Recently I have been questioned by a
CaymanS
owner on a engine failure. This failure was obvious by a Intermediate shaft failure at 18k miles. The owner had disconnected the
battery
since the smoke made him concerned of a electrical fire. He then had the car taken to Suncoast Service Department in which denied him a claim for it. The reason was that he exceeded a 10200 rev and abused the car. This though was wrong since they do not seem to understand how to read the VAL. A 10200 was a min set by the factory and the next range of Max would have been what it actually exceeded this by, and was 0.
It will be interesting to see how this one pans out now that the customer has this piece of information.
As I understand it from talking to the owner this week that they don't have final resolution at that dealership just yet and there is a conflict of interests with that dealership so they will likely go to another dealership anyway. The crux of the point I think is that make sure you understand what the overrevs mean and what Porsche will or wont do because of it. Since intermediate shaft bearing failures are cropping up left and right in 997s and to a lesser degree Boxsters and some
Caymans
, I think Porsche realizes they have a problem since they've now instructed dealerships to fix these rather than swap in whole new engines since Jan 1 of this year. Unfortunately from owners I have talked to there is no warning when the bearing is going to go, other than for a very brief period of time your engine sounding like it has marbles in it but if you don't shut it off immediately it is going to blow if the problem is indeed the intermediate shaft bearing.
You know Scott it might be nice to include a picture in this topic thread of where that bearing is in the engine exactly.
Please educate me . . .
I know that with Softronic (in a manual transmission) it is possible to raise the rev limits, but is it possible to completely disable the rev limiter to allow the engine to rev that high (>10,000 rpms)? Or, would it occur if you forced a downshift into too low of a gear at high speed?
(I'm just curious as to what argument the dealer is using to explain how the owner could get the engine over 10K rpms).
Bingo! That is probably (and almost always) how it happened...
brad
I guess I should clarify. The car did not over rev. The dealer does not know how to read the report. The listing of Min 10200 on the report is the base line in which the next line Max is set to whatever it is over 10200. His report has 0 in the Max in which means it was not over rev'd and never went beyond 10200. The car also has to go through ranges 1-6 to get to this point and he has 0 in all those also. All 997 and 987 cars will show a Min Rev 10200 on the reports.
Ah... now I see your point... how strange that they would mis-read the report like that, considering what's at stake... just strange. Are there modifications to the motor they are claiming are to blame for the failure?
brad
I want to point out that the Suncoast reference above refers strictly to their service department and not to their parts department which is a sponsor here. Some dealerships sponsor from the sales side, some from parts, some both, but no one sponsors strictly for service so I don't want people to confuse an error on the part of the service department with anything to do with the fine work the parts department does. I should also point out that my local dealer made a similar error on my car and then corrected themselves after talking to PCNA and uncovering their mistake.
This is disappointing to read. The intermediate shaft was a source of problems for Porsche in the 986/996 engines. There are many blown engine stories involving failure of the intermediate shaft bearings in Boxsters and 996s with the same no warning scenario. Also, many times what an owner/service department would call a rear main seal ("RMS") leak was actually an intermediate shaft seal leak (located in the same area as the RMS and without taking off the transmission housing it is impossible to tell where the leak is coming from). Unfortunately Porsche has been very secretive about the cause and/or effect of much of this. There are hours and hours of reading on the subject with lots of speculation. It had seemed that the problems with had finally been fixed with the 987/997 engines but maybe just more durable seals have been designed with issues still in the bearings and tolerances. It makes you wonder about the crank misalignment issues that the 986/996 suffered and whether this issues is solved also (one leading theory on the cause involved problems with the crank bearings).
I know the answer is cost but you have wonder why Porsche just doesn’t use the dry sump engine and bearings used in the GT and Turbo cars. These cars have not suffered from the same issues as the other water cooled cars.
Happy Ending
Hi All - It was my CS that had this unfortunate situation. But first, I want to re-confirm as K-Man said that the problem with Suncoast was with their Service Department and not their Parts guy's Phil, Ric, Aaron etc. Those guy's are great and deserve the continued support from the Cayman community.
My problem with getting warranty support on this issue from Suncoast most likely stems from the fact that Carlos DeBonis and I opened RENN HAUS in October 2007 in direct competition. Carlos has over 30+ years of experience as a Master Porsche/Audi/BMW technician and he left Suncoast in early 2007 after many years. Therefore, it appears there are still some lingering feelings about his departure.
Therefore, I want to believe that this is a personal issue between our two companies and not reflective of the normal service one can expect from Suncoast. In fact, another CS lost the engine the same weekend and Suncoast trailed it back to their shop and replaced the engine under warranty.
My happy ending is we took my CS to Reeves Porsche in Tampa and the engine swap was approved in one day by PCNA. The replacement engine arrived overnight the next day and was installed and ready to go by the day after. That's an approval, engine arrival and swap in 4 business days!
I wish to thank all the individuals that posted concern and comments on this forum. But mostly I want to thank Reeves Porsche, K-Man for his offer to help and Scott for his assitance in understanding the PIWIS log.
:cheers:
GuyC
