Do you have a Blue Paint Engine?

Does your engine have blue paint? Say what? Yes Yes I know our engines are all aluminum and to some degree coated with a brownish color substance called cosmoline from the factory. However, it has come to my attention that there are engines known as "Blue Paint" engines that are different from other engines put into our cars. Here's a picture to show you a Cayman engine that was discovered to be a "Blue Paint" engine. I'm curious how many of these engines are out there. If you have the inclination, crawl under your car with a flashlight and shine it all around your engine block to see if you have one of these Blue Paint engines or not. Please report your findings in this topic thread. Thanks in Advance! :thanks: PLEASE FILL OUT THIS FORM - > http://www.planet-9.com/misc.php?do=form&fid=3 PS. I will add a Poll to this topic but ONLY answer the poll if you have inspected your engine and can confirm or deny that you have a BP engine. Please no guessing. I want the numbers to be as accurate as possible!

Does the blue paint indicate anything about the engine?

it was made by ford, or new holland.

I think I do remember seeing blue when I want under there changing the oil. Pray tell what does this mean? Please tell me it's not the "Blue Plague of oil starvation?" I can't take... :crazy: I know what I'm doing this evening.

I'm also curious if there are any internal differences. Is there an age range when these engines were installed? For example, were these installed in 2008 as test beds for the 09 DFI engines?

From the following website: assembly "In the following pictures you'll see what is required to assemble a PorscheM96 engine at the Performance Level. This engine started life as a 2.5 Liter M96 from a 1999 Porsche Boxster that had suffered several different modes of failure to include slipped sleeves, failing IMS, and ultimately the "D Chunk" failure that ended in a catastrophic loss of life for the engine. This engine had previously been "Remanufactured" by Porsche as part of their replacement engine program and the case had been welded in several areas, MMC cylinder sleeves installed, and other standard procedures performed by the Porsche Remanufacturing program. The outside of the case was marked with the tell-tale blue paint so many of these problematic reman engines have been identified by." This article seems to suggest that the blue paint engines have been remanufactured, if I'm reading this correctly.... ​ ​

See below Nice guess Casey, but you working at a dealership should know the answer to this, unless of course Porsche doesn't share this widely. Whether or not the blue paint also corresponds to a higher % chance that your engine will fail has yet to be proven, but it is an interesting theory. There is no specific range, and AFAIK they are not test beds for anything since the practice has been around for some time. This is pretty close, but what that article doesn't say is that some of us are getting engines in our BRAND NEW CARS that have previously had failures. As I understand it, one of two situations is what has happened: 1) A previously failed and rebuilt engine was sent to the assembly line to be placed into a new car. 2) An engine that did not pass testing during the initial assembly process and failed for some reason(s) was remanufactured at the factory and then was placed into a new car. This is Porsche's way of tracking engines that previously had some sort of problem before being shipped out in a "new" car. I use the term "new" loosely. Will Porsche do more for an owner of a blue paint engine car that has a catastrophic engine failure than for a non-blue paint engine car that has the same failure? Not that I am aware of. Anectdotal evidence suggests that Porsche treats both engines the same in terms of warranty coverage and repair, despite the fact that one of the engines has previously had issues. I have no idea if other manufacturers do this on their assembly lines or not, perhaps it is common practice and perhaps it is nothing to be concerned about. It would, however, be interesting to know what percentage of cars end up with these engines and how they compare to non-blue paint engines in terms of repairs, failures, etc. Perhaps owners of cars that have had failed engines did not check to see if they had a blue paint engine before their engine was swapped out if they received a swap. Those who had engines rebuilt (like myself) can, of course, check their original engines to see if they were blue paint engines or not. As it so happens, my original engine was a blue-paint engine. My original engine failed. Coincidence? Maybe, I don't know, but again, I think some analysis and statistics would be interesting to look at on the subject. Interestingly enough both people who have voted Yes to having Blue Paint engines in this poll so far have both had engine failures, so currently at least our rate of failure is 100% Now of course that's an incredibly small sample size but at least it is a start to the data gathering...

Ive looked several times, but have yet to find the engine in my Cayman . The gas pedal works, so I know its somewhere.

Tomorrow I'll report if my car has a blue paint or not. But from the pictures I have from the turbo installation it shows no blue paint. http://gallery.me.com/hassaanabdeen/100677/IMG00216-20100609-1704 Yet, the texture from Ken's picture shows its taken from the side of the engine not the bottom of the sump. Therefore I'll have my car jacked up to inspect it and report back. Nevertheless, a blue painted engine doesn't mean it must fail. And an unpainted engine doesn't mean it's immune from failure. IMO a painted engine should've never been put in a brand new car no matter what! Regardless, if my engine has blue paint or not, but if Porsche uses refurbished engines in brand new cars then they are nothing less than crooks! Ken, I say have this presented in P-9 coming Newsletter and reserved on the forum main page... Everybody deserves to know the truth. My guess now when they decided to make only 600 GT3 RS 4.0 is because they had 600 refurbished engines from their GT3 RS 3.8... Damn!

I can't imagine a person who knows about blue paint engined cars, is going to shell out money to buy a used car with this engine in it.

Let along buying a brand new car with a blue painted engine! Ken, is the blue painted engine available only on the 987 or also on the 911 ?

Kind of funny that my first post on the forums should come in this thread. Here's some photos of mine after I crawled underneath at a friend's shop last night. He (Speed Syndicate Motorsports) has contacts at PCNA, and is going to see if he can get a little more info on this phenomenon for us. FYI this is my second CS; an 8/2006 production car, bought it two months ago, 29k miles GT Silver 6MT. Sensitive content, not recommended for those under 18 Show Content

I'm kinda on the fence on this. On one hand I buy my Mac laptops refurbished. To me a refurbished engine should mean it was rebuilt, most likely after an IMS failure, and isn't the fix supposed to make the engine better than the original? I'm still going to look for blue paint today.

You didn't buy your refurbished Macs at the price of brand new ones, did you? Plus you bought it as refurbished not called new. Then why the hell Porsche sells us brand new cars with refurbished engines?!! That's the point!

49700 miles 2008 CS - have had no engine work done. Car still runs fine. Blue paint on passenger side of block. Never tracked or abused (as far as I know)...Bought car new with 3k on it. Was an "exec's" car...... I know however for a fact that the dealer did/does track cars and then sells them...

Flat Six Innovations has a comment or two regarding the Blue Paint Engines. rebuild of a blue paint engine brief but interesting...

I can see getting one of the Blue Paint engines as a warranty replacement engine. But Id say cardinal sin if it shows up on a new car. Has anyone reported a blue engine on a new car? Fascinating story of the Flat 6 Innovations rebuild (above). Ive never seen an engine put together like our flat 6's.

My car had 3k on it and was new as it was never titled and sold as a new car by the dealer.

What does it mean if your whole car is painted blue? Is that Porsches "Lemon" color? :hilarious:

Does it never end with these assholes?

Seems to. Also, same light blue haze on many bolt faces like cv to transaxel and a few assembly bolt heads. Don't know about Porsche but in most industry do that so can tell if has been taken off later. Good news, dry as a bone down there and seems to use nada oil at all.

Hi Guys, So, where exactly is the blue paint? I have an '06 BoxsterS with 30K. I see bits of blue under there, but mostly on wiring/tubing... There is a blue dot close to the oil plug ... Thanks, Franny

I think where mine was painted is the block surface between the block and transmission which is hard to see if the paint doesn't go outside of the area that the transmission covers, although it could also be painted on the other end of the block where the pulleys are etc, but I don't recall seeing any blue there when I changed out the pulley a long time ago. It's not as easy as looking at the oil pan. The blue bolts people are seeing are supposed to be blue, those are use-once bolts that if removed are supposed to be replaced.

Strange they mark these engines with paint rather than putting their serial numbers in a database.... The paint can be removed, can't it?

Another thing to worry about.....the dreaded blue engine!:crazy:

Sure the paint could be removed, but might require dropping / disassembling the engine to get all of it off. I always thought it would be cool to get a buffer and polish the whole engine to a shine since it is mostly aluminum, how cool would that be!

photo taken back in may 2010 i was changing oil for the first time and i did not see any blue paint in this picture attached.

Re: photo taken back in may 2010 Nope as long as it wasn't on the other side of the block, and btw I received word back that the paint on mine was on the side of the block not between engine and tranny, then you don't have a blue paint engine. As someone mentioned, each engine has a unique serial number, so I'm not sure why the blue paint is required either as a record of the issue could be tracked in Porsche's computers using the serial number of the engine. Hmm maybe for people who special order their cars they give them the special blue engines on the assembly line at the factory so the persons responsible for installing the engines know which ones to pull to go into which cars. :hilarious:

I need to change my poll from a "no" to a "yes." I was looking in the wrong spot on the engine. I have to say I am disappointed that I have one of these engines. The thought that it is suboptimal bugs me. The thought that it maybe welded up after failing one of the various manufacturing tests like the "no fire pressure test" bugs me more. On the other hand, maybe because these engines have been rebuilt at the factory, they have received more attention and therfore they are better? I wish we could find out more about these blue paint m97 engines. Note that the blue paint is NOT in the engine stand bolt holes. This indicates to me that the blue paint was applied with the engine out of the car, on an engine stand; Though I could be wrong. Regarding the upside down photo... the left header is in the foreground and blue paint is on the left side of the main carrier (block). I grabbed this photo with my iPhone while the car was on the ground.... In case you are wondering, it is easy to do.... Can the poll be amended to gather information on how many blue m97.21s have failed in the hands of consumers. And how they were used? Milage etc. etc. ?? My engine is a 2007 m97.21 and 33,000 miles. It has zero track time. Its running fine, zero issues thus far.

Yes you have one, and I cannot change your vote, but I thought perhaps users could change their own votes or maybe that's only within the first hour of voting, I don't recall. I check the software options and didn't see any with respect to poll voting, but duly noted that your vote should be a Yes instead of a No. As for failures of blue painted engines we have 8 people who have voted yes that they have them, and I know 2 have failed, 1 has not, the other 5 I don't know, those owners would have to chime in.

I thought I read somewhere in here about those with blue paint were welded? What exactly was welded?

One more "yes" vote, as you can see by the pictures. This is an '08 Cayman S that I bought new. It had something like 22 miles on the clock (before I took my test drive!) so I doubt anything unusual happened at the dealer. I've had zero engine issues so far, it doesn't burn oil, and runs smooth and strong. I do the occasional autocross on street tires . It has <19,000 miles on it currently. I had an oil analysis done at about 15,000 miles, and except for a slightly elevated fuel dilution (2%), it was clean (and I'm certainly more inclined to do oil analysis in the future now that I see the blue paint). I'm curious about a couple of things: 1) Has anyone who has had a replacement engine supplied by Porsche checked for this blue paint? That would be a true re-manufactured engine, as opposed to an internal factory re-flow engine. I wonder if Porsche distinguishes the two? 2) Porsche makes updates from time to time. I wonder if they pull engines from the assembly line and update them with the new component before they ship, and then mark them with blue paint? While this blue paint is a concern, it's possible that an engine that has received special "by hand" attention is better than one that just came off an assembly line. On the other hand, it's possible that the hand involved screwed something up...

"Blue spot" 07 CS with >55k miles on it no oil usage to date (although it is starting to weep from the sump gasket slightly) bought new with 15 miles on the clock. It is kinda tappy but has been like this for the last 20k at least with no degradation so probably just professional paranoia......

This is what I have been thinking about.. I've concluded that we do not know, really. It is just hearsay until we get some information from an authoritative source like Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, which is not likely to happen. All manufactures perform tests on their products and those products that fail a test get remanufactured. What is so shocking to read from a reputable very firm [Flat Six Innovations] is that some defective engines have been welded as part of the remanufacturing process. Getting new sleeves is normal. If my engine failed a pressure test and was remanufactured to get new sleeves, I am okay with that. In fact I like that Porsche has a quality standard that results in a reduction of defects. What I am concerned with is the welding of engine cases to correct casting work. If Flat Six Innovations rebuilds more of these engines than anyone, which I think they do, it would be interesting to get more data from them. They seem to the the only source of information on the Blue Engines thus far. Los Angeles [ Porsche ] Dismantlers would be another possible source of data.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the new Holand engines were red.