Common engine failure signs?

I'm loving this site. Can you guys tell me what to watch for with the most common engine problems in the '99- 996? I've read something about water and oil mixing (head gasket?). Not having any issues now, but just so I can relax and enjoy. Cheers, A.

no sign.

no warning just boom

there is really no sign, but if you see your coolant level drop a lot with out any signs of external leaking, I would wonder where all that coolant is going??

I think one sign is repeated flashing CEL, and misfire generally on the #4 cylinder. I have heard of several people this happned to including myself.

Cracked block leading to intermix - coolant contaminated with oil and creamy deposit under the oil filler cap. May see some 'steam' from the exhaust on cold starts, lasts more than a few seconds. May also see loss of coolant over time. - Head replacement required - dealer will usually say complete engine replacement. Cylinder lining failure - sudden catastrophic - may see coolant being forced out of coolant tank under pressure or even out of exhaust system - hydraulic engine lock. In the UK you can have the cylinder re-lined - US drives replace engine. Intermediate shaft failure - sudden catastrophic - severe mechanical noise rapidly followed by stall. New engine is dealers solution. Two good write-ups linked from this webpage: http://www.autofarm.co.uk/engines/water_cooled/press

By the time you get signs, you are too late

good summary.

It's funny really...I'm reading all these comments, and there are the majority of us owners (not just here, also on other forums) who furiously criticize Consumers Report's survey results that states that the 996/997's are UNreliable. If this is not called UNreliable, then how do you define it? It doesn't really matter if majority of the engines are fine, just a big handful of failures is enough to make them unreliable.

my new engine has been pretty reliable

EVERY car has a handful of failures.....GUARANTEED.....So I guess that makes EVERY car unreliable in your book. If a handful of Honda Civics have engine failures, then I guess all Honda Civics are unreliable.

dont worry about it...just keep it properly maintained and enjoy it.

Actually there are several reliable signs of imminent engine failure and here they are: 1)A smell of burning oil after a "Vigorous drive" 2)Fluctuations in oil pressure on the oil pressure guage. 3)A prolonged amount of time for the engine to warm up in the morning (with high reving at startup) 4)A hesitancy when shifting into second gear. These are just the most common signs and when you see them (or smell them) it's time to panic. Just messin wit ya. These things happen to all Porsches. They are part of the "Porsche experience". There are no warning signs of failure it just happens.

the skies open up and the hand of god.... gives you the finger well, he thinks he is anyway...

Speaking from (my) experience. Car was running just fine, cruising along the highway 5th gear 120KMH smooth as silk. Passenger and I hear a flop flop, you hear that I say, yup she says, slow down start pulling over to the shoulder engine stops dash lights up and thats it...... Fluid leaking out the back when we got out. I am told it is an intermediate shaft failure. Has been over week now and still suffering from P-Car withdrawls. Geoff

Thanks all.Just wondered if there was anything to watch for, but doesn't sound like it. I'm not especially paranoid or anything, but unless you remember Deliverance you can't appreciate my dread over leaving this car abandoned on the road around here. The actor who gave it to Ned Beatty actually lives very close. I've met him, a very cool/ albeit eccentric guy btw, but the majority of locals think anyone in a 911 is gay, communist, etc., etc................

If you see smoke coming out to of the back like a Blue Angel, limp it to a used car dealer and throw yourself on his mercy. In my case, the car sat for 5 days then the engine blew. No warning. Cracked #1 cylinder. Do not let some of these guys fool you with talk of statistics and percentages, these failures are not THAT RARE. I used to laugh and say "mine's fine" too, but not anymore. . .

With my 2003 3.6l "failure" you could hear what sounded like metal ***** rattling in an empty coffee can coming from the underside of the motor near the transmission. It reminded me of the sound of a loose chain tensioner in my early 911's. My motor never exploded or froze it was just too loud and rattly during idle. I had read that they are "like this" and was told at first from the dealer that it was "normal" but I knew that the sound was not right. I told them that they needed to call the Porsche Rep to listen. When the Rep came and listened He agreed and they replaced the motor after doing some initial tests (over-rev, metal in the oil, and a few other things). Bottom line is that the motor ran fine and if I did not know what I was listening for I would have been sent along driving a time bomb. They replaced the motor in the last month of the original 4 year warranty . The car had about 21Km on it. So, to answer your question, you can listen to the motor at idle. If it sounds like a coffee can full of ball bearings, with the noise coming from just in front of the transmission, there might be something wrong with IMS. By the way, the new motor purrs like a kitten.

dude dont fall for the hype on the web, we in the real world dont replace that many

Problem is - you really shouldn't be replacing any!

Oh, Crap. Wouldn't the dealer in my PPI have noticed this? I would think it would have been in his interest, since he would probably have ended up fixing it out of warranty. He has seen the car twice since then and always said what great shape it is in. Maybe a "little" rattle is normal? Please?

anything mechanical can and will fail, wether its a watch or a engine. Moving parts will give up and come apart. Every manufactuers engines fail kia to ferrari.

And that's no excuse for poor design, manufacturing and quality control - I'm sure you'd agree. Wear and tear is one thing - poor design and QC killing your engine is unacceptable, whether it's a Porsche or a Saturn.

I work on jet engines, we have the most strictest quality control and built in stops of all engines behind rocket engines or NASA. There is tons of inspection and non-destructive testing that the parts go through and we still have occasional failures. Anytime you have friction between parts (bearing surfaces,piston rings, cam lobes, etc.,etc.), you will have failures.

And we all understand that. But if you had engines that kept failing in the same place, in the same way, and you traced that to manufacturing quality and design issues, you'd be looking at failures that had nothing to do with wear and tear. That's what we're talking about here.

I would argue that it's infinitely more acceptable on the Saturn. When you pay $80k+, not acceptable.

but any engine design has the same weak points , porsceh had sleeve problems early on, that has been elimitated, and by now 99% of those engines have been replaced. The ims was common failure, but again redesigned and its been at least a few months since weve seen one. any design will have inherint weakness's those are the bain of the porsche design. Any one in the mfg business will alos tell you that there is such thing as an acceptable failure % if you have 0 % of failures you are overpaying for materials and in order to cut cost you will accept a percentage of failures i belive most complanies use a 15% index iirc. it sucks, but that is bussiness, thats why porsce was in the crapper building air cooled engine

No, Porsche was in the crapper building the air cooled cars, because the market didn't value the qualities those cars provided. Not due to any inherent design flaws

I was not talking of wear and tear at all, just saying if you have two pieces of metal or more that contact each other (through rotation or snap fit) and then add heat on top of that, you will have failures.

I dont think dealers think that far ahead. Mine didnt. These motors do make more noises than a typical engine but with mine it was about 50% louder and very mechanical "slapping" sounding at idle. When I pulled the car in the garage it was loud enough to make me cringe a little. When I went through a drive through where the wall was right next to the car the noise was amplified and it was embarassing that a car like this would be so loud. It just was not right. This is a good reason to have another company PPI the car (other than the dealer) and make sure you get a warranty. I paid a little more for my car knowing that I had the CPO insurance. For me it paid off (when I bought the car I knew nothing about 996 engine replacements). I agree though that even though I am one of those that got a new motor, the only reason I found this forum is because once I was told I needed a new motor I got on the internet and started doing research. This is why I think that you cannot use the amount of bad motors on this forum to reflect reality. Many of us are on this site simply because we had bad motors so, IMHO, it is highly skewed in this direction. The real test is to imagine the days before the internet. You could only make a judgment about this kind of problem by hearing from your immediate friends, reading articles and talking to people you know who own porsches. In my case, I know seveal others who own 996's and none of them have had problems with their motor.

Yep the air-cooled engines were all perfect...... Clogged SAI's, valve guides, etc, etc.......

Comparing wear items like valve guides, and the non-issue SAI problem, to unpredictable CATASTROPHIC engine failure, is just intellectually dishonest.

Yep, I'm sure Porsche designed them to wear out every 30,000 miles. Trying to make it seem like an engine failure is just around the corner for every M96 is intellectually dishonest. Boy Pcar, it's so out of character for you to come trolling around knocking the 996's...... You've always been our #1 fan!!

Your are absolutely correct. Technically this is known as a self selection bias and any conclusion derived from a sample of this nature is worthless.

is that how you grow hair on your knuckles?

Like someone earlier said every car maker has some engine replacements. Heck look at the year Toyota has had recently with the big lawsuit over oil sludge and engine replacenment. I had engine replacement within 6 months of ownership anf 5k miles. Car has been a dream ever since the new one was installed. I cannot imagine driving anything else.

???????

ok, it was a stretch. you know, self-selection... hair on the palms....

I don't think every M96 engine will fail, I just can't imagine owning one when you simply don't know if it will fail. And by the way, I don't know anybody with valve guides wearing out at 30k miles, or even 60k miles, on a 993. My car consumes 1 quart per 1900 miles, so I guess I "dodged that bullet" .

hair on the palms I understand, it was the knuckles that had me confused. I thought perhaps it was an ape thing. Self selection, self satisfaction, I understand them both :-)

I'll tell you what, I'd be willing to bet you could take a 10 year cost of ownership for a 996 and a 993 (take out fuel, insurance, and tires) and you would be WAY ahead with the 996. It (the 996) is just a far less maintenance intensive vehicle. The 996 has much longer service intervals, less expensive parts, is easier to work on and has fewer little problem areas. All in a car that will leave a 993 begging for mercy (equal drivers of course) on any road course in the world. I'm sure you'll disagree. However, even if you look at the worst case and my motor lets go (I've got two M96 motors with almost 12 years operation between them and I have not had any problems with them). I can plop a new motor in with a new warranty and be way ahead of a top end rebuild on your 993..... Try not to......

Well, you got me there - there's no question the 996 has longer service intervals, if I recall the manual correcltly: 30,000 mile maintenance: Replace engine 60,000 mile maintenance: Replace engine and transmission 90,000 mile maintenance: Replace engine, transmission, and interior Gotta hand it to those engineers, they really have simplified things To your point, I would guess the running costs are slightly higher on the 993 (assuming the 996 doesn't grenade or a blow a gearbox), but not by much.

Huh? 993s have shorter maintainance intervals and are usually DOUBLE the amount for services....Isnt a major service about $2k? Mine is $800....I cant see how it woul dbe "slightly" more expensive....I did lots of research before I bought a 996 and I thought of a 993....The upkeep on a 993 was drastically higher, and if you really put miles on the car, it can be a nightmare....I can say in almost 4 years of ownership, I have spent only about $2k in upkeep....not including tires...lol...oh and I put 100 miles a day on my 996 and I have 135k miles on it. I dont see too many high mileage 993s out there being driven like that but there are plenty of 986's and 996's being driven a TON....Initially because it was a new engine design, Porsche REPLACED the engine so they can get the failed engine back to Germany to figure out WHY it failed and update the engine...they seem to have gotten on top of that...ALOT less failures now....but I wonder how many 993s failed? The quality of the M96 engine is very good, a magazine cracked open a 100k+ mile 996 engine and found it looked almost NEW inside....they summized it would last about 200k miles before a rebuild....by the way a 996 rebuild can be done for under 4k, a 380 hp 3.8L engine can be had for about 10k....thats pretty good....and actually offers a good upgrade path in the future.

OK - lets talk look at a larger sample of M96 engines. Let's look at all of the Boxster's covered by Warranty Direct, from'96, in the UK. And let's look at Engine failures specifically: http://www.reliabilityindex.co.uk/ma...8339010848601# UK Porsche Boxster's have a failure rate of 20.69% That's worse than Land Rover, Alfa, all the Japenese manufacturers, in fact they are 3rd last. Of course, only people who think they are going to have engine failure sign up with warranty direct for their extended warranties..... If you try to sign up your 996 to Warranty Direct in the US, for an extended warranty - they are no longer accepting new policies. Of course, that's purely coincidental, nothing to do with paying out for lots of engine failures. Or that fact that in the UK overall reliability index: http://www.reliabilityindex.co.uk/ma...28339010848601 They are only passed by Jeep as having a worse reliability rating. Of course, those UK drivers probably abuse their M96 engines in some way, so let's look at US drivers for the same Boxster model. http://www.reliabilityindex.co.uk/ma...01&country=usa Seems like the US cars have a 35.99% probability of failure when you look at engines specifically. Pontiac, Plymouth and Land Rover are worse - not exactly a stat to be proud of! And if you look at over all US reliability: http://www.reliabilityindex.co.uk/ma...01&country=usa Only Volvo are worse. Of course the fact that the US and UK numbers both show significant issues with engine failures, is purely coincidental. The number of cars covered by warranty direct must be skewed in some way, to be comprised of a higher percentage of cars with troubled M96 engines.... Personally I've only had 2 engine failures with the M96, third one is a charm - well for the first 16,000 miles any way. But I'm sure non of this is significant in any way.

I guess I only have a couple observations to this thread. 1)I just purchased an extended warrenty on my engine 3 months ago. 2)It's hard to understand the data you are presenting as it has no context.

Well you looked at Boxsters, which were KNOWN for failures in 97-99 because of slipped sleeves...Warranty direct will be covering those cars because they are out of factory warranty...so its safe to say there are a higher number of early Boxster engine failures than ANY other M96 engine...I would love to see an M96 failure rate from 03+.....Also ALOT of those failures were not ACTUAL failures...Porsche replaced alot of engines that did not need to be replaced to be on the safe side of things and to get the engines back and examine them. They didnt have anyone open them up and even diagnose them....so thats not a very accurate statistic.....interesting, but not accurate.

996 are known for failures through 01 for exactly the same reasons - as they had the same design issues. Read and enjoy: http://www.autofarm.co.uk/engines/water_cooled/press Porsche gradually modified manufacturing and design, so there will be fewer failures after 01 for sure - that doesn't help 996 owners with cars before that date, or make it ok. Unfortunately the IMS issue still remains, despite various changes in the design. Post 01, this is probably the leading remaining design issue that can lead to terminal engine failure. And Warranty Direct make a business covering cars that are out of warranty - that's what they do! So if they stop covering Porsche, they are making a clear statement about their calculation of risk Vs revenue. As more of the early M96 engines fall out of warranty in the US, this issue will become more critical as people will be facing a bill for a new engine, which by the way, is no longer provided at a subsidized price from Porsche. The reason this issue has been publicized and addressed in the UK ahead of the US market, is because UK warranties are only 1 year with an extension to two years. So they have been hitting the out of warranty position earlier, and hence companies have started to address the engineering issues with the engines, and warranty companies have begun to cut back on coverage. No point denying the problems exist - people just need to face the facts and make decisions from an informed position.

Or you can do as I did: When I was looking for a used 996, I specifically looked for one with a replaced engine.... No more problems or worrys Does it matter that it was not hard to find one?????

Really!

most cars if the engines are gonna fail, it will happen within the 4 /50k and will be taken care of especaily early cars. 3.4 cars over 50k miles at this point should run another 100k untill the friction wear becomes an issue. clinder failures happen low in milage. IMs can happen to anyone at anytime, no warning, although I see most of these on lower milage cars.

Yea, like this one at 92K miles.... Same fault as usual - not at a low mileage http://glenn986s.zoomshare.com/0.html

Mine went at 64k miles....and AFTER the original 4 year warranty. It was an intermix issue. The problem with that theory is that ALOT of Porsches dont get driven but 5--10k miles a year so they are not beyond the 50k at the end of warranty....so they sell then to someone who buys a clean, low mileage 996, and a year later the engine goes at 50k miles....or in my case, 64k miles 6 years after the car was sold...but I did have a CPO warranty, and that saved me!!!

Lots of great stuff here! Would you all say that it doesn't matter if (w/in reason) you redline, lug, AX, commute, or whatever with the car the engine may just let go? Is abuse one way or the other just not an issue? Consider regular and proper maintenance a given.

Porsche even says right in the manual that repeated short trips will contaminate the oil with moisture and fuel to the point where they can even raise the apparent oil level. They counsel regularly taking the car on longer, expressway-speed drives as a sort of preventative maintenance. I think that tells you something.

These cars should be driven FAIRLY hard....redlines (not overs) should be regular, no lugging, AX should be just fine, as well as commuting. I bet that the super low mileage garage queens have more issues than the ones driven fairly hard, but properly maintained....

I agree. That�s what I Porsche went mine came down with the dredged intermix flu. No Ford, Chevy or Geo much less a Porsche should have a failure like that especially with low mileage like mine. What ticks me off just as much is PCNA uncaring attitude i.e. your car is out of warranty, we don�t provide good will for car out of warranty; like it�s good will when it under warranty. I got to go it�s time for another round with the punching bag. I do love my new engine.

You still haven't explained the stats from your site, and neither do they. 20% engine failures? 20% of what?

It�s more like 50% when I do the math.

That would be 20% of the Porsche vehicles they covered have suffered some form of engine related failure that required Warranty Direct to pay for repair or replacement. So in itself it's an interesting percentage, especially when you read reports on this and other forums describing such failures. But when compared to other quality manufacturers, it gets really interesting! Mercedes 10%, BMW 10%, Jaguar 6%, Lexus 2% in the UK stats. And when you look at the US stats, Porsche are even worse when it comes to engine based failures than Saturn! Not what you'd expect from such an engineering based company like Porsche...

I understand it's 20% of the engines they have covered but over what timespan is that coverage and how many. I'm wondering if A)These numbers are only 996 numbers and B)They have enough numbers to draw a statistically relevant conclusion.

03targa: They must think they have enough numbers to draw the conclusion not to cover 996's anymore. lol

a) they start at '96, so that's M96 engines (986/996) b) No way of knowing - been round this loop with Dell before now What they do say is:

If they 96 isn't that also 993 engines? Also, does it include cayennes? You seem to ascribe all the problems to the 3.4l engine but there are potentially a wide variety of engines there. As far as statistically relevant. Well, 1 in five is very different than 200 in 1000. I'd like to see details but the website really doesn't seem to give any. Now I'm not saying that all insurance company's are trustworthy or untrustworthy, but........

In Europe, the 986 M96 was in production from 96 (MY97) - so they class the Boxster as a car from 96. I know, I had one. It needed a new engine before it's first scheduled service Lasted just over 9,000 miles before it terminated

I've got 102,000 miles on my 2000. Just sayin...

Hang in there Paul and keep driving it. I love to hear about high mileage engines. There's so much negative about these engines...especially the 3.4L that it's refreshing to hear/see one over 100K and going strong. I've been so tempted a number of times to get rid of mine because of all the negativity I read over and over again. I love the car...but those nagging reports are so discouraging. I guess what's so disconcerting is that most of the information suggests that there's no warning...no preconditions that would give you a hint to replace an intermediate shaft or heads....it just hits like a Tsunami and destroys the engine. So keep driving it Paul and let us hear how many more miles you've got in that gal.