Bruce In Philly

I would not discount these repair/rebuild companies..... for many reasons.

My model for interpreting the comments of these organizations comes from my engineer friend who works for Ford.... one of his responsibilities is getting involved in difficult customer situations at dealerships. In short, the stories this guy tells me of Ford product failures will curl your hair..... all due to customer misuse (of course he would say this). But the point here, is getting in your car on any day, firing up your engine and flooring it is stupid. period. With any car...... something I witness every day..... I see this when letting my engine idle at a train station in mid winter..... folks do this all the time.

Further, these guys see the failures because that is where you take a failed car... to them. A doctor will tell you everyone is sick because he/she never saw a healthy patient.

What none of us know is failure rate. All mass produced things will have a percentage that fail.... it is just the way things work. Every chain has a weakest link.

From reading these Porsche boards since 2000, I can honestly say, the 9A1 engine has the fewest posts relating to engine failure than any I have read in 17 years (sans the latest metzger blocks as I don;t follow them)..... this 9A1 engine is now 8-9 years old in my 2009 C2S with 119k miles on it.... plenty of product out there with time and miles to see a trend or problem emerge. I did own the older 1st gen water cooled and had two engines blow in my 2000 Boxster S..... this experience plus the tons I read on the 'net week after week for years.... well no way was I buying a car with that design in it.

Therefore, I am not worried about my 9A1 car...... it appears to be Porsche's best engine in 20 years. I just take care of it as I would any car.

Peace
Bruce in Philly

bazhart

Slight over reaction guys!

I have explained how rare it is so far and how good the 9A1 engine is but also that the fault relates to heat/cool cycles and therefore will be unlikely to surface until cars are relatively old.

Furthermore I have provided advice as to how to avoid or delay the problem and I have stated that the problem may have been resolved and that the fault has only been seen by me in the first years of production.

However the good thing is that we have developed a solution by fitting Nikasil alloy liners - although we will not be ready to produce these until after extensive testing.

This fault is unlike the scoring on M96/7 engines because you can drive them after scoring a choose if and when to have them repaired. Because the Gen 2 fault is a full seizure - once it happens you have to have it fixed.

If and when more fail, it surely is good for everyone that options are available from various sources to suit everyone's needs.

If there are very few that fail - they will not be bringing them to us (or anyone else) to be repaired - there will be no loss of value and no one is inconvenienced.

I thought you guys were happy to accept professional information about the current situation - but at least those who may live in a climate that can be cold may benefit if they avoid driving too hard from cold - too soon.

The GT3 and Turbo version of the M96/7 engines have Nikasil alloy closed deck liners (like the ones we supply and fit to the other Lokasil versions) and are similarly bullet proof.

By analysing the faults with M96/7 engines and developing solutions early we have been able to assess the market, invest in setting up a dedicated production process and enabled us to supply a good repair at a reasonable price (surely better than a more expensive solution that merely results in the same engine with the same inherent faults?).

Similarly we are doing so with the Gen 2 engines but if it turns out that hardly any do fail - it is only us that have wasted our time and money on the project - happy owners with reliable engines will not be affected.

One difficulty with the Gen 2 9A1 engines is that the bores are blind at the bottom (so difficult to hone to size at the bottom). So a solution to this has taken a bit more time than previous similar developments and the low incidence means we have plenty of time to test the outcome.

The good side is that in undertaking this we will also be offering a 4 litre version using the same technology - so when the cars are older (and possibly would benefit from a rebuild/refresh anyway) or actually fail - we (like I am sure many others will) can offer something a bit better to follow.

For now there are no immediate commercial implications for us except our advice to help owners avoid premature failures - that we hope will help preserve their enjoyment of the marque and continue their commitment to it.

Baz

Wayne Smith

Bruce (from Philly) ... I appreciate your electric blanket on the motor!

Baz ... Excellent write up. I too feel the numbers are too small to reach absolute conclusions. I appreciate your persistence watching these motors in the meantime.

FWIW, I'm approaching 105K miles with my stewardship being the last 3 years and 70K miles. I still take out 7.5 quarts of oil every 5K miles and put the same amount back in. So I assume my motor is tight. So three questions ...

Is there anything we should specifically be watching for?

What do you mean when you say that these motors can fail and still be driven? Did I misunderstand something? OK, I snuck in an extra question there.

Don't these castings go through an annealing oven? I know of the field aging process and the time lag problems this involved. But it was annealing ovens that took away field aging, not time to market. And with computer temperature matching the ovens do a better job.

Thanks again for your efforts.

318touring

Just a quick note to those who thought that Baz was drumming up business and scare-mongering amongst 997.2 owners:

I used to own a 996 (before moving to 997.2), and I would get spooked by the engine failure posts in 996 forums, which was at a rate of one at least once a week, at that time. I decided, and the missus agreed, to spend NZD20k to refresh my 996 engine which sounded, looked and felt healthy and normal. I called Baz on the last working day of the year (a couple of days before Christmas), well past his closing hours (I'm in New Zealand, Baz is in the UK), and he spent 30 mins talking me out of my plan because my engine was healthy and I hadn't observed anything going south.

If he was looking for business and piling up money for his retirement, he would gladly accept my business regardless whether I was sending my engine to the UK, or buying the parts from him (worth around NZD10k alone).

cosm3os

I'll add a question to Bruce's list: for those of us doing oil analysis on our M97s, what should we be looking for as red flags?

DC911S

I'm, guessing higher than normal copper, iron, and silicon levels....

user 72902

My oil analysis provided no warning that my engine was scoring. I did a preemptive rebuild and half of the pistons and cylinders were scored yet my oil samples were perfect. Keep sending your oil out to be examined but in my experience it won’t provided any help in avoiding this issue.

bazhart

This started out answering a question about the difference between Lokasil 1 and 2 and has diversified (not by me).

The shrinkage we have measured in 9A1 engines is reality - the cause can be debated. It may be that what we have measured (a final piston clearance of say 0.0004" and 0.0006" in some cylinders) is the final complete distortion and will not get any worse - therefore as long as owners do not rag the engine from cold - they will never experience a seizure. Or they may continue to shrink until they all do - only time will tell.

I suspect few will fully close up hence my advice simply to warm up before thrashing the engine - which may help prevent readers having failures (I hope so).

Arguing about the causes is simply being in denial of the facts.

Wayne - the M96/7 engines that only score on one side of the piston are not so badly damaged that they will not run. In fact many are slightly scored (from free silicon particle damage) but will continue to run for thousands of miles before evidence results in a boroscope. In contrast the Gen 2 (9A1) failures we have seen are full blown seizures on both sides of the piston and cylinder bore and result in more immediate and obvious noises, oil consumption and smoke and usually require immediate attention.

Unfortunately for Gen 2 owners there will be no signs and nothing you can do to find your bores have shrunk except find out one day when it seizes because you were impatient from cold.

Bruce - aged stress relieving takes thousands of heat/cold stress reversals. It takes around 8 hours to fully warm and cool a car engine so to reproduce the affect prior to production - you could not manage more than 3 in 24 hours, 21/week, 1000/year - hence there is never enough time to test pre-production fully for this potential problem and when it strikes a design it is usually too late to have avoided it beforehand. Machining the casting releases some stresses (and a stress relieving process during manufacture can minimise the outcome – especially after machining off most of the material leaving a very small amount to finish to size) but nothing can replace the influence of continued heat/cool cycles and that is why – in the past – castings were left in the open for years so the sun, rain and cold can expand and contract the material so the internal stresses can gradually relieve themselves.

A forced heat cool cycle after casting can release most of the cast in stress and minimise future distortion but never eliminate it (as anyone who has ever skimmed a block or cylinder head will know – variations in shape of around 2 to 3 thou (0.002” to 0.003”) are commonplace.

318, thanks for your support.

I know people question my motives for posting technical information like this so let’s clear that up once and for all.

After a successful career in motorsport engine design and manufacture I became an executive for a number of private and public UK businesses and started Hartech full time around 25 years ago because I wanted to spend the last part of my working life with the marque I had an affection and respect for since my first Porsche (a 356C) when I was about 23.

Now a septuagenarian - I realised decades ago that a business will not thrive because of the ability of one or two people that will eventually retire - but needs to nurture and develop the confidence and skills of its employees by supporting them rather than simply over-ruling them and stepping into every decision making process. As a result we have developed our staff (many of whom have been with us for more than 15 years) to take over and my role is mainly in mentoring, offering experience and advice (when requested or needed - which is increasingly rare) and answering Internet questions. I don't need to work - I enjoy it and do so for the benefit of my employees, the long term future of the business and to help owners in difficulties and specialists who may not have the benefit of our experience and background.

Very few owners read Internet Forums until they are told they have a problem when they discover a lot about it retrospectively. My advice on how to avoid problems therefore only ever reaches a small minority. Other Porsche specialists often do read or find out about posts and so my posts mainly reach specialists and owners with problems.

There are many unscrupulous business involved in Porsche's but the majority are well intentioned but simply do not have the engineering qualifications, experience or machining facilities to solve all the problems. But all are competitive and want the repair business for themselves - resulting in some recognising the quality of our posts and reputation and coming to us, some others providing an acceptable alternative and others persuading their customers into "their own" solution that is often inferior (and which we often have to repair again some time afterwards).

By posting good quality information we therefore can hopefully influence other specialists and owners seeking reliable repairs and in so doing can help protect the reputation of the marque we rely on for our livelihood and the outcome for those with unexpected failures and turn a potential disaster that may have resulted in an owner never buying a Porsche again into a satisfied customer that is better for everyone involved with Porsche's than the alternative.

If Porsche had been able to predict the longer term consequences of their M96/7 engine design and fitted a larger open IMS bearing from the outset, upper cylinder support rings to the cylinder blocks (at minute cost) and if European health and safety legislation had not stopped the process of ferrous coating pistons - the M96/7 engine range would have become one of the most reliable engines of all time. All we have done is (like a very small minority of very capable others) is to step in and provided a good alternative repair that is reliable enough to justify investing in.

In my opinion - the problem we have seen in a small number of 9A1 engines could not be predicted before production started and has probably only been experienced too late to influence change. This means that the shrinkage we have measured (which is smaller in the thrust direction and equally larger at 90 degrees - so an obvious metallurgical distortion) probably exists in all the engines.

We do not know if some are influenced more than others (but all the ones we measured are identical). It may be that they stop shrinking and become fully stress relieved before completely closing in on the piston and as the vast majority of Porsche owners actually never drive them fast (from cold or hot) many will never fail.

The minority that have got used to getting away with booting it from cold for a number of years would not expect that to suddenly wreck the engine because their piston clearance has imperceptibly been shrinking over a long period of time and has finally cried enough.

By providing this advice and explaining the cause in a professional way that experienced and capable engineers and specialists will understand - there is a chance that some enthusiastic owners may modify their cold driving style and avoid unnecessary problems all together - or specialists may decide on the best place to go to repair engines where it is too late.

The accusations of "scaremongering" that often follow my posts are frankly stupid. Posting never makes any failure occur and only ever might avoid failures (or delay them) and in so doing actually would reduce global demand for repairs - so not only do we not need any more work - our posts actually reduce demand for repairs generally - but we frankly do hope we may influence demand on our services when a problem needs fixing properly - and that is not scaremongering but protecting owners interests and the reputation of the manufacturer - helping preserve values and not destroy them as a result of the alternative of the models involved carrying a global reputation as trouble, expensive and to be avoided (which they do not deserve)!

You can disagree with our explanations and advice all you like but you cannot change the evidence or failures we see or the reputation we deservedly enjoy and the only area for disagreement is perhaps the cause and the solution - for which we have the strongest of record of reliable predictability over many years.

Baz

Doug H

Correct me if I am wrong, but your post and this thread in general establishes that the repairs or rebuild you and Flat 6 perform may be less reliable or last even less time, perhaps much less time, than a new or factory replacement engine because the types of failures we are seeing is even beyond the scope of a manufacturer's ability to detect given the length of time and number of heat cycles necessary to cause failure.

Bruce In Philly

Dude, your posts are great, don't stop.

What I am about to write is speculation, but I do feel strongly about it given my experiences in businesses all over the USA.....

Porsche's M96/97 engine was a problem because Porsche's business was failing. They decided to make a cheap engine.... cost cutting was a major priority then..... they felt they had to for simple survival. No, they did not intend to make a dud, but financial pressures are things that show up everywhere in a business and quality loss is an infamous and well documented casualty as noted by academia. Further, under duress, they decided to make a totally new engine platform. Even the block casting process was new. Yikes..... bad ingredients make a bad dish.

Correct me if I am wrong, but from what I gather, Porsche never used a sealed, "lifetime" bearing in an internal engine component like they did in the M96/M97 engine. That was cost cutting.

Further, a Porsche dealer in Atlanta had a poster in their service waiting room that said something like "All Porsche parts are race tested". I wonder if that poster is still up. I saw this when my first engine failed there in my 2000 Boxster S. Porsche cancelled sponsored racing then as a cost cutting measure. In other words, that engine was never properly tested.

Then, before they released the new 9A1, Porsche "leaked" that famous video of the new 9A1 on a testing bed running a simulation of the 'ring.... supposedly showing off the oiling capability.... that video was for a different purpose IMO, it was to show they tested this one!

Just my opinion....

Peace
Bruce in Philly

DC911S

Real racing is just that, and race parts are not meant for the street and vice-versa. Real race cars and race engines get total rebuilds after not many hours of running time. I doubt few if any parts of the existing 911 RSR is in an actual street 911. Even 911 GT3 Cup Cars (which are not street legal and can't be made street legal) require rebuilds after x amount of hours running time. Sure the basic architecture of the engine may be the same, but the race engine crank, bearings, rods, rings, pistons, and perhaps the block are not in street cars. Even if they are required to run some stock parts, you better believe that those pieces will be handpicked off the line and thoroughly examined and xrayed to look for any possible defects.

TheBruce

Baz - you rock. Appreciate the education! I have more questions about the M96/M97 if you dont mind. Bore scoring is the new boogeyman so I'm trying to get as much fact from fiction as possible...

1. Are all M96/M97 engines created equal when it comes to the scoring issue? In the forum poll there is some speculation that all were from the 3.8 M97s due to thinner cylinder walls vs the 3.6 M96.5. Any merit to this in your experience?

2. What is your recommended oil for the M96/M97 to limit the potential?

3. Its dissapointing jkw911's oil analysis showed no signs of wear before his rebuild. Are the first signs higher than normal oil consumption which becomes progressively worse? I'm at 50k miles on my 2006 M96 and have zero oil consumption between 5k oil changes. I want to know if this should be the primary indicator I look for.

4. If the problem does arise, whats the recommended course of action? Is there any different remedies if its caught early vs the owner lets it go for 10-20k miles.


Thanks again Baz. You are an amazing resource for the community.

ATSR

Thank you VERY much for all the info Baz!! I greatly appreciate your level of detail on everything you have posted.

Can’t believe that some people would put a negative spin on this.

Wayne Smith

Yes ... this. Always nice to have knowledge shared and advice dispensed that will help us preserve our rides.

I think most of us know to warm up before we rev up, but it's always good to see this reiterated.

Shred

Baz: Thanks for the info and advice
Always good to see researches and findings on the 9A1 engine.