I have a 2012 TT. It is bone stock, and still under CPO. I have oil changes every 10k km. Car now has 135k km. I bought it at 45k Km. in 2016 from a dealer.
Last week I got a check engine oil warning. It was at 9500 km from last change so I drove right to the dealer. It has never needed any oil between changes since I’ve owned it. The maintenance is totally up to date, and is always current at the dealer. I always use Shell V power.
Long story short the engine had bore scoring and is blown. Porsche is sending a short block to the dealer under CPO.
I’ve never heard of a turbo failing because of bore scoring. I’ve heard of it on NA cars but not turbos. I don’t drive my car hard. It is a daily driver in all seasons, including Toronto winters.
The dealer has been great. No complaints there.
Is engine failure on a turbo something I wasn’t aware of? I was hoping to keep this car till I die because I just love it. Now I’m wondering if the 997.2 TT has a wonky engine.
Any thoughts?

 

Wow, sorry to hear about the engine failure. I don’t know much about the 997.2 engines but I’m pretty sure that I have never heard bore scoring on a Mezger Turbo. Also, I haven’t heard of any issues with the newer turbo engines.

Are they able to re-sleeve the cylinders like the Mezger?

Good luck and keep us posted if you are able to find the cause. Definitely not common.

 

I was thinking the same thing about re sleeving. Because the car is still under factory warranty Porsche insists on its own factory short block. No mods permitted.
I hope that doesn’t mean another blown engine in 10 years.

 

First one I have heard of, therefore probably a fluke. You are getting a new engine on Porsche is the upside which should serve you well long term.

 

"Last week I got a check engine oil warning"

Was it for oil pressure? If so, that is possibly why you scraped up your bores. No oil, metal on metal. If so it would be worthwhile to know why you had that CEL.

Ed

 

Good question.

The dash said I was down a liter with good oil pressure.
I had a similar code 6 months ago which said that my oil was too high, which is weird because I’d been driving for about 6 months from my last oil change. There was no reason to get that code.

In other words I have lingering suspicions about the accuracy of the check engine oil warning system.

Over 6 years and 90k km I’ve never been down a drop of oil. At least according the dash gauge. I check the engine oil level every fill up, which is at least weekly.

 

Agreed. Downside is it won’t be a number’s matching car any more.

 

Yes, but it will be a fresh engine, and with those chassis miles.....I would wager that the fresh engine adds more value than the numbers NOT matching detracts.

 

Bore scoring in the MA1 engine doesn't occur anywhere near as often as we see in the M96 engine with Lokasil blocks, but the MA1's Alusil engine block can indeed suffer from scoring with the AlSi cylinder system is compromised. You probably didn't do anything wrong to cause this and it didn't happen overnight. The check engine oil message was displayed as oil consumption will increase on cylinders with scoring due to loss of ring seal.

If they aren't putting in a complete new engine and opting to do a shortblock, I would insist that they have the heads rebuilt if they aren't replacing them. The injectors should also be replaced as we've seen bad injectors cause scoring and have seen instances where injectors were reused and the engine scored bores again in just a few thousand miles. They should realistically replace anything that sees engine oil as there is certainly debris generated by the failure that will uncertainly have caused damage to other components in the engine that they will likely try to reuse.

I'm not sure what they will do with the warranty, but I'd insist that they warranty the engine for the full term they normally provide on engines. I fear your CPO might have less time than what they normally give on engines and will warranty it for the shorter amount of time of the CPO if that is indeed the case if it expires soon.

The single best thing you can do to prevent bore scoring is to use a better oil than the factory fill and change it more often.

 

Agreed. No one will care about numbers matching. Those days ended in 1998 with the last aircooled 911.

 

Those are great points. Thanks.

It is something of a paradox insofar as a factory oil change means using what the factory recommends even if it isn’t the best oil. I only have control over the frequency, and I agree that the factory recommendation of 15k km between oil changes is too long. I do it at 10k. The factory says Mobil 1 so that’s what you get. As much as I think there are better oils out there I’m glad I’ve had factory oil changes so I’m not now in a position to defend my service history. The first thing my service advisor asked for was my oil change history and I had all of it on file. That made this a lot easier.

My CPO runs for another 25 months, and I will likely pay another $2k to extend it another year after that.

I understand that the new engine will be warrantied on its own by the factory for 2 years, which means it overlaps my CPO.

One of things I find impressive from Porsche is that you can get a factory warranty for 13 years from new. It isn’t cheap in absolute terms (2k per year) but compared to the price of a new short block it’s a deal.
I’m not aware of another manufacturer that does that, let alone a manufacturer that produces something like a 911 TT.

Thanks to all who reply on this thread. I appreciate the input.

 

That's great the CPO still has that long and that you can extend it.

We advise a 6 month or 5,000 mile oil change interval.

As far as oil, there are many A40 approved oils that are superior to M1 0w40. They can't force you to use M1. You'll just have to bring your own oil in. You should use a 5w40 rather than 0w40 and depending on where you are, you might also be able to use a 5w50.

Once out of warranty, an oil with lots of moly is what you want to help protect the Alusil bores. We use Driven DT40 on port injected engines and DI40 on direct injected engines.

 

@Anakin Skywalker Thanks for the feedback, it is the first time I hear about an engine failure on 997.2 TT. That's a bit of a bummer especially since your maintenance was in accordance with factory rules. What was the frequency of your oil change time wise (every X months)? What is your typical driving profile? I am trying to figure out if you had a lot of situations where you have cold starts which would lead to engine oil dilution by gas fuel (for instance if you have to move your car from the driveway etc.). Well done on the CPO. I don't think there is anything at fault from your side, I really hope it's just a fluke.

@Charles Navarro Thanks Charles for all the inputs. 6 month for oil changes seems very frequent, it is the same recommendation for 991.1 3.8L 9A1 engine? I don't drive often my GTS (once a month) due to my busy schedule and my next oil change is forecast in 16 months...

 

I use my turbo from September to May as a daily driver putting on about 1.5 k km per month on the highway. Some of that is in extremely cold temperatures. Last winter I measured minus 30 C one day. I don’t drive the car hard and I let the oil temp warm up to 80c before raising the revs much above 3k. It is my winter car other than some Sunday runs in the summer.
I put on about 10k each year so the oil is changed annually, or at 10k km.
Thanks again for everyone’s input.

 

@Anakin Skywalker Thanks for your detailed feedback! First of alI, I think that is awesome that you daily drive your Turbo during winter. Your feedback is actually very interesting. Letting the engine warm up before raising the revs, all good things.
During the winter, the engine takes longer time to warm up compared to summer. Higher coolant temperatures in the cylinder jackets help to evaporate the fuel that deposited on the cylinder walls after cold start.
It takes more time for the fuel on the cylinder walls to evaporate after these relatively low temperature cold starts, which themselves requires additional fuel to be injected for the engine to start and to operate in those cold conditions, thus leading to higher level of oil dilution by fuel.
There is obviously nothing wrong with the way you drive and maintain the car since your driving profile should have been taken into account by Porsche engineers during the development of the engine (both NA and Turbo).
I'd be curious to ask Porsche :
- if they see more occurrences of bore scoring on this engine for customers living (and using regularly their cars) in northern areas vs southern areas. My guess is they should see more occurrences happening in colder climates.
- what is oil dilution rate they consider acceptable before having to change the engine oil : 10%, 15%?

I don't know if this is too late but it would be interesting to sample the oil from the failed engine and have Porsche check the dilution rate by a lab.

With your new engine, if you want to tackle this dilution rate topic, I would suggest the following actions by order of increased complexity :
1. The easiest solution would be to perform one or two additional oil change in the winter times.
2. During the time you use the car in the winter, if you regularly check the oil level (let's say every 500km) and see an increase, it means your dilution rate increases (more fuel in the engine oil). It can then give you an indication that you need to perform an oil change earlier so as to keep the dilution rate as little as possible. I am not sure however if that would be reliable - you would need to check the oil level in the same conditions every time.
3. You sample oil from your engine every 1000km, have it analyzed by a lab and check the actual oil dilution rate. Then, you have your answer on when to perform engine oil changes.

For the sake of clarity, I am not saying engine oil dilution killed your original engine because I don't have data to prove it but we know that oil dilution is an aggravating factor for engine reliability.
In any case, your driving profile is not atypical and I suppose (hope) that Porsche engineers may already have taken it into account.

Just out of curiosity, did the dealer told you what were the engine code(s) that triggered the CEL? The engine code(s) usually have to come up twice or thrice before the CEL is ON so if you have an OBD reader, the presence of this codes at the 1st occurrence might tell you something is happening so you might also be able to use this information to know when to make your engine oil change (although that might be a bit too late to preserve the engine).