sclemmons

Bought with 9k. Now has 33k trouble free miles. I only had two claims on the CPO: cup holders, and the driver's side window motor. Still going strong. Looks like the car that Darth Vader ordered for himself, too.

StormRune

Looking at the Auto Atlanta website diagrams at http://www.autoatlanta.com/porsche-p...section=103-10 there are several parts called out as being different for the X51 (all camshaft intake parts) but the Intermediate Shaft parts don't seem to be among those.

Interestingly enough there are two intermediate shafts listed, but the first one seems to be discontinued and replaced by the second one. Maybe this is due to upgrades to address the failure problems. I dunno.

gpjli2

This is just #'s. The failure rate is low and there are not that many out there. 996 had x51 kit w old bearing and 997 had x51 w updated bearing. They will behave just like the rest of the lineup wrt bearing failure. Just drive'em and enjoy.

alexb76

Someone should correct me, but I believe X51 was not available at 997 intro, correct? and was offered later in 2005.

If so, by default it must have newer IMS bearings, and the affected ones are always the ones pre-2006 and mid-2005.

throttle13

Hartech and Cartronic mentioned some typical problems affecting Porsche water cooled engines from 1997 to 2008. They both in the engine rebuild business, so they might be biased. But cartronic delivers at least some usefull insights into some feasable (not statistically documented) weak points of the M.96 and M.97 engines.

http://www.hartech.org/porsche_996_9...on_faults.html

http://www.cartronic-motors.com/cartronic_download.php

Cartronic explains in detail (in german) why X51 engines have a higher risk of failures.


PS: I drove with my two Boxster S (2001 and 2007/of course no X51/MT) 144.000 km and 120.000 km without any Problems before sale each.

Perk10

The X51 package was made available for the 2006 model year cars and up. The 2006MY's are generally considered to have the larger bearing and therefore you don't hear of X51 cars with IMS failure.

Spinout

Not apples to apples but I thought I'd mention, since we're talking about the debut of the X51 package, that the 2004 996 40AEs came standard with the X51 power package bumping the HP from 315 to 345. Nice

Henrik964

http://www.cartronic-motors.com/cartronic_download.php

Cartronic explains in detail (in german) why X51 engines have a higher risk of failures

Well that is theory. It could be like that or not. Still now facts on x51 kitet Engine failures