cstreit

One of my buddies is evaluating a Cup car and trying to validate whether or not it had a rebuild based on spotty paperwork.

Does Porsche reset operating hours in the ECU when they do a rebuild - or is it considered "for life" and the owner is supposed to keep track? ...or does Porsche keep track?

Thanks!

spg993tt

if porsche rebuilds the motor, they usually reset the ECU's variable for Motor hours to Zero. ECU hours is adifferent variable, the # of hours the ECU has been "on" o rhad power to it. motorhours wihtin the ecu (vs within the motec dash) is usually only reprogrammed /cleared to zero by pmna.

pmna builds nice motors. but a LOT of other shops build better motors ,at a cheaper rate. but they cant usually reset the value. so i fyou send it to shop X to build at 50 hours, you have a zero hour motor at that point, but it stays at 50 and increments from there.
so sometimes shops with do a cell phone image or modas print screen showing the house with a date stamp on the image o fwhen it was rebuilt and then you sort of go form there. so at 58, if you rebuilt at 50, its really 8. pmna uses that as one carrot. the other carrot from pmna is that i fyou pop the motor within a few hours, they will either rebuild at no cost or give you a massive discount. i bought a motor from a reputable non-pmna builder and it blew at 5 hours. i got a bit of a discount, but i was not happy at all when all was complete.

cstreit

Thanks for the detailed response. Much appreciated. That's about what I expected but wanted to validate it. Unfortunately while their are build receipts, the engine hours aren't noted. On the upside we can look at dates the car was used on AMB to validate and it seems to jive with what he was told.

A leak down should confirm the rest.

Surfbum

Whenever PMNA rebuilt one of my motors I received a certificate stating date of the rebuild, the number of the motor, the seal numbers, the number of hours on the motor they rebuilt and total number of hours on the car.

I assume they have a way of reseting to zero for that particular motor as well as keeping a running tally on the car.

amso3

In order to get the ECU reset to zero hours with a PMNA rebuild, you need to include the ECU with the engine when you ship to PMNA. I am sure that some PMNA rebuilds didn't include the ECU reset, so the documentation would be important.

BBMGT3

porsche rebuilds engine, runs on dyno for a few hours, and then resets engine hours on ecu, and sticks seal (plomb) on. non-porsche may or may not run the engine in (usually not), so the engine gets a few idle hours in the shop or a practice day running at low rpm for an hour or so

The "warranty" period is for at most a few hours and really needs the backing of a race team, privateer owners are likely to get a shrug and a sorry and a bill for a full rebuild if not more depending on severity of damage.

tkerrmd

gotta admit the Cups I have bought always have unbelievably detailed records, thats what they do

spotty paperwork would keep me away, unless price is low and you are ready for lots of rebuild