Some 996 owners should have camry's

This may be my first snarky post. I am tired and grouchy. Then I come on Rennlist to relax and see people post about what a pile of crap the 996 is and they should all be scrapped and it is a waste of money and a depreciating asset, etc, etc. I am sure the moderators are going to pull this thread, but until then I say to all those people... Bite Me I love mine. I have a $40,000 1999 911 and drive it all day every day and love it. I have no regrets. When I think about a do over my thoughts are maybe with all the driving I do I should have got a tip, or maybe I should have got a hard top, or whether Litronics should have been on my list. Not - maybe I should have gotten a 996TT or a 997, etc. If the car needs repaired, which all cars do, I will call the porsche dealer and they will pick it up and leave me with another porsche to drive. To those of you who don'e get this go get a camry. Has great resale, gets good gas mileage, and is reliable.

Preach it. The 996 is sweet. I spent $30K on mine, and I have never regretted a dime of that initial investment nor anything I've spent in the interim years. I still feel like I practically stole it, considering what they cost new (and what new 911's cost now).

You come on Rennlist to "relax"? Bwahahahaha. You have no one to blame but yourself. You have a Carrera. You want to relax? Take it for a spin.

+996

I hope this would depend on what the repair is. I agree, they can be great cars if one knows the facts about ownership.

Quotes source post: 11850987

Please list out your KK regimen for all the new guys as they may not be familiar with it.

" If the car needs repaired, which all cars do, I will call the porsche dealer and they will pick it up and leave me with another porsche to drive." Must be nice? Some of us just don't have a spare $15k+ for a replacement engine job. For those of us who can't afford the V.I.P. treatment from a Porsche dealer, Rennlist is a wonderful resource. Some forum members have an understandable sensitivity to huge repair expenses caused by any of Jake's 30 modes of failure. The individual problems are not the problem -it is the collateral damage that creates the huge expense. An example for a few M96 engines is the under-specified rod bolts. There was a recent thread that covered the carnage that can cause .I hope this gentle perspective helps you understand people's disappointment when disasters occur. What makes it worse is that much vital engine rebuilding information is not made available to us by Porsche. Simple things like wear tolerance on bearings. So you are left guessing when it would be so easy for Porsche to reveal those specs and help those who support their brand with hard-earned wages .

Quotes source post: 11850987

Not really. Depends on how busy I am and what the weather outside temp is. I can't think of a more expensive repair than an engine and I've been there, done that, and even got a T-shirt along the way. Really, it's a cool shirt. If it goes again I will fix it again unless there is another car I want more.

I know exactly how Jake compiled this information. Im sure Imre and a few others know how as well. Unfortunately this method is no longer an option.

Quotes source post: 11851026

I am not a confrontational person. I swear to God. I usually just sit by and watch the threads and if I do post something to try to help the situation, Schnell usually makes fun of me. And I am OK with this. And I understand your opinion. I was very disappointed when I needed a rebuild/refresh/whatever. But not suprised. But when I see all the bashing my car gets here it gets frustrating. It's a Porsche 911. Let me say that again. Porsche. 911. Who on earth buys one of these because its a bargain? You buy it becasue it is a work of art you can drive. If you are looking for reliable, low cost transportation, then a 911 is not for you. I can't think of a 911 ever, that is relaible, low cost transportation. I see the posts aking for all the specs on the engines. And I agree they should be available. But they are not. As the prices continue to drop and more get torn apart and worked on these numbers will be available. But as of now they are not. And this is well known. Sorry. If I am offending anyone.

Don't sweat it. He enjoys doing this to a few of us. He enjoys it so much, he has two accounts.

Quotes source post: 11851236

uhh... you're mixing up your "Schnell"s Also the way I see it is the cost of entry has gotten cheap enough that people jump in but do so without a contingency fund or fail to realize the "cost of ownership" is something entirely different. I think it is those people that can be the most vocal and complain the most. It's like a 308 or 328gts, a lot of peeps can afford it these days but they huff and puff when they find out a major engine-out tuneup is going to cost them $8k.

The 996 is awesome. *Not too pricy so an average Joe like me can enjoy one. *Very easy to DIY (compared to many turbo jap cars I've had) *95% of people have NO IDEA The car is 14 years old. Chicks don't know the difference between this and a GT3. *puts a smirk on my face everytime I'm in its presence *it is a beautiful work of art. Even though it's a "lowly" lil Carerra

The great thing about 996 maintenance...If you need to take your "regular" car to the shop you come back happy because the maintenance appeared to be so cheap!

Well, I should chime in here - first time Porsche owner, but long time car nut and serial car flipper have played extensively with Camaro's, Corvettes and BMW's and dabbled in some other things. Mostly a DIY guy, I have built engines, street cars, hot rods, race cars - you name it. So typical maintenance and repair doesn't scare me. Nor does the cost associated with a Porsche. But what got me into the game was really the low cost of entry. I sold a C6 Corvette for just under $30K and wanted to get into a much cheaper "fun" car that could also serve as my half time daily driver and put some $$ into the bank for some other priorities. '99 C2 fit the bill perfectly for me, and so far I just love it. Sure doesn't feel like a 15 year old car to me, and it will get all of the preventative maintenance it needs under my watch. And you know, I was totally cross-shopping with Camry's and totally almost got one - but what fun would that be? I wouldn't have projects to keep me busy in the garage!! I just love German cars from the 90's and early 2000's - those are also my favorite era from BMW, and currently have two of those in the stable as well. Sure, those cars need some repairing too, but they are a joy to drive and own overall. I am pretty sure I will feel the same about the 996, I'm only a month in but so far I really like it!!

I also agree with the statement that djks6 said "it is a work of art you can drive." I just got mine and have only driven it about a thousand miles. It handles great, is no slouch, pure fun to drive, looks better than most of anything even at 14 years old, a steal at todays prices. If it costs more money than I can afford to maintain it I guess I'd have no choice but to get rid of it. I don't see that happening. I like doing some maintenance myself, its why I have a garage. I like driving it and I like it when I go to the garage and see it. Its a car, I cant ask more than that from it.

We need to clarify the issues here because they are getting muddled. 1. Maintenance costs are not the issue. 2. Repair costs are not the issue - except for those caused by bad engineering . What really bothers me is that I am doing a fastidious rebuild of the M96 with all OEM parts or upgrades but the clearance/wear specs are not available. So despite all my enthusiasm,expense,time,tools,equipment,resources and skill(?) - it may be a sub-optimal engine -or worse ! I had no idea when I bought the car that Porsche did not support it technically. What would it cost them to publish their rebuild specs for 10+year old engines ? Nothing. What would it benefit Porsche to do so? The everlasting gratitude of Porsche owners for having supplied those vital scraps of info. So what I complain about is that Porsche are passively undermining the work we all do to preserve these cars. When I discuss this subject with my German friends in the P-car world ,they are full of praise and envy for the info available for the LS V8 and similar. I naively thought i could use my German and local contacts to get the specs. Ironically ,my German P-car chums lurk on Rennlist to try to glean such info ! There is nothing like Rennlist in Germany. But my point is not to whine about Porsche's misguided abandonment of us -that is their prerogative. It is to indicate the incredible value of this Rennlist resource because it shares info, and fixes. Most of all I am grateful for the forum it offers experts like Raby ,LN,Hartech etc to share their insights.

I had a wonderful 1985 Maserati Biturbo E...great gearbox...strange engine...you always carried three or four electrical relays just to be safe...the leather was great but the vinyl next to it began to turn green and then split...one day the headliner fell on me...another day the return spring on the clutch peddle snapped but I fooled it and had a bungie cord in the trunk...then the clear coat began to melt...then the carb when out of adjustment and the car stalled out on hard left turns...then the paper gaskets in the three piece heads started to leak...then the knock sensor for the turbos went south...then I broke down in King City...then... Yes the 996 is a piece of cake...and I love mine.

I don't see a problem with a Camry. My wife (and my daughters!) aren't too mechanically sensitive, and they view a car as more of an appliance. So, while we have the 996, there's also a BMW MT sedan, a BMW AT sedan, and two Nissan pickups for hauling crap to and fro. When the 996 isn't enough of a thrill ride, there's a few sportbikes / superbikes in the garage to wring out the adrenals. Different horses for different courses. The Porsche is a rewarding car to drive, but it won't do wheelies, or haul nine bags of manure from the gardening center. Sometimes you do need something else.

The problem I am having is that today, when you buy a used 996 you pay for the engine and get the rest of the car for free! Precious few cars fall into this category. The costs associated with replacing an engine are INSANE, it isn't even very well designed, and it has been in use since 1997 and still it costs $25k for a new one or nearly $20k for one that is "fixed" or $10k for a flawed used engine??? I have no intention of buying a Camry but, the fact is, potential engine failures make the 996 a fairly risky proposition, no matter how much you love the car. The lack of support from the manufacturer is probably indicative of the cost cutting measures used to bring this engine to market. They don't publish them because they are probably embarrassed. I will probably still buy one, having owned several Porsches in the past, I know it is what I want. Not whining, just kind of disappointed that failure modes are a secret, fixes are a secret and problems exist that are difficult and expensive to address. Shouldn't have to be like that IMO.

Quotes source post: 11852721

Some peeps don't seem to understand this...

Quotes source post: 11852816

Well - the failure modes are not so secret around here. I bought into the 996 recently and I was fully aware of the risks. I am OK with the risks because I got the car so cheap. Worse case I could go the used engine or LS swap route or part out the car and walk away and not lose too much - on the order of $10K. I lost that in depreciation on a BMW M5 in one year that I bought on CPO at 3 years old. Of course I hope mine gives me a few years of fun and the odds are with me on that quest, but it's no given. As far as motor replacement costs, other high end supercar type of cars are pretty similar. Good luck sourcing a motor or a rebuild of a S62 or S38 M5 motor for under $10K, or the S54 I6 in the E46 M3. Now, do those have as many failure modes or such a high failure rate? No. not even close. But they can fail as any motor can fail, and it's expensive when it happens. If the motor in my E34 5 series puked I could source a quality rebuild for $3K that would last 200K miles. But that car is not a high end super car. Still I do get your point, and it is frustrating to me as a hot rodder and engine builder, especially when I have owned many Corvettes with LS based motors that can be replaced with a factory crate motor for well under $10K if worse ever came to worse - ironically not that it does very often with those cars. Still, there is something compelling and special about the 911 and here I just went from a perfectly good low miles C6 Corvette to a 100K mile 996 (granted for roughly half the cost) and I am happy as a clam about the switch. Wait, are clams really as happy as we think?

Quotes source post: 11851053

you realize, I hope, that you are not obligated to read threads that will annoy you. Honestly, if somebody calling your car a POS offends your delicate sensibilities, perhaps the internet isn't for you.

The 996 was sold in enormous numbers. There were over 175,000 996s produced. Contrast this to the 68,000 993s produced. So there were over two and a half times as many 996s produced as 993. The sales figures for the 996 are just astronomical compared to any 911 variant that came before it. Porsche had never sold cars in numbers like that until the Boxter and the 996. This disparity in production, I think accounts for a lot of the paranoia about engine failures. All mass produced cars, even Camrys have catastrophic engine failures. The difference is that since Camrys are cheaper, you don't hear about them as much. Also, since Porsche before the Boxter and the 996 never made cars in such large numbers, there were in terms of raw numbers fewer Porches with engine failures before those cars were produced. So of course there were a lot more failures because the production numbers were so much larger. I have never seen any kind of credible scientific study that determines what the failure rate for 996s actually has been or how it compares to the failure rate of other cars much less comparable sports cars. All I have ever seen is anecdotes and half assed theories put out mostly by engine re-builders and parts sellers with agendas. Porsche really does live by the principle of making a race car for the street. The engines in the 996 are very complex and utilize things like variable valve timing that come straight off of race cars and make the engines very complex with a lot of moving parts that can fail. The thing about race engines is that they like to rev. And Porsche flat six engines have always been especially so. The old 911s from the early 70s run like crap at low RPM. The newer ones run well at low RPM but my impression is they don't like it very much and don't respond well to frequent low RPM use. It is not just Porsche. Talk to any knowledgeable Ferrari guy and they will tell you that the Ferarris that are tracked and used harder last longer, are faster, and run better than the garage queens. Think of it this way, imagine taking an F1 car or a prototype LeMans car and chucking around the track at 45 mph. How long would it be before that engine went berserk and catastrophically failed? Not very long. 911s are not that temperamental but they closer to that than a Camry is. Hell even the most boring road car will not last that long if all you ever do with it is put around town at 25 mph. I have a friend who has a 1990s Ford Taurus, we call it Big Blue, that has over 400,000 miles on it. How? She drives three hours to see her sick mother every weekend year in and year out. So nearly all of the miles are highway miles where the engine is revving and doing what it is supposed to do. Even on a Taurus that makes a difference. Ultimately, your engine may fail. Failures happen. But the surest way to see it fail is to not use it or be afraid to use it hard. And the best insurance against it failing is to use it like it was designed to be used and run the hell out of it. And this doesn't mean driving like a lunatic or going to the track every weekend. Just run it in lower gears so the engine revs harder. These engines really wake up at 4,000 RPMs anyway. That is where the power and the torque is. In second and third gear these cars are a ball on the street. In third and forth gear they are the same on the highway. When I was looking for my car I stumbled on a review of the 996 C4S on a BMW forum. The guy who wrote it was a complete douche bag who had driven one and said that his main impression was "does this car have a sport mode?" At first I figured he was just trolling. How could anyone drive even a base 911 and think that. After I owned a 911 for a while, I figured out what probably he did. He probably took the car out on the high way and put it in 6th gear and then wondered why the car didn't accelerate very fast from 60 to 80 and why it didn't have much power chugging along at 2500 to 3500 rpms. If he had been anything but a pig ignorant douche, he would have had the car in third and the RPMS up over 4000 and understood there is a real big sport mode in the car. My point being, the cars are meant to be driven like that and are not a lot of fun when they aren't. So go drive and drive hard and don't worry.

Quotes source post: 11853177

I thought you had to read all the posts. My bad. I wish someone would have told me that sooner.

Quotes source post: 11851245

Yup - I'm the only me around here.

Quotes source post: 11853261

I don't necessarily agree with this. VVT isn't a complex system and Porsche has caught on way too late in the game for the 996 in 1999, when Honduh was using it in their consumer cars since 1988. In most VVT systems, there is only a solenoid that controls a different cam profile. You can make it sound complex but it's really not, at least not the basic version. There are triple stage VVT systems out there that might be a bit more. Anywho, I just wanted to write something else in hopes of catching up to the 16+ pages of the "other" thread.

That is a fair point alpine003. I have read descriptions of variocam over and over again and still can't seem to grasp quite how it works. And in fact, you are correct that the beloved "Metzger Engine" has a ton more moving parts than the M96 or M97. Still though, the 3.6 liter M96 engine manages to get 330 HP out of 220 cubic inchs of cylinder displacement. That is 1.5 horsepower per cubic inch, while also meeting the emission standards. That is amazing for today and beyond amazing in 2002. They are very high strung, high output engines that just don't do well when not driven hard.

Quotes source post: 11853261

I think you can blame some of it on large production numbers, including much more outsourcing than ever before. It is IMPOSSIBLE to ignore the fact that Porsche took shortcuts to save money when they designed and built the M96/7 engines. If you believe the class action suit findings I think it is 8-10% for single row IMSB cars. That does not include other failures. No point in belaboring it here as it should be an assumed risk when buying one of these cars. Undoubtably most prove to be excellent, durable machines. I don't see any point in posting excuses because really, it doesn't help the guy that loses his motor on a well maintained car because the bean counters denied him some better quality internal engine parts. It is just a shame it is a risk but, if it were not, the price of entry would not be where it is today.

Quotes source post: 11853452

I have to agree with you. Although Honduh had one of the most hp/ltr displacement back in the day, they couldn't touch the torque amount that the Porsches produced(partly due to the boxer design in nature). Case in point, my Honduh back in the early 90's produced 115hp/ltr but it was very high strung with absolutely no low end grunt. You multiply that by 3.4L and the Porsche would've been over 390hp on 3.4L with those kinds of figures. BTW, technically it's "Mezger". It's an easy mistake that I also made before.

They filings say 10%. But those are just that "filings". They are claims made by plaintiffs' attorneys not established facts or facts established with any level of scientific certainty. Is the 10% figure necessarily wrong? No. But it is hardly definitively proven either. As far as the cost cutting and the relative quality of the M96 Motor versus other Porsche motors, you cann't judge that without full data on both the M96 and other motors, which doesn't exist. It sucks this guy's car failed. And failures do happen and happen in every model of car and engine. No one could rationally claim otherwise. The claims that the M96 engine is significantly more prone to failure than other engines and the various theories as to why is where people get into speculation in my opinion. All we really know is that the large majority of the M96 engines do just fine and are reliable engines. Some small percentage of them do not and suffer catastrophic failure. That is it.

You know, there are some pretty awesome Camrys out there. I don't think this one will ever have an IMS problem, but it's probably still unreliable and super fun! Toyota’s Wild Flip Top, Supercharged V8, Production Bodied Funny Car Is Even More Awesome In Person – Yes, We Just Said Camry And Awesome Full Story: http://bangshift.com/bangshift1320/t...camry-awesome/

^^^^ lol, I remember seeing that. Wonder if the headlights are airbrushed on?

I don't think you gotta drive em hard to make em last, but you can't lug em and they drive best around town if you leave em in lower gears. I always drive by RPMs, these little engines LOVE higher RPMs. I just leave mine in lower gears around town and like the rpms over 3500. If I stuff my foot in it I like the rpms to be at least over 4000 before I do that. You can really feel it come alive after 4600 rpms and it just feels great after that. I don't think you ought to drive at 4600 rpms everywhere when you're driving around town. My car has a tip so I just always drive it in Manual. I love the tip because it has that option. I been riding bikes for over 58 years and still am, bikes let you hear and FEEL the engines lots easier than cars but you take those skills with you no matter what you drive.

I use to let the car warm up before driving it either part way or fully, and then red line it each time I drove it and at 50k my IMSB was perfect on my 02 boxster when replaced. I had 12k type one ignitions and 0 type two. I agree the m96 needs to be revved and it sounds great when it is revved. Enjoy your cars.

The reality is that there were far more Camrys built and sold than the 996, and whereas a Camry owner may not perfectly maintain and care for the car, a 996 owner does. The result, more Camry's engines outlive the car, and combine that with the number sold and you end up with a low mileage engine for a Camry for $2K. Also, I understand why Porsche would not release specs. If it's harder to "reconstruct" a porsche engine, maybe the old ones will slowly phase out and the Porsche enthusiast will be inclined to upgrade to a newer model.

Yes, the sound, high RPM, makes a noise like one of The Flying Lewis Sisters in the throes of satisfaction.

I was actually let down when I revved my TT to near redline as it didn't sound as good as the m96. Although I am slowly taking to it now that I am forgetting the sound of my old m96. At lower rpm the TT has a great exhaust burble, but it is said the m96/97 sounds better than the TT and 991 motors.