Paul Waterloo

Well this thread has scared the hell out of me......almost don't want a 996 now! Interesting thread to say the least.

c4racer

I hear Camry's are very reliable and fast...

Flat6 Innovations

No, just buy a solid car with an engine specific, very detailed PPI.

Being informed is the key, too many people buy these cars blindly and get bitten. The guys that know about the issues can protect themselves.

Some people like the truth, but in the modern world there's few of those people remaining.

Paul Waterloo

Okay, I'll bite. I'm a long time car guy, reading this board for at least a month now and I don't see any specific checklist for an engine PPI. Do you have one or a link to one? It appears you have basically the most experience out there with these engines.

Thanks!

Paul

Flat6 Innovations

Once upon a time I posted this for free. Someone used it and had their local shop carry out a PPI. The vehicle passed, but the engine failed in 1500 miles after purchase.

Guess who got the blame? The guy that have the free checklist out to be used.... Me! Tell me what's fair about that?

After that I pulled it. Today we share this in our classes, and instruct technicians further on the procedure.

Paul Waterloo

Okay, thanks.

I guess I will just have to buy one and keep my fingers crossed!

I have been in the electric motor repair business for over 20 years now, and really know a lot about rotating equipment. I can't believe a IMS bearing that started to fail couldn't easily be picked up by regular vibration analysis and trending. In electric motors, you can see a bearing failure a mile away, at the start of degradation, long before it destroys itself. I've never seen vibration analysis on an internal combustion engine using an accelerometer, but I'm sure it's been done before.

I did a search and saw a guy in the PNW did this a year or two back, he posted some vibration spectrums on a Porsche newsletter, I saved it but did not have the chance to read it.

I figure if I get a 996, which I am pretty certain I am, I would look into this and sample other 996 / boxster engines to see if we could find different vibration signature amplitudes / discrete frequencies and then change the bearing out at the beginning of degradation. This would be long before metal was found in the oil filter. You seem to be on the end of this process when the bearing or other item in the engine has gone beyond degradation into failure.

I'm sure this has probably been discussed before, but it sure sounds like a fun project for me.

Flat6 Innovations

I offer engine specific PPIs, where I do go invasive and determine exactly what the health of the engine is.

Its already been done. We did it back in 2007 with the help of 2 different dealerships that saw 50+ cars per week. We supplied the equipment and they tested every car that came in the door. Within 3 months the values were so scattered that it was proven that it would be impossible to gather accurate trend data to support a "good" or "bad" IMSB. This is because of all the other rotating and reciprocating components that also created their own vibrations, and those vibrations varied depending upon age, mileage, condition of engine and tranny mounts, dual mass flywheel health and dozens of other things.

Yes, because that electric motor can be isolated from other sources of vibration failure easily in most cases. If the iterations per second are higher than normal, the only thing that can be present is a worn motor.

I have done it before with lots of engines. I have even used this to test the drive systems of tandem rotor helicopters.

Familiar with it. I believe he gave up after he found the same thing that we found 5 years prior. You need a tooin of "good" engines with good IMSBs to sample from, then you need more cars with samples of various IMSBs undergoing the 4 stages of failure to test from, before you'd ever learn whats good or bad. With that, you'd need a way to eliminate all the other vibrations from the engine that can also vary, which isn't going to happen. Even a failing water pump could impact the vibration of the engine.

Again, I did this when developing the IMS Guardian system. Vibration analysis was the second form of detection that we utilized, but the results were so scattered that you'd never be able to determine good from bad, and I have gathered the data personally.

Its been discussed dozens of times on different forums.
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Imo000

You’ve talked the vendor out of selling it to anyone else so this way no one can get it but you? You are not selling any parts and I totally understand that but, now no one can get an oversized bearing for these engines. That’s terrible! Correct me if I’m wrong but, the way it looks to me is that essentially you’ve set up a monopoly on this part by talking the vendor out of selling it to anyone else. Why would anyone blame the bearing for machining errors or lack of hardening of the reground surface/crank shaft? There are thousands of other engines, from other cars (not Porsche) with crankshafts that need nitriding after they are re ground. This service is offered to anyone and thousands of people use them all the time when they are rebuilding their engines and oversized bearings are readily available for them too. It’s nothing mystical of unusual but the lack of oversized bearings for this engine makes this process useless. By blocking the availability to these bearings probably works well for your business but it totally goes against what gearheads do.
Well, at least the good news is that since Porsche started to scale down their crate engine program, demand for an oversized bearing will go up and someone eventually will start selling them to the public.

Paul Waterloo

Flat6: It sounds like you have it all figured out. I can say that if I had your reply to management in the nuclear power industry (where I work), it would be rejected. They would figure out a way to isolate the vibrations.

If I was in your neck of the woods and I was buying a car locally, it sounds like your experience would be great in having you do a PPI.

But considering I'm not, and the car I buy probably won't be in your area, it doesn't sound like you can help me. If you want to email me your engine PPI checklist, I promise not to sue you.

;-)

I guess the fun of getting a new car is learning all of its quirks and what makes it tick or in this case tick tock.

KrazyK

I have the standard PPI (@$300) used by MOST shops. Its a .pdf and covers most things except invasive procedures. I think I posted it before.

TSMacNeil

While a chip detector is a fine idea, it doesn't cover all the bases. What would be fantastic is a vibration detector on all the shafts and crank.
It is THE primary instrument to forecast a failure in jet engines, well before the actual failure itself and the resultant shedding of material for the chip detector to see.

That would be awesome.

Flat6 Innovations

Not at all. I approached the vendor and we paid them to make the tooling to make these. The vendor cared nothing about making them, at all. I had to commit to buy a huge number of sets.

On top of that we had to carry out all the R&D to test them, and their optimum running clearances. No one else paid for that, it came out of MY pocket. I have learned the hard way to be selfish and to take care of my own, the IMS Retrofit debacle with all the band wagon clowns jumping onboard was among my lessons.

Development is expensive, I've wasted 4,400.00 in less than one minute before; until YOU do that, you just can't understand. People get all pissy about things, until it's their money paying for the development, and until it's their part thats stolen by someone else and replicated. Today, if I allow something to get ripped off and copied, its my fault, before I expected people to give credit where it was due, and do the right thing. People don't.

Don't bitch to me, or about me, bitch to Porsche. They are the ones who never offered them in the first place. We pioneered all the M96 developments without any help from anyone, monetarily or otherwise. Thats no small feat.

Why not? **I** paid to have these made, I ddid all the test work, I set up the clearances, I developed the heat treat regimen, I made the tooling to allow for align honing of the carrier and I paid for all the parts. Please tell me why I owe anything, to anyone. I'd like to hear it.

Because the modern human blames everything on anyone other than himself. Its easier to be a victim than a failure and EVERYTHING is ALWAYS the vendors fault.
I'll have no part of that, not any more. If someone decides to assume the role of engine builder, they better be ready to assume all the bad, with all the good; but few are. They want to say that they built it, until it fails, then its the part's fault, or its my fault. Its never their fault.

If its so easy, why hasn't someone else done it? One person has tried and failed, they built 9 engines and had 9 engine failures. They gave up.

Whats unique about the M96/97 crankshaft is it's surface treatment and how it responds to heat treat. Hell, I had to pay to have a crankshaft destructively inspected as just one part of the costs of this, and I didn't mention that it cost the same to have one crankshaft heat treated as it does 112 pounds of crankshafts treated. Try that one on for size during development.

Thats what they all say about everything. Nothing mystical or unique, and you say that having never built an M96 engine with your own hands.

If its not mystical or unique, why do I have attendees from 4 continents traveling here in 2 weeks for my hands on engine rebuild school?

Lately, all gear heads do is complain. They expect everyone to do the hard work for them, while they play the part of the keyboard warrior who is worried about his online reputation as being some wizard behind the torque wrench. Hell, most don't even know how to use one!

And there will be failures and the person who sells them will be responsible for the mistakes of every person out there who didn't do their part. That won't be me. I've learned my lesson.

Why do people think they are entitled to something, even when they haven't done anything to help create it? I never understand that.

Hell, when I started building these engines and developing them, I was laughed at. Why would I help those people who laughed at me back then, by developing fixes to bail their asses out of trouble today? I don't play the game that way.

Back then people couldn't see the forest for the trees and today they are a decade behind the leaders, and its only their fault.

Imo000

Jake,
I totally understand your point and I get it, business is business and that’s fine. But this battle between the big engine builders (like you) leaves the little guy (like me) with very limited options when I want to fix or rebuild my engine. It really doesn’t help a bit when I see a post where a vendor was discouraged to sell parts to others. If now is the time for others to start developing the parts that you already have then, such is life. I have no problem sharing whatever information I’ll get from my projects but then again, I don’t have a business to run either or deal with competition and the related politics, I’m only in it for the fun. I’m sure you still remember when you did all this for nothing more than fun and all this other BS didn't matter.

Flat6 Innovations

No, its more than business. Development isn't business.

You are having to pay for the con artists and rip offs that copy products. Just like everyone that buys our products has to see the costs of the patenting processes that are required to protect them. Thats wasted money; we shouldn't have to worry about that.

The problem is that the "little guys" continue to support these rip off artists by buying the knock off part, when they know it was our design that was copied. The "little guy" thats only concerned with his own wallet therefore ENABLES these rip offs to exist!

If people didn't buy the ripped off part, they'd not be on the market; so in a way its all the "little guys" fault. Bet you never considered it that way, did you? Most don't, because they've not personally been ripped off after they worked to perfect something for a couple years, or more.

Well, this vendor is discouraged to sell parts to others based on previous experiences at a retail level, when supplying components.

I want it to be clear that the company who has made these bearings for us is not in the Porsche industry, they are also not a company that provides parts at a "little guy" level. When working with them we must develop every aspect of the component, right down to all engineering and evaluation.

Again, my initiatives are for complete engines only in most cases. My commodity is engines and my specialty is development of components to make the commodity the best, and completely unlike the rest.

As we move further and further into the 9a1 DFI engines, month after month we see more of them with issues that we've already developed components and fixes for. I let go of developments for older engines as we move newer and newer, and now that we have 5 years of development in the 9a1, and 4 years of modifying them for customers, I'll let go of more M96 stuff when the time comes. I'll do that as long as it does not create potential liability for me.

I don't deal with others in the industry, I take no part in the politics. I do my thing, my way and I sit in the middle of no where and have a lot of fun, all day long.

Wait, I still do... The dollars the facility generates is put toward development to keep us on top, and so I can one day have the worlds most bad assed hobby shop when I decide to put it all to rest.

I am way too damn mean to be a competitor. When I used to race I'd go to the track with a killer mind set, and thats why I stopped long, long ago. I approach any competition with the same mind set.

I have an old worn out T shirt that says "I didn't come here to lose", and its true.

All that said, I have owned a Porsche every day of my life since the age of 12... I am where I am because I am an enthusiastic Porsche owner thats been blessed with an ability to think of the things well before the other guy does, then make them work. It all started with an old VW at the age of 8, then in 10 years I had 80 cars and had already been in business for 5 of those years.

I was up till 4 am this morning working on a 930 engine, and it wasn't because I had to.

Like I said, if you want to be pissed off, or disappointed with anyone, extend that frustration in the direction of Porsche. They are the ones who did not offer over sized bearings, and they are also the ones that made it so difficult for us to do what we have done, primarily by not releasing specifications and making us have to figure it all out ourselves. That was part of their plan.

mjb2448

Don't sugar coat it Jake, tell it to us straight