I agree... And the 996 has not depreciated percentage wise any more than any other European sports car of the era.. Look at the values of BMWs and other cars to see this clearly.

The Cayenne doesn't have engine issues and today you can buy a Turbo for less than most 996 Carreras..

The Porsches that are worth more everyday, rather than less are the non radiator laden versions. I just traded for an SC yesterday, you can't ever have enough Aircooled 911s.

 

Sorry if I missed it somewhere in the thread but what's the cost of the screw on filter mod Jake and can it be done by your average mechanic? I've done this mod on my Jaguar XKE (which does eject ecess oil into the sump) and it was quite simple........same for your mod to the 996 motor?

Les.....who's beginning to wish he'd driven the car to Jake rather than having the Porsche dealer fit the LN IMS bearing.....:-)

 

The LN Spin On Filter Adaptor is an easy DIY install, prices can be found at www.lnengineering.com. This was the first product that we released with LN.

Hindsight is 20/20... Dealers were the last group to start doing IMSR procedures. They only started doing these because of requests of owners.

Recently one of the largest dealers in the US shipped us an engine after a post- process debacle that ended with parts ejecting from the engine at initial start up.... Seems they left an extra part in there somewhere that was caught between the IMS drive chain and the crankcase. That one was real interesting, and guess what? Its not their fault!

 

Maybe I missed it given the length of the thread, but if the root cause is metal filings from the original, failed IMS, then why was there no evidence in the oil filters during the first two oil changes?

 

good question, the assumption is that they were dislodged during a recent track day.

 

Really wonderful thread, solid information and explanations. My thanks to everyone for all their time contributing to it. My take away for all this is that Excellence is no promise of Perfect. It is a car made by people, no more or less. So what does a 72 year old guy living on social security and a small pension do with his newly acquired 03 996? The best thing I can do...enjoy the car every day. I bought this to be my daily driver for at least ten...with luck twenty or so years. I paid a fair price based on what a really nice piece of metal it is. Uniquely nice. Looking at the 911 history I really can't think of another car like it. As for the mechanical issues in this thread, my aftermarket warranty/service contract gives me peace of mind for the next few years, but if I have to buy a whole new engine at some future date, I've already put that money aside because this isn't about what the car is worth on the market, but rather what it is worth to me and the pleasure I get driving it.

 

^There's some perspective for ya^

 

We will never know the sequence of events with certainty. However, here would be my guess.

Due to the car spending its first 11 years in Minnesota, packed away for the winter 6 months at a time, some initial bearing damage occurred. PO drove it 2.5k/year and changed oil every year. The details of what, where, and how the initial damage started are never going to be known. Since PO did his own oil changes, it is not clear if he inspected the filter carefully enough to find a problem earlier.

At my PPI at 28k, metal fragments were found in the filter. IMSB was replaced (as was RMS). However, as Jake has made very clear, and as shown on the LNE web site, the process of flushing metal out of an engine is time intensive and expensive, and there is a valid question as to whether it can be done at all. In any case, none of those steps were done. (The shop was so incompetent that their RMS replacement was falling out 12k later, BTW.)

So, being naive about this issue, I take possession of an engine with unknown levels, types, and sizes of metal bits floating around in the oil. The normal Porsche filter housing has a bypass valve that allows unfiltered oil to be pushed into the engine when cold (high viscosity). Jake's note on this was that my housing's valve was too lightly sprung, and the valve opened too easily. Thus metal-laden oil was constantly running.

It seems pretty clear to me that damage would have occurred eventually, given these engine conditions. The track day likely accelerated it. By the time Jake got the engine, the IMSB was nearly failing, most of the main and rod bearings were worn to the internal copper layers, and it was pure luck the engine hadn't yet imploded. The wear of the rod and main bearings indicates that very fine metal particles were present, which are less likely to be caught by a filter inspection.

The lesson is clear: inspect the filter and housing with extreme care, look for the tiniest metal particles. If there is any metal at all, whatsoever, in the filter or housing, either walk away or get a much deeper, more invasive, inspection and realize you are dealing with a $15 - $20k risk in short order. Install a no-bypass oil filter ("spin-on") on all your Porsches to avoid unfiltered oil.

An oil analysis will not find anything wrong. I had Blackstone analyze the oil and they found nothing unusual, saying the engine is in great shape and the oil can be run a good number of miles further. Later, I told them it had nearly failed and was being rebuilt. They were completely surprised. They use spectrometer analysis to find the molecular components in the oil. Big chunks of metal are not detected.

A bit over a year ago I was on the lookout for a 987 for my wife. There was a local one (about an hour away) that looked pretty good. I had a PPI done and the mechanic said I should come and look it over just to be sure. Glad I did, because there were no metal chunks anywhere but there was very fine glitter at the bottom of the housing. This is before I knew all the above. The car had other issues (undisclosed body work, very dirty oil) so I passed, but now I know I probably dodged another one of these bullets. The one we did buy had an immaculate filter as inspected by a very OCD mechanic. We are the fifth owners of that car and couldn't be happier with it. And it has the spin-on oil filter adapter.

To simplify it down further: the engines are extremely expensive, frequently the full value of the car. If they show any significant metal in the oil beyond the (very low) normal wear levels, they will fail sooner than they should, maybe very soon -- not if, but when. Some owners will figure this out and unload the car before the evidence becomes obvious. Be educated, do the work, and be prepared to walk.

On the other hand, if you have a solid engine, enjoy the car. To me the 996 is so far above the previous models I could never go back. It is a huge bargain at current prices.

 

That was an excellent post, Mike. 100% spot on, I can tell that you've sat in on one of my classes, and that you paid A LOT of attention to the material I shared.

Oil filter housings are failing left and right, and creating all sorts of issues. I just turned in my 5th Patent application in the past two years on Monday, and this most recent one further addresses the issues related to the factory oil filter housing with another "fix".

Generic UOA is very unimpressive, its all unicorns and rainbows to those guys, and I guarantee that no one there has ever built a Porsche engine. They don't know the materials that are used for the rod and main bearings with these engines, and their analyses are incorrect all the time.

That said, only a particulate UOA will detect wear metals that are larger than 30 micron, about all a generic analysis is good for is to see the depletion of the anti- wear package, so one can better determine when a certain engine should have its service intervals set. That said, its not even good for that, because TBN and TAN are only evaluated if you pay more for the services. Its a big joke to me, we use ALS and Caterpillar only, and of course Lubrizol handles most of our UOA in exchange for assistance with Joe Gibbs Driven lubricant R&D.

When I see one of those generic UOA, I just shake my head when reading their "comments" section, which is a complete joke! Everything is "normal", even if its failing, but the crazy thing is, with an M96 failure is normal, so I guess they aren't wrong after all.

 

Jake with all due respect to your knowledge and experience, your last comment seems rather jaded. From what you just said the people at Porsche are unethical idiots who can't do anything right, and the only fools bigger than them, are the fools like us who buy their cars. It sounds like you feel that we'd all be a lot wiser to just find a different car maker as fast as possible and trade in our 996s for whatever they'll give us for them. No offense but there are still a lot of 996s on the road with very happy owners.

 

Snap!

 

I never said that, it may be what you perceived, but If I said you were right, we'd both be wrong.

You must understand that ALL we see here are failures. We do not see cars for oil services, we don't see cars that need brakes; we only see cars that need engines, or need in depth repairs. If you live with death daily, and have added 19 failures to your failure log in the last 18 days, you'd also become biased. People are not happy when they call us, and when I ask how they are doing I hear "I could be better" about 4-5 times per week on average.


Again, I never said that. if that happened we'd not have any more business. This is not the case as we have an 11 month backlog at the present and we have been operating at 150% for the past 8 years, having never had a backlog less than 6 months that entire time.

People love 996s and even 986s enough to spend more on the engine than the entire car is worth, because they know that its impossible to buy a car that damn good today, for that small amount of money thats required to fit a Raby engine. The ONLY issue the cars have is their engines, its the one part where compromise was made to make way for high production numbers, automated assembly, just in time manufacturing, and profit.

I am one of them, as I currently own a pair of 996s, and my wife currently holds 4 standing Land Speed Records that were attained with a very early 1999, 996.

I bought one of the 996s for 1500 bucks with a blown engine and 74K miles on the clock, with a clean title and a 2 owner history. Hell, you can't even buy a rusted out 914 for 1500 bucks today.

Dropped my 4.4L prototype V3 into it and after shredding the CV joints twice, I am finally enjoying it. I have to learn how to restrain my urge to turn the PSM off and roast the tires. Next will be the tranny, because now I have traction, and stronger CVs, so the next weak in the chain upstream is the gearbox. I can't wait to shoot a chunk of it through the side of the tranny case, thats an accomplishment. A guy like me has a ton of junk laying around, and failures are just part of playing the game, and you have to enjoy them. Failures are just opportunities, disguised as broken parts.

I spent more for the pistons in that 4.4L engine than I spent on the entire vehicle purchase.

 

John...meet Jake.

 

Hello Jake and thank your for your well worded reply. I think I misread and over responded to you as the result of being new here. As you say, you live surrounded by the death of engines and in that world it is hard to be optomistic. And I'm glad to hear you are having fun with your own Porsches. Thank you for all your replies and thoughtfulness.

 

Thank you :-)