BGB Motorsports

The Porsche 9A1 platform has proven to be a near bulletproof weapon on the street, or out on track. While we have heard rumors of this issue, it seems to be happening more frequently to the point that we had 2 bone stock (BUT HIGH TRACK MILEAGE) 9A1 DFI engines show up at our shop within 2 days of each other. One is from a 3.8L GT4 Clubsport and the other a 3.4L 981 Boxster S engine. Both are from the 981/991 generation of NA engines for cars built between 2013 - 2016. I can't imagine this ever happening on a road car, especially a PDK road car so for your folks that don't do Launch Control at the Starbucks, don't Auto X, don't run your cars into the ground around America's road courses, we think you're fine. As for everyone else, let's be honest...these cars go to the track and have the ever living snot kicked out of them for 2 hours per day and probably 400+ miles per weekend under a 2 - 3 day Driver's Ed event format. We ask a lot of these cars! While seemingly more common among the manual transmission cars where drivers tend to rush downshifts and incite a change in inertia, we are now seeing PDK cars experience this failure too. We have no doubt though that these are some of the more heavily tracked cars around.

So...if you're sitting on the sidelines until the track season resumes and you're curious about maintenance that can be done to prevent a potential loss of your engine, call us! As of late we have been repairing more and more of these motors - we are grateful to stay busy so if you're considering some maintenance during the down time, you can either send it or we can even come and pick it up if you aren't too far away and we can coordinate pickups!

There is really only one other place I would trust to be knowledgeable about this repair and you know who that is! Our combined hours going in and out of these motors far exceeds anyone else in the country, so stick with the authorities!

We have been subjecting these cars to the stresses of endurance racing for almost 10 years now; we are confident in saying that they are some of the most reliable, most resilient engines around! You can't beat a current generation Porsche for the money! HOWEVER, when subjected to stresses far greater than intended, we are concerned to the point that we are going to address this issue going forward with every engine we touch. This engine in particular will cost over $15K to repair; it will depend on the nature of the environment to know exactly how bad the collateral damage will be if it happens to someone.

We will update this thread going forward for all repairs and work regarding this maintenance!

James88

Can you elaborate, what are you seeing?

d00d

PDK gear's bolts backing out?

Five12Free

looks like the bolts in the cam sprocket failed.

zedcat

variocam actuator bolts? I know of 2 981 Cayman S and a 981 GT4 with the same failure. The cases I know of were covered under warranty by Porsche.

James88

Wow !!!
posts an alarming thread and leaves us hanging...WTH

BGB Motorsports

Yes. I have heard of multiple cases where Porsche has covered this under warranty because they're aware of the issue and if they can stand behind it, they are. this is why i love Porsche.

I'm here...don't fret. The intention was to start the discussion. I had to leave yesterday because we are running limited staff and trying to make sure that 1 person stays in the office.

For those that asked the same question, from what we can tell, if you're aggressively rushing downshifts prematurely OR you're missing shifts OR you're banging the car off the rev limiter in high load corners in the taller gears, you're introducing the engine to a situation beyond what it's intended to handle. The change in inertia is causing the bolts to break. We don't know if excessive heat is exacerbating the situation. One thing is clear. This is not like the IMS issues where an appropriately driven street car can fail without warning. This is something you're exposed to if you drive these cars inapproprtiately. We raced DFI 911s and Caymans from 2010 through 2013 and never had an issue; drivers were missing shifts often but we also ran engines for roughly a season which is about 3,000 miles per engine. These engines are in the 10K mile range and these cars are tracked heavily. We are trying to create a list of engines that have seen an issue so that we can pinpoint it. RIght now it's specific to the 9A1 motors that came in the 991.1 and 981 generation cars.

burnergt4

When Rick was walking a couple of us through the tweaks for the 4.5L engine conversion I think he’d mentioned this as well. These are aluminum bolts that are shearing, correct? if I’m remembering right, his solution was to swap them for steel bolts and that seems to have done the trick.

Kenith

I wonder if this would be good to replace these as preventative maintenance.

sonorous

I'll leave it to Rick to share any of his solutions, but yes he did mention that he has seen this condition in 9A1 engines and that he does have a solution which he implements in the 4.5 conversions. He also noted, as BGB indicates, that this occurs in manual cars (not PDK) that are driven by extremely aggressive and/or professional drivers on track and is associated with equally aggressive, high RPM, downshifts. In these cases, the aluminum bolts are the weakest link as the engine spools up very quickly to maximum RPM and can exhibit total failure. Once the bolts break, very bad and expensive things occur inside the engine, like pistons hitting valves, etc. I personally don't see this as a normal failure mode to be worried about by the average owner. I would also speculate that cars with this condition also would have DME over-revs. That is pure speculation however...

BGB Motorsports

Correct, we're on board with DeMan in swapping out these aluminum fasteners for steels. The whole purpose of this thread is to raise awareness of a potential flaw that we (along with DeMan) are able to put a fix on prior to grenading the top end! Preventative maintenance in these cars is key, and that's what we're here to do

See above. Yes, steel fasteners are the key to preventing this type of failure. Make no mistake, while 6 speed cars are more likely to see something of this sort with aggressive shifts, PDK cars are not immune. We current have a 981 Clubsport with around 12k track miles, and a 981 Boxster S (both PDK) in with the hardware failure. There is no smoking gun at this point as to what is the sole cause of the bolts sheering issue (oil issues or oil temps, aggressive shifting, manufacturer defect, etc), we can agree that this is a fairly simple, however quite labor intensive job. Perfect for those pre/post-season refreshers that people send to us here at BGB!

85Gold

So my big question is does this affect the 987.2 9A1 engine???

Peter

d00d

Wouldn't it be safe to say it's an improper materials selection defect of specifying malleable aluminum bolts that tend to deform under pressure?

Rick DeMan

the 987.2 and 997.2 uses a steel version of the cam adjuster and is immune to these failures.
And they are not interchangeable, so this fix as John has shown here is a proven and solid solution

Chris P Lewis

Are these types of bolts used in the 718 GT4s?