Did I Just Buy a Turd?

Hello all, Lurking for the better part of six months, and finally signed up / donated, etc. This website was an integral part of my decision to get after a cayman s. Thank you for all the good posts, tech, FAQ's, etc. It's quite extensive here, impressive. Closed the deal on a 07 CS with under 40 k Miles, nearly immaculate car. Drives strong as heck. Well, did an oil change today with about 3K miles on the oil. Tore apart the filter to see how it looks. What I found did not surprise me, but definitely is raising the hair on the back of my neck. Fairly decent sized chunks of metal in the filter. Attached are some pics. Some questions I believe will come up. Did I get a PPI done? No. Did I get the car from a dealer? No. Is there history on the car? Yes. All looks to be well on the purchase. The prior owner purchased the car from a Porsche Dealer about 2.5 years ago in Maryland. I guess you get what you pay for, always! If the IMS is shot, did I catch it time with this amount of metal you think, or do I have to go down the road of this boroscope deal to see if I ruined the cylinder walls by now? Any other thoughts? Thank you in advance. If it's toast, I guess I'll just put in the DFI motor and move on... and lick my wounds. Regards, DA

Also, read a bunch of threads here. Apparently this is very common in the Cayman. Any recent posts/ folks that have seen this.... what has ended up happening to your car? Or not happened? Pretty gnarly to see metal flakes, and it is common?!? Crazy.... DA

Not common to all Cayman. Just a possibility of IMS Failure brewing prior to 2009, NOT GOOD. I'd bring it flatbedded to your Indy or Porsche dealer for examination. I would not drive it, as things could get worse.

FWIW I dont know that a PPI picks up an early IMS failure? UNless you specifically ask for them to cut the filter I dont think they would do that. Also I dont believe the cam deviation would be picked up by the scanning tool until it gets a bit worse? I might be wrong. Since this is not a changeable IMS and you dont want to rebuild the M97 (I agree if a DFI swap is practical)....maybe just drive it til it blows? If you flat bed to a shop they are going to want to tear the motor down if the IMS is going. Its a bad situation. I appreciate that you are keeping a positive attitude.

Have you put a magnet on the metal debris? I would check that first.

IMS failure in these cars is EXTREMELY rare. Worst case I've seen is a less than a 1% failure rate. That means that more than 99% don't fail. As already mentioned, are you sure those chips are metal? That's the first step. If they're not then I don't think you need to worry. If they are, that sure doesn't mean they're from the IMS. If you do more research here, you'll see that of the thousands of members and thousands of Caymans, you may find 2 or 3 actual IMS failures. And of those, track use was often a factor. If it were me in your situation, I wouldn't worry about what you see yet. I'd get an oil analysis done and keep an eye on it.:cheers:

I would agree with the previous post, drive it for a few thousand (carefully) and then change the oil, do the Blackstone oil analysis and rip the filter apart to see the rate of degradation. I have 92K on my '07 S and had the oil analysis done a few thousand ago, nada. Car has been bullet proof except the usual interior issues, water pump, brakes and soon a clutch... this was/is a daily driver. GOOD LUCK

+1 I had a similar scare a few months ago on our 52k mile ‘07CS. Found silver bits (non-metallic) in my oil change. Dropped the pan, cut open filter, and sent the oil out to Blackstone Labs. The report came back with no issues. Put oil back in and went back to driving as before. Todd

In addition to the other actions that have been suggested, you might want to consider getting a magnetic drain plug - Suncoast has them for about $30....

It's a 2007. You are paranoid from reading too much internet garbage. Go for a drive and relax.

Thank you very much everyone. A little relieving to see the posts with similar situations and higher mileage. I have four kits from blackstone in my garage and I completely forgot to snag a sample. I was focused on making sure I had properly jacked and supported the car correctly. Ill order the mag strips asap.

A Turd? I don't know. Is your Cayman brown?

Blue, fortunately. Yes, there are a lot of posts about wiped out motors. Part of me thinks that a lot of them also are from folks who literally beat the piss out of their car and don't treat them well, aside from the HPDE folks who are running em' hard. Either way, appreciate the quick posts here. We'll see how she goes. I'll grab a sample in a few thousand miles and get it out. I run the analysis on my suburban and F150 occasionally since they get a lot of miles put on them. Worth every penny. On the metal, I will check tomorrow, I have some very strong small magnets. I am not entirely sure of all the metallurgy in these motors. Plenty of metals out there that are non ferritic.... Lastly, yes, I did some more reading and saw how the 06+ cars I guess have the best of the IMS bearings that came OEM. Reminds me of how heavy duty pumps the refining and chemical processes industries use double angular contact bearings to tolerate higher deflection / vibration. Thanks again, I'll follow up on this thread down the road for other folks sake that may find this issue one day as well, aside from the few other threads discussing. Regards, DA

I had a 2008 CS I remember being worried about the IMS thing, I had that car over 4 years, drove it almost every day, one of the best cars I have ever owned, enjoy your car there is nothing like it .

I dont get why everyone says that just because the failure rate is less than 1% that it is extremely rare. That means for every 100 Cayman/Boxsters, 1 experiences IMS failure. I don't know the purchase numbers for 987.1 Cayman/Boxsters, but that is not that insignificant...

It is rare. Nobody knows the failure rate. The 1% number is just a swag by forum prognosticators. It may be much lower than that. There are very few verified failures in years of postings here and other forums.

Didn’t Porsche confirm the failure rates of 8% for the early engines and 1% for the second generation during the class action suit. I thought that’s where it came from. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Pretty sure those numbers were "estimated" at less than 10% and less than 1% since there is no way to know the actual numbers.

heh that filter looks normal to me. Been tearing mine apart since 60k. I've had bigger fleck or two than that and going strong at 113,000 miles. Run 5W-40 oil and get UOA from Blackstone every 6,000 miles, add a magnetic drain plug, and call it a day. Your worry about the IMS at that mileage is overblown; at 150k to 200k then you can pop the cover off and check the IMS to see if the grease is gone, if so do a Direct Oil Feed mod, the only recommended thing I've seen for the M97 in the Panorama "ask a tech" section. the 987.1 does have oiling issues so I wouldn't track it unless you do lots of mods, and even then I've seen quite a few failures. Just enjoy it at 9/10s on the back mountain roads and you'll be ok. Constantly riding it at 7000 RPMs around a high G track with race slicks, no oil baffles, a single oil pickup, and no center radiator.. yea you're going to spin a rod bearing or the cylinders will get scored. Don't run M1 0W40 either, that stuff will show wear metals on a UOA, 5W40 is a MUST.

Thank you for the reply here. I wanted to wait to reply until I put some miles on the car and changed the filter. Did 2k miles since the last post (took a while!), mostly highway, but definitely some spirited driving. Inspection... only two pieces of metal. One of the pieces was small and dark, maybe 1mm long. The second one is a glinty piece of metal about 2-3 mm long, by 1 mm wide / tall. Its got a slight curve to it. I figure its a piece of timing chain. Either way, I am very relieved. In 2k miles, the motor only consumed about 1/2 a quart of oil as well. My 11’ Tahoe went through a quart every 1500 miles or so..... my 11 burban doesnt use any, and it has 146k miles on it. Yep, I run the amsoil euro 40 wt, I think it is 5 or 10 w-40. Whatever oil the prior owner had on there, the motor consumed a lot of it. Went through a quart every 1 k miles for 2 k miles or so. Then I did the first change, pooped myself, and posted this. Thanks for all the help folks. David

Be certain to ALWAYS use the proper fluids in your Porsche. They contain many synthetic fluids that are not your garden variety that are sitting on your garage shelf. Mixing in the wrong fluid can be disastrous and expensive to repair. The proper oil weight is 0W-40 or 5W-40, not 10W-40. Power steering fluid from the factory is synthetic Pentosin CHF11S. Adding regular ps fluid to the system can ruin the pump. Antifreeze is Euro flavor that doesn't contain phosphates. Mixing phosphate and non-phosphate antifreeze will create a gel in your system. I'm sure you were just updating us with your positive result in the last post and weren't serious about using 10W-40, but I wanted to encourage you to check the manual or forum first before adding any fluids to your Porsche.

If you are using Amsoil 5W40, your chance of scaring a bearing is very limited, especially if you are not running RE71R's or worse Hoosiers. There are magnets that go around your oil filter to really pickup small fiberous metal debris, which in your case would be a good idea. The magnetic oil plug, will do the job of alerting you to a problem, while the magnet around the filter will actually help prevent metal damage. I went through a simular breakin period with my 07 Cayman S when I bought it a few years ago with 22k miles. I use the magentic drain plug, and my first oil change after starting its use, I got a number of very small hair like metal particules arranged around the magnetic plug face in a very thin gray paste. So I went with LN's filter system using a Corvette spin on filter, which trap smaller particles. Since then I have changed to Castrol 5W50 and most recently to Driven Joe Gibbs XP 9 10W40 racing oil and have not had any particles of any type in my oil filter or on my magnetic drain plug. I had a LN deep sump with windage tray installed and asked the installer to carefully check the bottom of the old pan for evidence of any particules. His report back was it was clean. The Castrol 5W50 and Joe Gibbs oil quiet my timing chain a lot vs Mobil oil for what ever reason. The engine does not burn oil between oil changes. I check its level before starting each day, takes about 6 seconds and let it warm up for a few minutes before driving. I also down shift a lot to pump oil onto the cylinder walls to prevent bore scoring, while using a Numeric short shifter and cables.

Thanks guys. Yes, its the 5w-40 amsoil , https://www.amsoil.com/shop/by-prod...-oil/european/european-car-formula-5w-40-synthetic-motor-oil-efm/?code=EFMQT-EA Done many blackstone tests with it for the last 20 years or so, its worth buying. I do need to order the LN spin on filter and mag plug..... on the list. Read enough about fluids on this car and agree. I run the euro car spec glycol, bought pentosin or whatever the name is from Vato Zone. Put about 1-2 cups (50/50 with DI water) in when I got the car, hasn’t moved since. I do smell faint glycol so I went ahead and ordered a pump etc and will be swapping along with the expansion tank. I would ask for someone to show me how typical glycol would gel in a Porsche. Having a real difficult time getting my head wrapped around that one. I can understand using hard or lime softened tap water, you would precipitate out the calcium. How would the elemental phosphorus come out of the liquid and gel? Looking at the numeric cables this past week ironically and am orderimg them puppies up too. Ill take one day to pull em and another day to install, after reading the posts. The car has RE05’s which are decent but will probably swap to something with a little higher treadwear than 140. Thats another topic too. Thx guys

Think I figured it out, I have read this guys site a few times. http://pedrosgarage.com/Site_5/Coolant_Antifreeze.html

Thanks for the link, interesting article. And it dispels the notion that you HAVE to use Porsche antifreeze, even if only topping off. Pedro knows his stuff. He's the expert used in Porsche's Panorama magazine when someone asks questions about Boxsters and Caymans in their tech section.

Oil Analysis came back today from Blackstone. Excellent news. Attached is a screenshot. Thanks for all the feedback folks. I drove the car around Houston today, all the way down to Bayport and back up to Cypress.