2002 Engine Problems

I recently had the engine blow on my 2002 Carerra with 4100 miles (Tip). I have now heard of two other people who had the same problem, one at 2100 miles and one at 3500. Seems to be a pattern. Porsche wants to replace the engine and I want a new car. The guy who had his blow at 2100 miles got a new car. Has anyone else had this problem or know of anyone who did. Please e-mail. Thanks

A real bummer. What exactly went? <img src="graemlins/cussing.gif" border="0" alt="[grrrrrrr]" />

They didn't explain it very well. Something inside the engine cracked. It sounded like pebbles inside a coffee can as the can was rolling!

Hummm blown engine. Geez, sorry to hear it! At least they can give you a porsche for a loaner while the situation gets sorted. Were you driving it hard or just like everyone. Aggressive without beating the car.

Darn that really blows. If they won't replace the whole car they should retrofit the new engine with that enhanced powerkit-I would be happy for that as a consolation. I think PAG would be wise to appease loyal Porsche customers. Regards. Mike

I heard of 4 such cases in Atlanta. The problem appears to be related with the new variable timing system. My dealer said that it was related to overtighntening of bearings.... He's got 4 really upset customers right now. JM

Push for the new car, unless its a lease, a replacement motor is easily identified and will decrease future value. Although the power kit deal would be worth it if you could pull it off. Also keep in mind that if the car was equipped with alot of options you will have a long wait for a new car. <img src="graemlins/burnout.gif" border="0" alt="[burnout]" />

[quote]Originally posted by bloke: <strong>Hummm blown engine. Geez, sorry to hear it! At least they can give you a porsche for a loaner while the situation gets sorted. Were you driving it hard or just like everyone. Aggressive without beating the car.</strong><hr></blockquote>they offered to call Enterprise rent a car for me while mine is in the shop

Check out your states lemon law. Florida's is very extensive and gives a lot of protection in a case like yours. You can probably look it up on the internet. Good luck!

That is SO WRONG! Mabye Porsche of NA should think carefully before giving you a nice enterprise rental.(btw, have you call them) How can they treat a new customer who spend a 80k+ on a car then expect them to drive a nice fancy rental car. I get better service from a japanese car makers who doesnt mind the word SERVICE. I am starting to think they are getting a bit too greedy and since they are making fat margin on every car they sell. At the very least a boxster till they sort things out. Also, getting replacement engine doesnt make me feel any better. After the warrenty is done then WHAT? "Oh MR/MS New Customer, we got a problem or more like you(customers) got a problem. Btw, we take care of it for a nice cheap price of only 25K. So dont worry and we can give you a lift to that Enterprise." THIS IS SERVICE BY PORSCHE.

actually, the dealer called Enterprise, who never called me back. I got a ride Nice, so I have a blown motor to look forward to I see..... hmmm..

Between the transmission problems and now the engine disasters I am begining to feel lucky, which is not the way that I expected to feel about a $90K+ car. Perhaps I should not tempt fate, but after 3000 miles I have had no problems with the C4S. I wonder if PCNA follows this forum? If they do not, they ought to begin to because they will have no place to hide from such problems and the dissatisfied customers they create. It is not ususual for most car dealers to stonewall customers with problems, including MB and Porsche. Often such problems are not serious enough to be covered by state lemon laws, but are nonetheless unacceptable for owners of expensive vehicles. Forums such as this give us some leverage through knowledge.

Wonder how many 996's have been sold, and how many have major problems that require engine or transmission replacement? I know the cars cost $$$$$ and we expect 0 defects, but is it getting to be a trend? Did the early edition 993's have something simillar? Did the labor strike in Germany have anything to do with it? Hmmmmmm.

Thanks for all your responses- keep them coming, it might help my case to get a new car! My concern is about resale value. The guy at the zone office, Rick Perkins, told me that it won't have any negative effect on resale if the engine's been replaced. I asked him if he would back that up by giving me a letter stating that Porsche would make up any difference if my car brought less in trade than other comparable vehicles. Of course, he wouldn't, because he knows that a replacement engine will hurt the resale. They did, at least give me a Boxster to drive while they're waiting for the new engine.

Palting: This US production schedule was given to me from an earlier post from one of the larger dealers in the mid-west" Boxster.....7071 BoxsterS....5039 Coupe.......1981 Cabriolet...3605 C4 Cab......1438 C4S.........1668 Targa....... 662 Turbo.......2107 Total......23571 If we could somehow develope a "clearing house" type info gathering at least in the rennlist community we could A. determine the number of 02 Porsches and B. determine what and how many problems were associated with the number of 02 Porsches. Does that make sense? Could anyone other than J.D. set something like this up. It might be very helpful. I'm retired and home most every day...I would be glad to keep a record of numbers of Porsches this group owns and record the instances reported to me of problems. I would, of course, be sworn to secrecy on specifics, but could at least keep a record measured against the 02's in the Rennlist population. Anyone have any thoughts or ideas? <img src="graemlins/drink.gif" border="0" alt="[cherrsagai]" /> <img src="graemlins/soapbox.gif" border="0" alt="[soapbox]" /> <img src="graemlins/c.gif" border="0" alt="[ouch]" />

I do think that customers that have these serious breakdowns (e.g., engine, transmission) should receive some sort of compensation. Having said that, however, I do not see any evidence of any sort of trend. We have heard of two engine incidents and two transmission incidents. That is four out of nearly 11,000 996s that will be delivered in the U.S. during 2002. The incidence of this occurrence is .0004! Hardly a trend. While I sympathize with those poor souls who have long waited for their cars and then lost them for a brief time due to catastrophic failure, I remain upbeat and enthusiastic about my upcoming C4S delivery!

i got my c4s by trading in a 2002 c32 amg mercedes that had blown its engine when it threw a rod at 9100 miles. i have 6k mi with no probs now but i'm beginning to think there's nowhere to hide! <img src="graemlins/icon107.gif" border="0" alt="[icon107]" /> <img src="graemlins/cussing.gif" border="0" alt="[grrrrrrr]" />

DaveP has it right. It is terrible to hear about these problems, but it is a very small percentage of cars that are having these major failures. I have noticed the same thing with corvettes. To those with the problems it may seem bleak now, but once the repairs are made it will soon be history. <img src="graemlins/beerchug.gif" border="0" alt="[cheers]" />

[quote]Originally posted by Dave P: <strong>...We have heard of two engine incidents and two transmission incidents. That is four out of nearly 11,000 996s that will be delivered in the U.S. during 2002. The incidence of this occurrence is .0004! Hardly a trend... </strong><hr></blockquote>Now, if you redo the calculation and consider that 99.999% porsche owners do NOT participate in this forum, the percentage of catastrophic mechanical failures looks very very bleak indeed.

[quote]Originally posted by karl k: <strong>Now, if you redo the calculation and consider that 99.999% porsche owners do NOT participate in this forum, the percentage of catastrophic mechanical failures looks very very bleak indeed.</strong><hr></blockquote> I think you mean very good. If a significant portion of the 99.999% Porsche owners are suffering catastrophic failure, it would have been all over the news, magazines, surveys.

I just hate being that 1/11,000 with a big component failure LOL Well, yeah it'll behind us soon enough. I hope to get many goodies from Porsche, too. So I may come out ahead....

Karl K has it right. The forum participants probably represent a very small minority of 996 owners. If one extrapolates from the serious reports on this forum, there are likely many more significant problems that only PCNA knows about. Blowing off one or two owners' problems as anomalies that will be quickly forgotten after some remedy is exactly the type of response that the manufacturers bank on. Add to the above the tendency of people not to report problems and one can imagine that there are many more than we see on this forum. Don Watson's idea is solid IMO. Cataloging topics concerning problems would be quite powerful. I have often wondered what percentage of 996 owners look at this forum or post on it.

I don't think the issue here is the failure, it is the level of treatment once a failure occurs. The dealer should be OFFERING a Porsche loaner car on an incident like this. You should not need to be asking. My advise is to give the general manager at the dealer one last opporunity to make right and then call Porsche Customer Commitment, the 800# is on the web site and flip out on them. I have heard of dealers not only offering P car loaners, btu also giving credits for exclusive parts to people with major problems. This is the servcie I expect. These are not Lexus' these are Porsches, they cost twice as much! <img src="graemlins/cussing.gif" border="0" alt="[grrrrrrr]" />

There is always strength and influence in numbers. Do you-all see the statistics that J.D. shows in terms of Porsche owners participation? It's huge...although there's no way of sorting our 996 owners. Hey, there are other lists as well (altho Rennlist is tops). Well, those of us who have had problems can gripe about them, and those of us who are getting edgy about potential problems can get edgy, but unless we collective focus our energies, it's not going to make any difference at all. Gee, I've been using the soapbox icon far too much lately. <img src="graemlins/soapbox.gif" border="0" alt="[soapbox]" /> <img src="graemlins/icon501.gif" border="0" alt="[icon501]" />

Rennlist usage statistics are very impressive over the past 3 months. If you've not seen them, take a look at the bottom of <img src="graemlins/icon501.gif" border="0" alt="[icon501]" /> <a href="http://forums.rennlist.com" target="_blank">web page</a>

[quote]Originally posted by Dave P: <strong>I do think that customers that have these serious breakdowns (e.g., engine, transmission) should receive some sort of compensation. Having said that, however, I do not see any evidence of any sort of trend. We have heard of two engine incidents and two transmission incidents. That is four out of nearly 11,000 996s that will be delivered in the U.S. during 2002. The incidence of this occurrence is .0004! Hardly a trend. While I sympathize with those poor souls who have long waited for their cars and then lost them for a brief time due to catastrophic failure, I remain upbeat and enthusiastic about my upcoming C4S delivery! </strong><hr></blockquote> We are passionate people and we like passionate cars. But, I agree with Dave P. I think we are making WAYYY too much of these four incidents. One of them is not even in the US but in UK. Next thing you know, we'll be planting bombs at PNA headquarters . The idea of a Porsche catastrophic new car failure registry is a good one. Something simillar was started for the M3 and engines blowing up. But I have a suspicion the registry won't have the numbers of busted cars as in the BMW M3, and therefore may end up for naught. At least it will serve notice to Porsche that the numbers are being watched, smnall the numbers may be.

[quote]Originally posted by Palting: I think you mean very good. If a significant portion of the 99.999% Porsche owners are suffering catastrophic failure, it would have been all over the news, magazines, surveys.<hr></blockquote>A typical right-brainer response. Step out of your cave and note this re car QUALITY in this formidable survey J. D. Power and Associates: <a href="http://www.auto.com/industry/iqs18_20010518.htm" target="_blank">http://www.auto.com/industry/iqs18_20010518.htm</a>

Hi Palting I too like Don's idea. While Renlisters are a small percentage of total p-car owners, I would think we should have basically the same proportion of failures and problems as the general population. You could possibly argue that we'd have more since we probably drive our cars more aggressively than the population as a whole. I think we'd spot some trends if they exist. As Greg points out this is still the same drivetrain they've been building for four years. This hasn't come up in the last two has it? We're all so emotionally involved in these machines, it's upsetting when they break. M in C

[quote]Originally posted by karl k: <strong>A typical right-brainer response. Step out of your cave and note this re car QUALITY in this formidable survey J. D. Power and Associates: <a href="http://www.auto.com/industry/iqs18_20010518.htm" target="_blank">http://www.auto.com/industry/iqs18_20010518.htm</a></strong><hr></blockquote> Eh? <img src="graemlins/a_smil17.gif" border="0" alt="[blabla]" /> <img src="graemlins/a_smil17.gif" border="0" alt="[blabla]" /> <img src="graemlins/roflmao.gif" border="0" alt="[hiha]" />

[quote]Originally posted by Palting: <strong> Eh? </strong><hr></blockquote>Pls. give the kid a calculator, to make up for the lack of inheritance (left brain). <img src="graemlins/jumper.gif" border="0" alt="[jumper]" />

Oh, oh. Could it be '99 deja-vu all over again: a couple of bad cases end up giving the whole model year a bad name?! Let's hope this gets resolved quickly and does not manifest in too many other '02's. Regards.

I know of a car at Newport Auto Center , California that they are replacing the motor as of last week. Its either a 01 or 02 i think it was a blk cab, Call em to see what kind of stuff they did for the guy, after all it is Newport Beach ! [phone removed]. give us a update. Sorry for your 90k problem.

Sounds like that issue w/ the 964 oil leaks.... Anyhow, A) It's horrendous, but it is a newer engine design B) Porsche is unlikely to give a new car, as a)If you can afford a 02 S then you have enough $ and you'll be OK, and if you sold your family to get it, then, well you shouldn't have it in the first place. b) There goes all their profits. They can keep telling people "we gave them a WHOLE NEW ENGINE FOR FREE" which most will think is incredible service C) Ever try to get something like this done from GM??