Thank you for the compliment. I don't think Porsche will fail, nor do I think Porsche will even sag. I just think they will lose a noticeable amount of repeat customers and former promoters of their brand that they could have had. I do know that it will now be difficult for my wife to let me buy another Porsche, especially since her Macan (with Alusil cylinders) is starting to show increased oil consumption and there are whispers of Macan bore score. In other words, Porsche is losing out on an opportunity to be even more invincible. However, given the recent issues and expense of VW's Diesel-gate, I am somehow not surprised. Your brand loyalty may be somewhat unique under the circumstances, but I think your point is well taken.

 

As a trained material science engineer and working at US Steel for 4 years- Baz's paper is excellent and I highly suggest reading it instead of watching the Jake videos. Not saying Jake's videos aren't good, the paper just provides a deeper understanding of the various problems that are at play in this situation.

 

Only if you use the same cylinder technology, or something that isn't developed/ sub- standard. If the problem is addressed correctly, and service is kept up to date, with a proper oil, you will say goodbye to this issue. We have been addressing bore scoring for 18 years, it was the absolute very first mode of engine failure that we worked with, and it's the one that we have the most experience with. The engines that we addressed this problem with 18 years ago are still in service, and we have never had a single case of scoring reappear after engine resurrection.

Now, that said, I am going to pretend that I didn't read all that BS above about being a capitalist, or a fear monger. If I don't ignore that, it'll take away from the technical aspects of these posts. Technical things are all I give a damn about, which is why we are as effective as we are. People will have their opinions, and they will have their lack of first hand experience to go along with them. Each of you should ignore these posts, and those making the statements should refrain from doing so, if you intend to actually learn something through my experiences, and through us taking the time to share them. I will make it very clear that I will train my worst enemy, if he will listen. I have had this happen, as direct competitors have attended my hands- on classes, and I taught them the same thing I would teach anyone else. At the end of the day, I don't care if you like me. This isn't a popularity contest to me. If it were I'd be kissing everyone's ***, and trying to be everyone's buddy, only telling people what they want to hear- no matter what I had experienced. I don't care if someone hates me, as long as they learn from me. You can think that I am a capitalist all day long, and all I will say is that we finally got a return on our investments of life, and money that we have sunk into this over the last 2 decades. Finally. We didn't simply fall on top of the summit of this mountain, but the longest climbs do seem to give the rewards of the best view.

Also, someone mentioned that "now people are looking for bore scoring". Damn right! They should have been the whole time! The fact is the silver car had all 6 cylinders at stage 1 failure, and had the future owner not spent the money for an invasive PPI, (and had we not produced the volume 4 bore scoring video, showing the shop how to find this) they would have bought a car and had a failure within the first couple months of ownership. According to how far they had to drive home, they may have had symptoms start before they even made it home with the car! A HUGE majority of the tickets that we get about this come in from the category in our ticketing system "I just bought a Porsche, and I need help!". These people were either ripped off, because someone knew the cylinders were scoring, or because of bad luck, or because of a sub- par bore scoping procedure that did not view the cylinders from BOTH sides. I'd say that the prospective buyer of this 997 got his money's worth on the PPI, and that the shop that did the scoping job also did a great job of following the procedure, and finding the issue. Remember, when the silver car arrived here, I did not believe the diagnosis, as there were zero normal symptoms, so I scoped it again myself, and DID find the same issue. I only looked at one cylinder to prove it had an issue, but all 6 cylinders were scoring.

These two cases showed up at the same time. They are 450 VINs apart, and are the same year. It wasn't planned, it just happened like this.The local car is literally from 10 minutes away from the training facility, while the silver car hails from Alabama, about 2 hours away. I am personally processing both of these builds at the training facility,I have tabled all but one class for 2020 to do more engine builds here.

What is to be gained from this "duo" of bore scored engines is both found in the constants, and the variables. Pay LESS attention to all the crap, and pay attention to these things, if you actually want to learn something, rather than listening to bitch.

Here's what I gained from these two:
Black car:
-This engine had 5 perfect cylinders, and one that was horrible. The skirt of this piston was worn away by .5mm on one side, while the other side looked perfect.
-All wear was isolated to cylinder 6
-All wear was isolated to the top side of cylinder 6 only
-The engine ws a factory replacement, that after further investigation was found to had been replaced 10K miles ago, due to damage from a flood.

Silver car:
-No symptoms
-All 6 cylinders were scored in the same regions
-All scoring started, and stopped at exactly the travel point of the oil control rings
This one taught me more than I have learned in a long, long time. I talked to the customer that owns the car, and have decided not to reuse this crankcase, as we all need to study this failure very closely. On Friday I fish- scaled the oil control rings for tension, measured ovality, and cylinder taper, and sent the injectors away for testing.
The wear that we see with this one isn't something that is usually caught this early on. This one can give us some valuable data that we have not had before. Its not that we haven't seen his exact problem before, because we have- the big difference is we haven't seen this exactly the same on all 6 cylinders of a single engine, and been able to index every component to help understand things.

There's more than 1 or 2 ways that these engines score bores, which you will have derived from these videos we posted most recently, IF you are listening to learn, rather than listening to reply.

 

I've been getting calls about scoring Panameras and Macans as long as they have been out, like with Cayennes. The one variable here is the piston skirt coating used - once they went away from the Ferrostan skirt plating, that seems to be where the problem started. It's worth noting that the skirt coating used on KS cast pistons in 2.5, 2.7, and 3.2 engines holds up much better and doesn't flake off like the Ferroprint, resulting in little to no scoring in the engines with cast pistons.

I'm not surprised that Porsche has switched over the SUMEbore coatings on all aluminum blocks to provide a more durable bore surface than Alusil. Being that SUMEbore is only about .004-.005" thick after honing, it doesn't provide a barrier to heat transfer, like Nikasil.

 

That's interesting Charles as that is only similar thickness to Nikasil? Nikasil is also oleophilic and applied to a solid cylinder has great heat transfer capabilities by excluding any joint line between alloy tubes.

However the future is indeed in spray coating although not yet available commercially for rebuild options.

Also interesting that you have linked the KS piston coating to the change to ferroprint and the resulting failures - all explained in detail in our report mentioned above and explaining exactly why.

Baz

 

That's troubling on the Macan. Let's have a bore scoring party I guess, jump in, the waters' great.

My 1991 VW 2.1 Boxer 4 Westy has iron replaceable liners, and engine is at 255K miles burning zero oil with no work performed internally. Only challenge is keeping a rust free exhaust system hanging off the back of it.

Our 2009 Cayenne base is an iron block (closed deck). Safe.

Our 2006 3.6 base 911 with MT is the only engine at risk then. Right now at 66K miles, no black tips, no oil burning oil, no engine noises. But upon teardown, could be missing half (or more) of its original piston skirt Teflon plating. Certainly not a candidate for a supercharger. I also have the Baz paper.

 

When I looked at a 2005 997 with 38,000 miles that drove beautifully, I had it checked for scoring, and sure enough, there were telltale marks of scoring in the 6th cylinder. It was a start, but as the mechanic said (who is a noted rebuilder); who knows if it will last 10,000 miles or 100,000 miles? Predisposition to scoring doesn't mean that it will develop, any more than a family history of heart disease indicates that a son or daughter WILL get heart disease. Odds may be increased, yes, but by how much? We don't know. Would I pass on the car? Well, I have seen 50k cars with absolutely no evidence of scoring as well. It doesn't mean that they will not get scoring and require a rebuild at some point, any more than this one is guaranteed to have scoring.

 

From what I've read the symptoms are pretty much the same as the M96/97 (knocking sound, high oil consumption, extremely black oil) because the end result is the same. Both types of failures end up with scored cylinder walls. The difference is what causes it in the first place which is completely different between the M96/97 and the 9A1. Since it's a different mechanism, there is no reason to think that the incidence rate is the same between the two engines, particularly since it seems pretty clear Porsche was aware of the problems and made significant changes in the 9A1 aimed directly at correcting it. The publicly available anecdotal evidence backs this up, as the reported incidence of 9A1 "scoring" failures is far, far lower than the M96/M97.

I have not read Baz' report (may still but apprehensive about the NDA) but he's written prolifically about this on this forum and others in the UK. Every photo of a scored 9A1 I've seen (including Bronz's engine in Jake's video) had four scored areas directly in line with the main bearing support attachments at the base of the cylinder. The M96/M97 doesn't have this as it has a separate crankshaft carrier. Baz's theory (which I think is right on the money) is that the bearing supports put stress on the cylinder which deforms its shape and squeezes the piston at BDC. This is why it's probably less likely to happen over time as things loosen up with more miles. It's also why the advice is to take it easy until the oil is at operating temp as the cause is probably unequal thermal expansion when starting from cold.

Off topic a bit as Jake's video is for the M96/97 engines, but there's enough anxiety about this issue that it's important to understand the differences between engines.

 

Here is an overview:

https://docplayer.net/39787648-Sumeb...-surfaces.html

 

Nothing is the same between the M9X and 9a1 issues based on what we have seen since 2010.

 

Obviously, you have no understanding about multi-sensory learning. (I'm sure you'll go running over to your friend Google) Irregardless, bad advice to tell people go read one expert over the other just based on the medium they choose to use to communicate their findings. Bore scoring sucks and yes, it's affecting my car too. That's why I like to come over to the 997 forum. We have many things in common when it comes to this problem. For us 996 owners, I think the whole IMS bearing fiasco overshadowed the bore scoring problem for years. Now that many people have already addressed the bearing problem, they just realized they've awoken a sleeping giant called cylinder bore scoring.

Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum. I smell the blood of an porscheman, Be he living, or be he dead, I’ll grind his bores to make sum bread!

mwahahahahaha!

 

Jake thanks for commenting and addressing the differences between the two cars. It seems reasonable to conclude the two cars had different root causes. Perhaps the black car had a localized piston skirt plating delamination that affected only one cylinder whereas the white car must have had a more generic cause. The white car is actually the more puzzling and interesting of the two, what would cause all of the cylinders to start scoring at the same time? It has to be something systemic rather than a localized failure. Contaminated motor oil? Something with the fuel injection system pressure causing them all to leak? Just spit-balling here.

 

Not even the general failure symptoms? Completely agree that the scoring cause and pattern is completely different (as I detailed in my post) but isn't the end result that oil gets in the combustion chamber and and carbon gets in the sump? Not trying to be pedantic but trying to sort out the differences between the M96/97 and the 9A1 and understand how it affects the symptoms.

 

I've been keeping up with this on and off so I really need to do some catching up since I drive an 06 3.6 Carrera. My question is, so far I've seen no mention of 997.1/997.2 turbo models or GT3 models. Are these cars built differently? Again, I have'nt kept up but thought I'd ask since next year I may start looking for a 997 turbo or 997 GT3.

 

RTL 5009 It gets more interesting by the hour!

As a material science engineer I would understand why you may like and prefer my own report but I must add that it is aimed at people with some engineering or scientific background and not for probably the majority of owners for whom I think Jake's videos must be received very well indeed. I would like to be able to reproduce something similar but don't have the skill, time or equipment but I also think the content of our reports would not suit video reproduction because I think they cover too many topics for too long and in too much detail to pull together by that medium more suited to your background. That is why we warn potential readers of the level of content - although we have tried to provide shorter introductory sections for those with less depth of knowledge.

Mt Nutty - good appropriate name for someone who tears apart someone on a personal level for apparently suggesting they are experts and others should listen to them then goes on to tell everyone else how they should receive information and how wrong they are to have an opinion of their own - hypocritical comes to mind?

Thanks for that Charles - very interesting and great that you are exploring it over there. But after supplying over 3000 Nikasil plated wet cylinders without any problems we are not about to change something that's not broken! How did you find the rings that were designed for a different Ra value bedded in with such smooth bores? we can also adjust Nikasil from very much smoother to very much coarser but have found our ideal settings and they suit all the rings we supply.

PV997 - please don't be apprehensive - the report actually contains well researched answers to most of the questions you have raised and unless you intend to write a book or report copying all we supplied and claim it as your own - we will have no reason to make your life difficult. Feel free -- anyone - to comment or disagree constructively and with technical back-up of a similar quality and research - we can all learn and all I want to do is understand causes better as this helps create better solutions. indeed if you contact me directly I will make sure you are happy with the situation and then you will have the answers to everything you need to know.

Baz