of the well wishing emails that we have received and even a couple of letters and goodie boxes that have been shipped to our facility to thank us for our energy with the M96 engine understanding and development. Trust that we are an innovative group of fire-pissing hard chargers that LOVE Porsches and want to help make the M96 live the life of of performance and endurance that has been expected from a Porsche for almost 60 years.

Jake Raby
President, Flat 6 Innovations
www.flat6innovations.com

Bob Rouleau

Bravo Jake!