Wellardmac again expresses my sentiments exactly. What put me over the edge was the all the 'IMS' issues he would comment on. No doubt Raby is one heck of knowledgeable guy. But when I read a post from a guy who was just about to pull the trigger on his own 996 only to be frightened off that really turned me off. The only posts I ever saw from him were regarding our cars blowing up and what product could be sold to fix it.....nothing about chiming in a 'summer drive' or 'what blast it was to own one of these cars'. I actually posted an observation one time and it was responded with 'please close this thread'. That told me the truth about what was happening.

Simple as that.

 

I've found my car to be ridiculously reliable, despite two previous owners and some hard use. The list of things that have straight up failed in 100,000 km is very, very short. Combine that with less than $5000 a year in depreciation, and I'd have to say the most expensive part of the car is the nut behind the wheel. Mods, baby, mods. What costs the money in a 996 is not what you need to do, but what you want to do...

 

Yup, I've got to agree 100%. I wish all of my cars were this reliable. I've been amazed at how solid my car is.

 

Curious about this. Can you post what you are referring to? Thanks.

 

If people like Raby were not around to post their experiences and a method to fix problems, we'd be left with posts about everyone having problems and nothing to do about it. It's quite nice that there's a fix for one of the known issues with the 996 engine, isn't there?

 

Agree.

A strong aftermarket doesn't have to be likable. It just has to be there.

 

I like Jake and the service he provides. I don't think the guy would go out and develop the IMS retrofit for some phantom problem on his own dime and then scaremonger folks into buying it. That borders, quite frankly, on ludicrous.

Having said that, I don't see how this unscientific survey could provide any meaningful information.

 

PM sent to Paul. Sometimes its best to let sleeping dogs lie.

 

This is a pro LN Engineering/ Flat 6 post

The newbies around here forget that the IMS bearing issue existed long long before the LN IMS Retrofit came about.

Also, without Flat 6's contributions we would not have a way to run a remote oil filter, remote oil cooler or add an accusump to our motors. Jake see's a pattern of problems and tries to figure out a way to head it off. I have spoken to Jake about transmissions when I was in need and it was too soon in his development but he new exactly the problem that I described to him.

I have held a few of these broken and failing IMS bearings in my hand. Enough of them to realize that cheap preventative insurance is to replace the thing before you reach the failure mode.

I for one am happy that there are now solutions available to us for preventing our motors and transmission from self destructing. I have now had one each of those go and you can be certain that I am taking every precaution I can on my 996 and 986 going forward now that I have the choices.

my 2 cents.

 

I am surprised at the reactions posted here. Michael Karesh is a very serious guy and his True-Delta data is highly respected. He knows statistics, and can handle the unhappy owner bias.

I'd like to see 996 data on his site if only to prove that the car is very reliable. Why a few of you seem to think it would do otherwise is a bit odd isn't it?

 

It's simple Bob, there's no way that he can get a statistically significant population of Porsche owners to make any of his conclusions valid. It really is that simple.

The fact is that if he were to recruit every member of this site (ever single one!) he still would have a biased population, as he would only be capturing the enthusiasts and ones that might be biased towards having issues with their cars.

The only way to get a truly significant population is to have a large enough sampling of RANDOM porsche owners willing to participate in his survey.

 

I just want to add to my post above to put things into perspective.

Porsche sells a total of approx. 100,000 cars per year.
Porsche claims that two thirds of all cars they have ever built are still on the roads - that's a hell of a lot of cars.
Rennlist has a total membership of 79,000 - most of them inactive.
PCA has approx. 100,000 members, most of them inactive.

So, even if you were to get responses from all active Rennlist members and all active PCA members you would capture data from only a small section of Porsche owners. You *might* (assuming that PCA members and Rennlist members have not self-selected into population by virtue of their enthusiasm for their marque, which as we all know is a false assumption) have a sample that is representative of "Porsche owners", but not a sample that is representative of any given model or model year, so to try to capture an even smaller subset of that (say, 996 owners) and try and work out reliability data on an admittedly small and self-selected subset of owners is a flawed endeavor - that's even before you try and segment even further by model year.

I'm not being mean here, I'm just pointing out the reality that any numbers gathered from a small self-selected group are inherently flawed and worthless. Anything meaningful would have to be gathered from a random selection of ALL Porsche owners and not ones that have self-selected to any particular forum or club. The reality, as others have said many times, is that the only entity that knows about Porsche reliability is Porsche themselves.

 

You sir are a voice of reason, well said. What it boils down to, is a wide demographic that these cars exist in, a 10yr old porsche is in an entirely different demographic than a 1yr old porsche(for the most part).

Point in case, I earn 1/3rd of what the original owner earns, I can turn a wrench and dont mind getting my hands dirty, he has never turned a wrench in his life. I am also less than half the PO's age.

And now on top of this trying to gather a wide array of data from a wide array of Porsche owners, few 996 owners post here or have even heard of rennlist, my neighbor down the street has a 996(2005) and has little or no interest in rennlist.

With that said it IS a noble effort but, I feel a noble effort in vain.

Now too Mr. Raby.....

After reading I cant recall how many pages of IMS failures and IMS installs (Kyles was very good BTW), Im sick of it to be honest.

BUT with that being said I am glad that I am aware of the issue and the fact that MR.Raby has designed and provides techinical support of the issue.

The IMS issue is kind of like that ASPCA commercial with the sad music and the abused animals....you get upset....but its easier to change the channel and know that your pets are in good hands. Does that make sense...or am I rambling like a bafoon?

 

Makes total sense to me.

mkaresh don't forget to go back to all the persons and find out how much of the work/billing done on their cars was not needed and how many times they got billed before the actual problem was fixed. Then bounce it around with the Porsche dealerships performance in the area of getting the diagnosis right the first time. From what I've seen online is taking the car to an honest Porsche dealership is the only way to go unless there is an alternate porsche mechanic that works wonders.

For me if the engine quits in an ugly manner its upgrade it to be a beast of some sort or just throw another engine in from good old Duetchland. I don't care to know what the run of the mill is up to. They can get recycled with the aluminum cans and water bottles

 

Those who developed retrofit kits are quite good for people who want to increase the reability of the engine, but It's a critical way to go if you're a rennlist active user... It's important to separate the internet information and help, and the real business. I purchased several parts to J*** and did a lot of advertising and publicity in my forum (Soloporsche), but when I'd need to ask 2 important questions, about the IMS operation, there wasn't any reply from him.

That's why I'm a bit dissapointed , because if someone's "helping" or sharing info, It would be better being more kind. I'm happy to learn about several points referred to 996 engine in those enterprises but It's a delicate business share info in a Porsche forum. When you risk to sell your pieces in a forum you are exposed to all kind of critics (positive and negative)






Internet Forums were born to share information not to make business

Here you can see several pictures from a soloporsche motor engineer who is trying to help those who want to reinforce the IMS parts and could get it done by an expert lathe operator, as I did, copying the idea from our soloporsche friend who did by himself last year without searching anything. He doesn't apeak english, he didn't Know LN Eng , he'd never been here, but he tried to use the logical reasoning to do the operation... He opened our eyes and I got it done by my mechanic .