utkinpol

i did not say it is a terminal failure. it is just a major PITA thing to deal with. essentially it all relates to deteoration of cylinders in second bank due (mostly) to heat issues and/or insufficient lubrication.

try to search for it here, i believe it was discussed here before. one of other (earlier) signs to look for was to check if one exhaust pipe is noticeably greacier and more 'wet' than the other.

also, if you want to see some statistics, for what they are worth - look at those responses here:
http://www.total911.com/news/466/

Dervish

Just asking as see my post here https://rennlist.com/forums/996-foru...sport-aos.html

I'm off to see Baz at Hartech in 3 weeks for his opinion also...

?

utkinpol

i get a bit of blue smoke when i startup my car after it sits still for half a week or so. it has tendency to smoke more when oil gets older.

i burn out may be a quart per season, about of 20 AX days, 6-7 DE days.

from what I understand limited amount of smoke at startup from both pipes is kinda normal, but it should stop almost immediately (in 4-5 sec) as it burns up all oil that sneaked into the cylinders, if it keeps puffing smoke for minutes after startup or if you see smoke coming out from left pipe only - it may be a sign of a problem.

i think more I track my car more smoke I get, so, I am quite realistic about engine`s life expectancy here. there are no miracles if one keeps running stock street M96 motor at redline for serious enough time IMHO.

yossarian

Mine happened in Bank 4 not bank 2. I only noticied at 2500 miles because I was parked pasenger door down on a hill. This caused the oil to slip out and leak. 15 minutes was a couple of plumes. 1 hour, smoked the whoe street.

And yes it was on one pipe. Just dont forget they cross at some point.

Clifton

FYI - for those worried, performing oil analysis will shed some light on what is going on inside your engine. I was able to monitor the health of my E46 M3 with the S54 motor (known to have bearing failure). I watched excessive metal content like a hawk and was able to reassure the guy who purchased it from me with a clean bill of health for every oil change.

The analysis will also provide you with an early warning if things are going sour prior to the engine going Kaboom. This would pay dividends for those who might be reaching the end of their warranty period. You can decide to sell or get on the dealers radar that the car is developing an issue.

CarGuy21

Are you sure it was bank 4???? These cars have a boxer engine with two banks of 3 cylinders each.

yossarian

Ah crap you are right. I was not thinking bank I was thinking cylinder. It was the forth. Ill assume thats the second bank but not sure.

yossarian

Just one more comment. The engine PSI report (I think it is called that) showed the drop. Beyond the scope that is a non invasive way to check.

ecostellodo

this is from the 6speedonline forum. thread link: http://www.6speedonline.com/forums/9...ke-dealer.html
his video link is on the last page of the thread.

phaphaphooey

Lubrecon, what is your thought on Pennzoil Ultra? I have heard great things about it on BITOG but like others have said I am in no way an expert.

Lubrecon

Don't know much about it, but when I looked at the Product Data Sheet, the VI looked like it was probably a PAO rather than a Group III basestock. Sometimes hard to tell, but with VIs in the 160 -170 range it looks like a PAO, same as Mobil 1.

As far as all of the hype about cleanliness capabilities, it is usually just that, hype. Everybody wants to be like Mobil 1 and thus the usual "it's better than the best" BS. Have you looked inside of your engine lately?? If you have been using Mobil 1, it ain't going to get any cleaner using the latest me too product. As far as Ferrari's approval, well I guess if you are driving one, and probably using Mobil 1, you could switch, but for what reason I could not guess.

Ask Pennzoil what the basestock is in the product. If they hem and haw around, and don't say PAO, then you can bet that it is a Group III. Mobil 1 is the standard all others aspire to, but today's oils are all very good, and any differences are marginal at best. Just be sure you change oil on a regular basis, I change every 5,000 miles, using Mobil 1, just because it is easy to remember when to change it. But I am wasting the capabilities of the product, it can go much longer than that before an change is needed. An oil change is the cheapest thing you can do to ensure engine longevity assuming nothing else shortens the life, such as IMS bearing problems or cylinder scoring or localized overheating that has been discussed here.

cbzzoom

IMO, and this is just pure guessing, I suspect some of the cases of this happening are due to the cars not being properly maintained through no fault of the owner. There are several ways your car can be in a non-ideal condition even though you are making a good effort to take care of it.

1. If you actually listened to Porsche and did 20k mile oil changes.

2. Because some of the cars eat oil, and because the electronic gauge is so flakey, you could easily run the car with low oil level without being aware of it. Particularly if you developed an RMS leak or something like that, which you easily can have and not see any oil on the ground.

3. There are several ways the coolant system can be compromised. Coolant caps had problems, coolant reservoirs cracked, you can get gunk in the radiators blocking air flow, and coolant hoses can develop leaks. You could easily be driving around on a less than optimal coolant system.

Mspeedster

Good lord that looks bad. I hope that was a one off problem and not an omen of some intrinsic issue with the new 997.2 DFI engines.

bazhart

Since repairing a lot of these 3.6, and 3.8 engines (and some Cayman S 3.4's for the very same reasons), and after offering the low temperature thermostat to customers - we realised that it would be sensible to inspect the bores with a camera (or boroscope) before fitting the thermostat - basically to protect us from complaints if the engine already had scored bores that were then going to be falsley attributed to us at a later date.

To our suprise - a high proportion have scoring already started - although not yet bad enough to result in knocking (which is usually the piston tilting due to the extra clearance resulting from the siezed face and tapping the top of the cylinder) nor bad enough to be noticeable through increased oil consumption yet.

We have also had a few customers with suspicions - who brought there cars in to check and in each case they were scored.


Also from inspecting the piston coating - although initially all the damaged ones had coating missing in chunks, in some higher mileage engines we are getting in now - the coating has worn through and the piston alloy is rubbing on the Lokasil bore material (while another piston may be seized and the bore scored) and I will put some photos of this on our web site soon to compliment those already there.

In the UK the Main Agents seem to usually state that the problem requiring a new engine is scored bores (which doesn't sound too bad) whereas for every scored bore there is a destroyed piston face and a scrap piston (which sounds far worse).

It is 85% bank 2 (cylinders 4, 5 and 6) and if the car has been driven around for some time with oil consumption up or tapping noises - we often find all three scored.

Bearing in mind how relatively cold our climate is over here - I can only conclude that this problem is going to become far more widespread than your postings would suggest (hence a huge order for oversized pistons is now iminent from us).

Please do not confuse this as scaremongerring - it is only a small number so far - but as all engineers know - a trend is easy to spot if you work on a lot of a product and this is really quite scarry - so get a warranty/insurance if you can and you should be OK and if you have any concerns get a camera down the bores to check - usually number 6 is a good bet!

We do have one very odd problem with about 1% of this whole generation of engines that we still have not yet found an answer to - a slight knock on tickover when hot that comes and goes - but is not piston slap, tappetts, camshaft chain tensioners, crankshaft etc (because we have prgressivley changed all of those to find the problem and still are at a loss). Just a touch of the throttle and it goes away - could also be to do with general chain wear on sprockets and backlash - any suggestions or answers welcome.

It seems it may be to do with camshaft housing wear - not sure so far.

Baz

Bullit

Not AT ALL boring! Thanks for sharing your knowledge on this! Greatly appreciated!