996 tracking?

Hi guys, I have been a lurker for quite a while. I own a rainforest green 2000 c4 aero. I joined the PCA last year and did several autocross and DE events in my area. I really enjoyed these events and am doing more this year also. Last month Panorama magazine Tech Q&A fielded a question whether the 996 engines were reliable enough for track use. The editor did not feel that these engines were up to the task (IMS, water pump etc). He also expressed the opinion that the IMS fix was not a lasting soln and that engine failure could happen even with the IMS repair in a track situation. I love my car and am frankly freaked out about this article - what do you think?? I would like YOUR opinions on this matter. If this subject has come up before please just send me the link and I will investigate further. Love your website, visit often, great community!

I'm not a racer, but I have seen a few failures on 996/986 engines that would scare me as well.

Racing/tracking is hard on a car... any car. And sometimes, not often, there are failures... of various kinds. But on rare occasion, there are failures on your favorite canyon run, or in rush hour traffic. I track my car... it's one of the main reasons I got it (drive it often on the street as well). I bought a roller with an IMS failure (it had been a daily driver...) so we rebuilt the motor - and it's good and strong. I feel pretty comfortable....... but it could fail - I accept that risk. If you can - track it and have a ball. If you can't bear the thought of it breaking... then maybe it's not for you...

I base my decision on which car to track on several factors, one of which is cost and availability of replacement parts. Since 5.7 liter small-block v8's are (exaggeratedly) a dime a dozen, I'm somewhat more likely to flog my Corvette even though the 911 is a better track car in some respects. That said, I'm not afraid of thrashing my 996, but I do understand that the likelihood of a machine breaking is dependent on how hard you use it. This is true for blenders, M96 motors, and everything in between... I love to wind the Porsche out to redline, but when it comes to complete hooning, like locking out the front brakes for epic burnouts and big, smoky drifts, the Corvette is my go-to car.

I would absolutely ensure you have an upgraded oil sump baffle system. I will not track my car again until I have that completed, if ever. https://rennlist.com/forums/996-foru...l#post12292128

When I had my 996 C4 Aero I tracked it 4-5 times a year for 4 years. My car never ran better after a weekend event and it is simply amazing what these cars are capable of. The waterpump and IMS thingy didn't scare me. The wp will give you signs of impending failure like a whine or leak. The chances of an IMS failure on the track are far and few.....but it can happen, crap anything can happen. What did me in was oil starvation on sweeping turn. This happened only after I added track tires and guess what? It was my fault. After upgrading suspension, brakes and finally track tires I was asking for trouble because I did nothing to compliment oil lubrication. IMHO if you are using street tires for a DE than you are fine while just maintaining the health of your car. IF you add track tires please add a X51 baffle to the sump pan or get a deep sump pan kit. Your wallet will thank you.

As Pete said, the oiling can be the biggest issue of running these on the tracks as naturally it is not a dry sump motor like the previous versions. Outside of the x51 baffle, something like an Accusump and secondary pump retrofit could greatly reduce any oiling issues. x51-version.jpg

Thanks so much guys, great input - has anybody had a IMS retrofit fail in normal driving, aggressive driving? How important is the water pump issue? I presently have 30K on the car, no issues - but I will look into the oil sump issue. thanks much

Depending on where you run, it maybe beneficial to add a center radiator if you don't already have one. As for the lower temp tstat, I'll leave that one alone. Anytime when you're tracking you should always make sure all maintenance is up to date first including the WP. The general consensus is the IMS fails a lot less in spirited higher rpm driving. Don't lug the motor and you should be fine.

Don't overthink it... if you want to track it just do it. Go through the club's maintenance checklist and have fun. Life is too short to worry about bearings.

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This.....but do not ignore the oil sump or you could have a serious issue that you will kick yourself over. It's not worth $10-15K for a mistake.

I tracked my car for years without a deep sump kit on r comps. No explosions no drama. Paul did you have a bad experience or just prefer to be cautious?

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Good to know! I gotta say it is always in the back of my mind, but I've pretty much decided that I'll deal with it if she blows. I'm hoping I have a dual row IMS and was thinking about oil issue and will need to look into it further, not sure I want a oil pan that hangs lower to the ground, I'm already pretty low... I have Ohlins/solid top mounts, my new RE-71R's are being installed today, wanted something softer/better grip than Pirelli Rosso. I've only done 2 AX and 2 track days since I bought it, but have many more planned for the 996 this year...

My LN deep sump/spacer kit only drops the pan an inch or so. My car is very low also and I can understand the concern but again I've never bottomed out even with the tall manhole covers in Miami.

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I though "Miami manhole cover" meant "buttless leather chaps."

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We have tons of speed bumps around here and I heard a big bang once, but couldn't locate where it hit, maybe it was the exhaust tips but sounded more solid, I was going a little faster than I should have and now I only go super slow, never had a problem with oem suspension.

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I guess you know something I don't

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Nah, you probably bottomed out the rear suspension. Seriously the never ending road construction in little Haiti is terrrible for lowered cars. They leave manhole covers sticking up 3-4 inches above grade while repaving for weeks. I actually got so sick of driving my 911 on the streets and highways here that I bought a range rover. 911 mostly track and weekend sprints now.

I can speak from experience from blowing an engine at the track. My car actually sucked down a valve and chewed up my engine. What I do know that more and more of the IMS problems seem to be from cars driven not very hard. Most of the IMS problem I have seen at the track are usually cars with many miles on them and had no history of a change. My experience is that my problem stemed more from my car running hot than an inherit problem with the IMS. I should have installed a third radiator or CSF radiators. It also could be from me as I notice that if I short shifted more my car tended to run cooler. I guess it depends on how hard do you drive the car. The faster you are with DOT R and redlining it , will be harder on the car no matter what make or brand that it is. My advice is that you should get the upgrades. Replace your IMS, get a deep pan for DOT R , change that water pump, and get a third radiator. That should make you ready for the track. BTW water pumps issue will destroy an engine regardless if you track a car or drive it like Miss Daisy. They need to be changed if the pump is too old.

You only live once�do it! Guaranteed regret if you don�t, low percentage regret if you don�t. I just change my water pump and thermostat and flushed the cooling system before this track season as PM. Change the oil every 2-3 events you will be golden.

Jetskied I also dropped a valve seat which resulted in a rebuild and upgrade to 3.8. I wasn't at the track, only driving 15mph leaving brunch.... Point is you can have a failure anytime in any car doing anything. If op wants to track it then collectively our advice is maintain car, mod as necessary and drive the **** of it.

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I'm curious as to what a list would look like for the best track Porsches (watercooled, including Cayman)? My guess: 991 GT3 GT2 997.2 GT3 991 turbo ? I know they're fast, but heavy, may not be the best track car 991 ? (too new to determine durability?) 997.1 GT3 996 GT3 ? ? ? 996 at the bottom Where would the Mezger turbos fall in? and the 997.2? I know Mezger had issues with coolant pipes and some engines blew but aren't they pretty much bullet proof? thoughts?

918 CarreraGT RSR GT1 Cup GT2RS, GT3RS GT3, GT2 GT4 Not necessarily in that order, of course long list of race cars I'm leaving out

Nevermind all this nonsense, how about some pics of your car? Don't believe I've ever seen a green 996 with aero kit.

Drive the **** out of it. I do. I swear to god I must be one of the few rare breed that honestly don't think twice-not even for a split second;about the IMS. Laugh now, cry later. **though the oil starvation at high Gs is a real issue I've heard.

Thanks guys, I will try to get you some pics - factory aero too, GT3 Lite, savannah beige interior!

Just track it! If it blows, it blows... that's part of the fun of driving a car hard. You're probably more likely to miss a shift and destroy your engine and/or transmission than have it fly apart on its own. No 3rd radiator, IMS kit, or water pump will help then... Overall it's still cheaper than a GT3 engine to replace, no?

Yeah, Blackhawk is what I have been running for DE events, great place to learn for a newbie! Paul, your link to your blog about oil starvation at Blackhawk was informative. Ive just been doing this 2 years but isnt it shocking how many people actually stay with the sport - less than 10% of newbies actually run a second year WHATEVER the car! Why is that?

I track the **** out of my 996. Original dual row IMS, deep sump baffle kit from FVD, ROW 30 suspension, roll bar, racing seats and harnesses and that's it. I have seen more non Porsches fail on the track than Porsches. Seen plenty of brand new Camaros and Vettes bite the dust. But,I have seen many a Porsche crash out but that is a different story. Any car can blow a motor so I just enjoy it until my number comes up, which is hopefully not before I get a GT3.

Interesting post. I picked up my 03NB in Feb, specifically so I could do DE with it out here in NorCal (I live about 20 mins from Sonoma Raceway). My car came with just the right options: x51, M030, sport seats, and short shift kit. Based on above posts, sounds like x51 kit may have me covered on the oil sump/baffle mod, correct? Also, I believe that kit adds a radiator? Just curious, as I've got four track days coming up in the next three weeks, and I've already done two. I do notice a big belch of blue smoke when I start the car for my next session after I've done one at the track. Based on what I've read, this is not something to be majorly concerned about - and can be somewhat mitigated by letting the car idle for a minute before shutting it off after a session. It doesn't do this during normal use - only at the track. As for IMS, when I bought the car the clutch was pretty much done, so I just did IMS and clutch at same time - 40k miles. Thanks for any info/suggestions re current set up. And as others have said, regardless of any of this I'm going to drive the thing like I stole it, and worry about cleaning up the mess as/when I need to.

I just did the IMS thing on my C2 ( purely preemptive, no warning signs at all) but now that I have a GT3, it'd be the one more likely to see track time. I did replace the water pump on the C2 when it blew up while on a road trip. The signs were there, weird whine, a bit of water leak, but I did the Press On Regardless route and was lucky to have a dealer 10 miles away she it did go kablooey. As said above, drive it. Stuff happens, but at least it happens while you are in a Porsche. Now I need to see what is causing the weird clunking noise in the C2's front end.....(the list of what makes you neurotic about these cars that we love so much never gets any shorter)

Thanks Porschedog, have been lusting after a gt3, yellow 2005, just cant justify the coinage - damn things are appreciating as we speak! But I have to drive one yet, whole different experience from what I hear! Love the doxie, have a Brittany Spaniel myself, a big galoot named Charlie!

Whether we're talking Porsches, especially water cooled ones, or Ford Mustangs, or Corvettes, my track experiences strongly show that stock cars should be retrofitted with improved oiling and cooling systems before being tracked regularly. Track sessions always produce elevated oil and water temps that may exceed the engineered margins for street cars. My first P-car was a '80 911SC that I used in nearly 15 DE events over some 6 years. As a precaution, I replaced the "trombone" oil cooler with a oil cooler installed in the front air dam, but that was the only mod, except for DOT tires, I made to it, and it never missed a beat. But of course the 911 3.0L engines were well known for their robustness. Most such mod's. are not expensive...ask some PCA DE folks what mods they recommend as "starters". relinuca

I may be naive, but many of you worry too much - you're borrowing trouble. Perhaps we are just fortunate, but my wife and I both drive our 911 (separate run groups) in 5 or 6 DEs per year. Thus, our car might be on track for a solid hour before a 30 minute brake. We do all of the Porsche service manual items and additional work as recommended by our tech. As others have said, these cars are very capable. Based upon our experience, they are built to withstand track & street time. Safe driving & God bless.

I think there is a genuine issue here because the parts and repair costs associated with our cars are exceptionally high. The prospect of a $15-20,000 bill for a grenaded engine is a really good reason to think twice when compared with alternative car brands with much lower costs. I also go to the track as does my son. But we run BMWs because the economic downside is quite a bit shallower (ask us how we know). If your priority is the track and keeping costs within bounds, perhaps a 996 is not such a good idea and its time to get a dedicated track car that is less nerve-wracking? My 996 is sheer delight on the road but just too expensive to fix for the track, in my mind.

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The March issue tech column said that Porsche Motorsports was the first one saying not to track the car. Perhaps they had bad experiences in the development phase of the engine and Porsche decided it would cost to much to re-engineer. But this is Porsche Motorsports...they are not selling to you and me, these guys service the teams at Daytona and Sebring, etc. At the same time, the "oil starvation and IMS issues" are one in the same in the opinion of the author of the book 996 The Essential Companion. I tend to follow that opinion in taking my own protective action. Still, as per much of the advice here, I'll sooner than later do the X51 sump kit just to give an additional margin of protection...even if I never get back on a track. The Ferrari 308s and 328s also had oil starvation issues due to the placement of the oil pickup. The original design was to be longitudinal and dry sump but during development that got nixed. They went to the classic oil sump desing but they did not relocate the oil pickup location. On high speed right hand sweepers such as Turn 2 at Willow Springs and even on certain parts of Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills, you could see your oil pressure drop to zero. Ferrari's ultimate solution was to get rid of the transverse engine layout and go longitudinal with the 348. The V12 Ferraris in the Daytonas also had issues with the left bank cam gears and chain getting dry. A guy I knew had special tubes put in that squirted oil on the chains on that side of the engine.

For those interested in the article.

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One of the local owners club meetings was at a shop here in town. A tech was talking about how a older boxter (I think 90's or very early 2000's) failed and the rebuild cost around $20k. Forgot what caused the failure, but it had a ton of miles and was used as a track car, so nothing we need to worry about really, it just got old and decided to give up. Not only was the owner using it as a track car, they were also driving it to the track (cross country) and pulling a small trailer with their track seat and tires. They would get to the event, drop the trailer, put on the track gear, drive the **** out of it, swap everything back, pick up the trailer, and leave. As far as I know they are still tracking that car, and the rebuilt motor sounds like it had a bit more snort added than the stock one. Of course Porsche says not to track them, they want to sell you a track ready car... Actually, there wasn't a red flag raised at another owner club event where we were talking about track days and getting involved with them (once a month or so). Maybe it's more of an internet thing?

OMG. Fugging Internet hysteria again. And BS to that stupid Panorama article. "Reiser" in my opinion is probably a student of Jake who - to his credit, only sees failed motors so is biased towards his point of view. I track my car 5x a year. She's also a daily driver. On any given day when I'm there, there are about 20 - 30 other cars, 80% of which have a M96 engine in it. They too track between 5 to 10 times a year, and most are stock and have been doing it for years. Enjoy the car. If it scares you, don't buy it or if you already have one, sell it and buy something else. Geez. Now if you plan to do RACING in it, of course that's a different matter altogether and of course Porsche Motorsports recommends a racing car from their development to race in. DE Track sessions are NOT RACING sessions.

I tracked my 99' 996 C2 87k, ran and handled great!!! I did get the deadly intermix but I cannot blame it on tracking since it is a common problem. Not the fastest or best handling car out there but its a different world tracking a rear engine car and I love it. I will probably track it again after I can afford Raby's services.

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Exactly but with DE's once you start to get to the upper groups you are wanting to go faster... That was me hence the track tires. Had I stuck with street tires I think my percentage of failure would have been lowered quite a bit. My initial comment in the post about if you track with street tires you are good. IF you track with R comps you are vulnerable unless to upgrade the oil flow. This is all about the slippery slope. But to each their own. And to the guys that say well if it blows it blows I'll just deal with it. Big talkers with 15K burning a hole in their pockets.

I posted about my experience on racing forum and then just put on here. Apologize if I duplicated the message. From earlier in this thread: smoke upon start up can be an oil/air separator but we changed mine and there was no smoke on start up...but there was when my engine blew months later! Jason

The guy claimed Porsche Motorsports said not to track the 1999s. I would like to see some proof of them actually saying that. A few minutes of searching the internet reveals no evidence that Porsche Motorsports ever said such a thing. Considering the amount of debate over the 996 and the dry sump issue in particular, I find it difficult to believe that if Porsche Motorsport had ever said such a thing, it wouldn't be linked to and pasted all over the internet. Yet, I at least can find no evidence of it. I would also point out that the 996 Essential Companion book has several pages on the dry sump issue and never mentions any such statement or any issue with taking the car to the track. I know not everyone agrees with that book's contentions, but the book is nothing if not thorough. I find it very hard to believe the author would have not included such a statement by Porsche Motorsport if one had ever been made. In short, I think that Reisner pulled that statement out of his @ss. He is repeating some urban myth that he has heard. If someone on this board has a link showing proof that Porsche Motorsports ever said that, I would like to see it and will concede the point. Until I see such a thing, I call Shenanigans. I don't think Porsche Motorsport ever said that.

If Porsche said not to track a 996, why did they make Grand AM Koni Challenge 996 cars from 2001-2003?! Those are 996's... and are not street legal meaning they can only be used on the track.

Go to the track. It's a blast!

yes

Track away. Use super high quality oil. Change before and after event. I've got 4 years of hard track use on my 2000 C2. The IMS issues don't happen on track cars as a rule (high RPMs and more frequent/better oil service interval).

Wow, didnt mean to cause such a stink, advice much appreciated! So, I am to assume not to trust even the Panorama editors as they have their own biases? In the end, isw Porsche backing track use for the 996 or not, go figure????!

3 years on stock motor. All racing. X51 oil baffle pan and Motorsport AOS. That's it. No other mods.

Real-world expertise? You actually expect that to stand up to a degree from Google University? Psh.

yes GBMA6120.jpg

Great experience here, IMS notwithstanding. I would just add be very careful w/ your shifting. The probability of you doing a bad shift is probably a lot greater than an IMS going bad assuming you have a stick. Upshifting from 3rd to 2nd. Or downshifting and letting the clutch out too soon. I think its called a "type 2" overrev and it gets logged in the OBD. I've bought a few of them. So relax, drive w/ margin, watch your gauges, inspect oil very often, and enjoy what I think is now the sports car deal of the century. M96 is plenty tough for what you want to throw at it. When (cuz you will) you move to sticky tires, well, you have to take care of some business. But you knew that. Or you know it now.