Engine rebuild (sort of).

It has been almost two weeks since I discovered a broken roller on my bank 1 timing chain. I spent most of my spare time researching any information I could find (online and in the manuals) on engine disassembly and reassembly, and still going. I started creating a parts list and already ordered some of the parts I will use for sure. I have to admit that I keep changing my mind about how to go with this "rebuild".From only replacing the damaged chain to sending the block to LNE for a 4.0 conversion, and anything in between. I’m starting this thread as I’m hoping to get some helpful advice and I also have a lot of questions to ask. I still hope to have the 3.6 to 4.0 LNE conversion one day and looking at this project as a preparation for that. I’m sure I’m going to make some mistakes but also learn a lot. I’m not going to cheap out on this project, but also do not want to spend money on unnecessary parts and procedures. So, starting from the bottom up, and focusing on the major components, here is my first few questions. 1. Crankshaft. understanding this is the heart of this engine I would like to preserve it in the best condition possible (and ready for the next build if it will come). The plan is to replace the bearings and case bolts with ARP. The question is: which bearings to get (I understand some are available with special coating)? And what measures should I take regarding the inspection of the crankshaft? 2. Pistons. Not sure what to take out of it, but here is a picture of all six pistons, showing the wear on the bottom side of the skirt. The top side looks flawless on all six. The plan is to replace the big end and small end bearings, ARP connecting rod bolts and give them a good clean. I understand I’m better off keeping the original rings than replacing them. Few questions here. - is it necessary to replace all the above. (Connecting rod bolts will be replaced regardless) - if yes, should I also replace the wrist pin and snap rings? - Is there recoating service available for these pistons, and is it necessary? 3. Heads. The plan is just to clean them up. The questions: - should I consider any valve job (lapping) and valve seal replacement? - should I reuse the original head bolts as the Porsche shop manual recommends or replace them as the Bentley manual recommends? Just to put things in context, my car is a 2002 C2 with about 60k miles. Never smoke on startup, no rattle on startup, no oil consumption between oil changes, never found any fragments of any kind in the oil filter and sump. All cylinders look clean with no sign of scoring (will post pictures over the weekend as I would like to take them in natural light for clarity.) Al chain guides look almost new with minor wear on the IMS pad (will post pictures later). The car is my daily driver (well, used to be) doing about 6K miles a year. No plans to track the car in the future. Thanks in advance for any of your advice.

Here are the pictures of the chain guides. I tried to get a good angle with the lights so the marks will be visible. the IMS blade is the only one with actual wear. also, does anyone have a clue why this plastic pin cost more then the whole blade?

My car (2002 C2) went under the knife at 96k because I started seeing what I thought was an alarming amount of glitter in the oil. Once torn apart, the parts look nearly identical to what you have shown, which is to say, they looked pretty good. The exception was the rod bearings that had signs of contact. However, I expected worse. No bore scoring, piston coating was worn and a few spots had flaked off. Yours look a bit worse than mine did, subjectively. I went into this with a 4.0 rebuild the goal, which I am now doing. For all of the parts that you should replace when rebuilding, it was only incrementally more to do the 4.0 bores. Also, you will be performing all of the work of a rebuild without the full benefits. (It is a fair amount of work to do correctly). as you may tell, I am leaning toward advising a full rebuild. The adder is the new bore and pistons. I cannot give any value on if pistons should be used as is or coated. I did not use coated bearings as I did not want to make the clearance any tighter on the mains and rods plus I do not see the value for my street engine. I did buy K1 rods, ARP main bolts and head stud kit. (The latter is probably overkill but I didn�t realize that until after I bought them).

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Based on the picture of those pistons, it looks like either early bore scoring or in process of starting. That ferroprint coating is clearly missing in places and will lead to bore scoring if reused. At a minimum, you might consider new pistons with better skirt coating. I don't know about reusing the rings or not on new pistons, someone with better insight should chime in on that, but I suspect you'd be better off going with the bore replacement program with LN and new pistons/rods/pins/bearings than try to reuse any of that.

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that is exactly why im going back and forth with my decision the parts i'm going to put in will need to go in regardless, and the additional cost of the boring and pistons definitely worth it. i just don't want to go thru that expanse at the moment. i don't know if you read my other thread, but i found the issue with the chain during a project that already cost me 4-5K. i'm hoping to get things done that will not need to be repeated when i decide to bore it. if it will happen it will probably be in 2-3 years which is 15K miles in my case. that is why i'm also not very concern about the condition of the pistons (which look much worse in the pictures then they really are). this is going to be my first engine "rebuild" so like i said on my first post, it is going to be a good practise. not to say that i will not change my mind tomorrow the bore and pistons are still in the cart. so i assume you used the OEM bearing for crank and pistons? did you send the crank for inspection, balancing and such? thanks for chiming in. i'm following your build,and you already help me with understanding the oil pump consul installation procedure .

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No doubt in my mind that the piston going back to the engine like that, will eventually lead to bore scoring. the cost of new OEM piston doesn't make sense to me. i rather rebuild the engine again in few years with a larger displacement.

Yes I used Porsche bearings for rods and mains. I had the rotating assembly balanced (+- .25 gram) and pistons/ rods matched. Crank had a light polish but that is all. I did not have the crank magnifluxed. Many will have an opinion on that last point.

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thanks. now I need to find a reputable machine shop in my area to do that for me. I assume it will need to be done with the flywheel and pressure plate installed ( I got all new parts). if anyone can recommend someone, it will be greatly appreciated.

Well, my 2cents worth,,, to start with give yourself all the info you need to make these decisions. 1) Measure the bore for size, taper and out of round. That alone will tell you what to do more than likely. 2) Maybe not needed, but for piece of mind/performance, have the crank magnafluxed and micro polished, oil holes chamfered. 3) Measure the piston skirts for signs of skirts collapsing. Then think about what you're doing with this car, do you need a relatively small hp gain for a hefty $um, for just cruising down the Sawgrass or around Sample rd. Or do you track the car competitively and every last hp is critical..? Or will a sweet running dependable stock size bore street engine be more than enough..? JFYI, I'm a firm believer that power, crisp throttle response, and a great running engine is mostly in the head. Ya, of course you need a good sealing dependable bottom end, thats a given. But don't over look the heads. A custom valve job, maybe new valve seats and guides if needed, clean/match up everything, would be my choice every day over a big bore if I had to choo$e 1... Just saying. Millennium Technologies will do a non damaged 996 cyl for $750.00 each side, stock bore size with a quality nickel-silicone coating, US Chrome has similar pricing and also does great nik. This will give you perfectly round, no taper, perfect diamond honed cross hatch bores ready to seat new rings, with a dependable rugged nickel - silicone type platting. US Chrome advertises the "the roundest hardest bores in the industry". Much better than Porsche defective oem loco-sil... Be nice to get rid of that loco-sil as long as its appart, and not have to go whole hog on this build,,, unless thats what you really want..? jmo

As someone who has walked this very path...albeit for different reasons, but the same path...I would strongly urge you to do this once and do it right. Toss those pistons. The only regrets I have from my rebuild are the things I did not do. Fortunately there are few of them.

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I did also have the flywheel and pressure plate balanced. They are the two items that were the most out of balance and would have the largest impact. Most shops won�t balance your assembly without them. Your best bet is to look for someone locally to perform that work. Shipping can be expensive. However, I would only make this investment if you are doing a full rebuild. I would also have your cylinder heads gone through too. I had a great experience with Hoffman in Georgia. They pressure test for cracks, replaced guides and seats, springs, retainers, seals etc. Not cheap but if you are going to go the full rebuild route, a good investment.

As far into the engine as you are, I would bite the bullet and do the bore increase now. You will spend the labor and everything but the re-sleeve and larger pistons either way. Do it once right and don’t look back. LN makes a billet button for the IMS chain tensioner and I would get that to replace the plastic button. Send the heads to Hoffman and have them redone. You can put it back together without doing the bore increase, but if that is your end goal you will be spending a lot of that money again for all the gaskets and consumables when you take it apart for the bore increase. It would be much less expensive in the long run to just do it all now. Good luck with the rebuild. I have a 4.0 and it is so much fun to drive! Mark

thank you all for your comments. it looks like, sending the heads for reconditioning is a must, regardless of which path I will take. @ allcool this is some interesting information you are sharing here. giving me a lot of food for thought. I will definitely take a look at Millennium Technologies.it is literally a walking distance from my office. anyone you can recommend for the crankshaft job in our area?

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Millennium Technologies (Automotive & Powersports) 1404 Pilgrim Road, Plymouth, WI. 53073 IIRR, thats who plates/bores/fits the big bore nickies. US Chrome is also a great choice close to the same area.

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LOL. there is another company nearby with the same name. doing airplanes

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Well, most automotive machine shops nowadays do less for more mony than I'd like, at least around here, if you can even find one still open. Seems they are a dying breed. But there is a great crank shop in Lake Worth, Larry's Cranks. They are a complete old time real automotive machine shop that cares about quality. But you won't find any cnc machines there. They will do your crank. Magnaflux, polish, & champfer oil holes if needed, check its runout/straightness, and clean your crank for $90. They also have a nice balancing machine for your crank assembly. If ya want I'll take a ride up there with ya, haven't been there in a very long time. They've been in business for 40 years...

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Millennium does Nikasil plating and can direct plate the block, but this does not address any of the structural issues with the 3.4, 3.6, or 3.8 blocks. I'd recommend only direct plating 2.5, 2.7, or 3.2 blocks. Nickies sleeving is an LN Engineering process and not offered by Millennium although they do Nikasil plating for us to our specifications.

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wow that is very generous of you. I might take you on that. I did a quick Google search for local shops, and the only one that came up was Mesa Balancing. https://mesa-balancing-store.myshopify.com/ he quoted me $425 for crank, flywheel and pressure plate balancing, $75 for piston rods and extra $125 for Magnaflux. I also got a quote for the heads from Hofmann 😬

Quotes source post: 18741936

There is no aftermarket coating that will hold up for use in Lokasil or Alusil bores. Theoretically a new set of pistons with ferroprint coating could be special ordered from Mahle Motorsport, but even so, you'd be taking a huge risk on the stock Lokasil bores. We used to offer a service where we would strip the ferroprint coating and apply a teflon coating to the pistons and then re-use them paired with our Nickies, but there really is not a huge cost savings and at the end of the day you end up with a stock displacement engine. It's money better spent to go bigger while in there and address all the known cylinder issues at that time.

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I paid $465 for crank, flywheel and clutch balance, rods balanced and matched and pistons matched at an old school machinist in Sacramento. On paper, he did a great job, just took a long time. I will let you know how it turned out once it�s running.

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Jandackson, can you share who you used here in Sacramento.

While we all have financial constraints, but it seems to defy logic, not go go larger displacement with LN 4.0 or Slakker UK Hartech 3.9. Your time and going with proven engineering block solutions are also a commodity. You're already down the rabbit hole re your top end with Hoffman heads. Why not go for displacement now, and Nikasil cylinders? You will via displacement have a more enjoyable engine in real world situations. With a block based on proven Nikasil cylinders....Then you can free your time and funds up on servicing etc.

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Thanks for replying Charles. Can you elaborate on the ''structural issues" please. I am familiar with the D-chunck, and cracked blocks, but out of the hundreds of thousands of all the produced engines in question, seems these are the rarest of failures. Seems many can be traced to severe overheating and low speed detonation(and other engine issues) that also causes havoc with the valve seats in the heads. Anecdotally also seems track cars suffer more from these rare issues... Wondering if any ''structural issues" statistic failure rates have been computed. Are these failures more common than imsb failures..? or bore scoring..? or are they the rarest of failures usual caused by other unaddressed engine problems.? Will replacing the Porsche defective loco-sil with MT real nik-sil 004" plating with direct (no sleeve) heat transfer to the water jackets help prevent block cracking and or D-chunck in correctly running maintained engines..? Are good running maintained engines that are approaching 100k miles with no bore score, no overheating issues, no deto, more or less prone to these issues, or have they passed that point if it hasn't already happened...?

If you're considering getting your cylinder bores plated as your cylinders are still nice and round there is one more option you might consider. Hartech used to 'fix' M96 blocks by machining a step at the top of the cylinders then press fit an aluminum carrier part with water flow cutouts in it, it essentially makes an open deck closed. In theory they can't go oval. Although hartech is UK, i bet there are shops stateside that can do it, i think I've seen it done on high boost Honda turbo builds so the shops exist here.

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John I used Parrish Automotive Inc in North Highlands [phone removed]). He is a one man shop now and his shop is a bit disheveled but he seemed to know a lot about balancing. Note that mine was his first flat 6. Like I said, I will know how well he actually did when I fire the engine for the first time. I called a few other shops and either didn�t get an answer, or got a bad vibe.

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This is correct, the structural issues stem from the bores going oval in the larger bores of the 3.4 3.6 3.8 engines, whereas the smaller bores of the 2.5 2.7 and 3.2 are thicker and don't go oval nearly as bad.. Any large bore Factory block will go oval over time ( 100k+ ) and can even crack or D-chunk...but being oval is bad enough by its self... Yes Hartech was re-rounding the Factory cylinders with an aluminum support ring around the top as recently as a few years ago, but have since changed to a full new cylinder like LN Engineering does...They have not elaborated as to why the change but common since would say that the process is almost as labor intense as doing the full cylinder but doing the full cylinder results and a more robust end result. As a matter of fact, Nikasil cylinders do not "need" a coated piston to operate, the coating is just some added insurance, but on Lokasil or Alusil a coated piston is a MUST because aluminum will not slide against another aluminum so the coating is a must have and the only coating that will really hold up to the task is the iron coating "ferrostan" that is now outlawed due to environmental issues..the other coatings just don't hold up long term, many ( like Hartech) have tried them... So, if a 3.4 block was not scored, theoretically you could have it re-rounded and supported at the top, then Nikasil plated,then have the pistons glass blasted to remove the coating , then fitted to the bores. But to find a machine shop to perform this at a reasonable savings would be very difficult and to pay a premium would end up costing as much as just having LN Nikies installed and go with a larger displacement.....and "mo powa!!"

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Thanx for the info, I know of Parrish, I had two great Machinist, one retired and the other pass, I am using Rex Hutchison right now on a 4 banger flat head for a 42 Ford built Jeep, even Rex has retired and son running shop. shall see how that comes out and hope yours turns out great. old school guys shop are always disheveled.

Are you keeping a spreadsheet of your current set or planned cost? My off the cuff mathcrometer says your closing in on buying it all. Labor is always the sync. Re-doing labor is brutal. Make sure whomever is doing your balancing is literate on balancing a dual mass flywheel. (If they do BMW as well thats a good sign) Before I had my engine done I priced a ton of options, a parts package and necessary machines work is about $15K for good work and parts. NO assembly.. You can get cheaper... Fast-cheap-reliable, you can have 2..

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yes. I ended up with the same numbers. the guy I found in Miami for the balancing said he is doing a lot of Porsche engine work. I’ll research it more.

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This. The skirt coating's main job here is to prevent aluminum on aluminum contact and galling. Once that coating is gone the only thing preventing galling is the motor oil lubrication. Once galling starts the engine will quickly destroy itself as galling leads to more galling, as aluminum is physically transferred from once surface to another increasing surface roughness. The sprayed on coating (ferroprint) just isn't up to the task (as your photo shows) and it's very likely the root cause of bore scoring in M96/97 engines. If you are going to do this, do it right and have the block refitted with Nikasil-plated cylinders. Give Charles at LNE a call and talk about it. It's not cheap but $6k will set you up with a block, new pistons and rings, and it will never bore score.

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Note how the piston skirt coating is much more flaked off on bank 2 (4, 5, 6) than bank 1, and we all know bore scoring is far more prevalent on bank 2. So this is the smoking gun. Why it happens on bank 2 first is up for debate, Baz at Hartech thinks it's higher temps at the thrust face. Charles at LNE commented that he thinks it's higher side forces due to the piston/rod geometry. Regardless, it's pretty clear the skirt coating is a real problem on the M96/97, and it's just a matter of time until things go sideways. IMO, the only way to fix this for good is Nikasil-plated cylinder sleeves with new pistons. Both Hartech and LNE have stated they tried plating the Lokasil cylinders with Nikasil and it just didn't work. These guys are straight-shooters in my experience, and I don't have any reason to doubt them.

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my dilemma is not if to do it. The dilemma is if to do it now. the engine was running perfectly good before I took it apart. The cylinders do not seem to be scored, and there is no argument it will eventually happen. I just invested (I don’t like the word spend &#128513 5k in parts an tools. Most of the parts were replaced electively. After I found the broken roller, I have another shipment of parts on the way, approximately 2k in total. going full rebuild is another 15K. if I put the engine back as is, I have no doubt it will live fine for at least couple of years, and will get a fresh rebuild then. the labor is not a problem is the guy doing it (although he is very slow) works for free and very meticulous 😄 I didn’t made my mind yet, but I think I’ll give LNE a call next week. What I was hoping to get from this thread, is the understanding if parts of the process can be done now. for example. Balancing the rotating assembly, replacing crank bearings and carrier bolts. that means that I will not need to do it again when I do the cylinders. Same goes for the heads. I know it is sound a bit awkward, but that was my line of thought.

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You can certainly put it off, run high molybdenum motor oil, install a low temp thermostat, don't lug the engine, and perhaps get away with another 20k miles, maybe more. You'll be no worse off then when scoring does happen as the fix is the same. So what it really boils down to is if you are willing to perform the same labor twice. If you have a guy willing to do the labor for free then that certainly helps. As to whether you need to redo the stuff you mention that depends on how many miles you get away with. It will all need to come apart though and many of the bolts are single use only so you'd need to replace them regardless, probably the same with most of the gaskets. I'd replace the bearings just because they aren't very expensive. Heads and crank should be fine unless you run up a lot of miles. Definitely do give Charles a call though. If you are already doing a rebuild the you are talking another $6k to fix the cylinders/pistons and you never have to worry about it again. Edit: I was thinking about the 997.2 (which has the crank bearings integral to the crankcase) when I made the comment above and forgot the M96 has the crankshaft cassette. That's a really good point in that you may be able to keep it all intact. I've never seen it done that way but maybe it can be done?

I would: Do it right the first time. Buy once, cry once. Things are not going to get less expensive.

@meirschwartz my engine was running great when I elected to take it apart ( please don�t tell my wife). What triggered me to start this was the increasing amount of glitter in my oil changes. That said, I decided it doesn�t make sense to do any further maintenance on the car until I had this issue resolved. The engine is the heart of the car. If it isn�t healthy, th rest doesn�t matter. I am about 2/3rds through my rebuild (just installed the heads) and I can say that I will be relieved when it is complete. This engine is an intense build simply because of two things: 1. It is a somewhat complicated assembly. This is made worse with all of the jargon and �voodoo� implied on the right way vs the wrong way to assemble them. You won�t k ow it was right until you start it. AND run it for the next 50k miles! 2. Even with the available resources, I find myself with a lot of questions and gaps in my knowledge with this motor. I really think you will be both financially and emotionally ahead by building it �right� right now. You will enjoy it now (time is super valuable) knowing you did it RIGHT, to the best of your abilities and the best parts available. After the build, all other maintenance and upgrades are easy and much more valuable.

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Thanks for the explanation, always enjoy reading your informative technical posts, they show a true understanding from vast experience and skill, we all benefit from them, Same goes for Charles and Jake and others here... 100,000 miles on a new/rebuild engine,use to be the industry standard for engines, and was considered normal as long as the end result was not a catastrophic engine failure and was just normal wear and tear, excess oil consumption, maybe the start of a rod knock, etc... Although I know many of the other Porsche engine internals/lower ends can go for many hundreds of thousands of miles. Like the older 928, or other tutonic brands. We lost the lottery on our 996 engines for sure. So help me understand,,, you say they go out of round in 100,000+ miles. In my engine building experience this means the cylinders wear material off the walls and this causes a taper/out of round. But if I'm understanding you correctly, seems you're implying this is not what happens to the 996, as cyl reinforcement rings machined into top of cyl prevents out of round..? Do you mean the actual block warps and twist into out of round cylinders without piston/rings wearing into the cyl walls causing oor/taper/ excess wall to piston clearance..? How much out of round is usually found at 100k..? Seems .0008" is max out of round or taper limits many use for the 996, and thats not much, but normal for engines of this type in my experience. Many other engines have .0004-0002" max taper out of round limit 1-2 thousands of an inch of cyl scoring will usually cause a out of round measurement over max limits. Seems .002" is cyl to wall clearance, so .0008" taper/oor would probably put you over that spec also... But a couple few thousands of an inch can easily be machined true and then ready for a nice nik plate job.... So a little confused here. So even with the head bolted down the cyl twist//warp/go out of round with out cyl wear causing the out of round...? If thats true than the Porsche engineers sure missed the boat on this engine, actually the boat must have sank in the decade they produced this engine... Along with all the other shortcomings of this engine, this tops the cake and I'd never build one of these very poorly engineered motors. That 2.7t Audi swap is looking better and better to me... Ya, with imsb failure, block structure/cyl /piston problems, chain/guide problems, valve seat dropping problems, d-chunk, cyl cracking, oil starvation, heads cracking, aos engine hydrolock failure, scavenge pump failure, etc... Ya, I know they can all be retrofitted with solution$. $25k worth of solutions when all is said and done. maybe double that if you don't do it your$elf. And even then all ya got if you're very lucky is 325 wheel hp unless you spend 75k for under 400hp. And then still wonder if the imsb you put in 50k miles ago in a rebuild is ready for replacement again, or your chains/guides are starting to deviate the cams. Or the new found power doesn't play well with our poor quality fuel and low speed deto knocks out a weak valve seat, or the water pump impeller comes apart clogging water jacket passage ways causing hot spots that crack the head. imo, defective design that should have been canned after all the problems came to light, not continued in production years, opposite of what I'd expect for Porsche in over a decade of this engine production... Seems to me, I'd be a fool to do anything other than replace the engine with a better engineered motor., than try and retrofit the way too numerous critical issues with the 996 engines... Ju$t to many problem$(co$t) that are not pre$ent in other well engineered motor$. $uppo$e the aftermarket love$ this golden goo$e of an engine... If the above is not true, and cyl wear causes the out of round like on most every other engine ever built, than a proper .004" thick nickel-silicone-carbide plate job should prevent further cyl scoring and out of round/taper/etc... At least till some cyl wear sets in at 100k miles..?

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The cylinder failures with these Lokasil blocks have little to do with overheating or tracking of these cars. If anything, those who track their cars use better oil and service their cars more frequently, so in my opinion, cylinder issues are less prone in those cars that are tracked. When a water pump fails, usually it's the heads that crack, and that's from impeller debris getting trapped in the very small water passages in the heads. LSPI only occurs on direct injected engines with forced induction, so that isn't a contributing factor. It is very rare for a knock sensor to fail, but if it does, that's easily identifiable as the piston will show signs of detonation and the rod bearing will have excessive wear on one of the shells which will show up in used oil analysis and if really bad, you'll see copper in the oil. Again, none of these have anything to do with d-chunk, slipped sleeve (which is very rare), or ovality issues. I'd say about 10 percent of the blocks that come to us a year have cracked cylinders. I think we've only had one slipped sleeve block in the last year. The rest are scoring failures. Compared to other failures, scoring is the number one thing we get calls about where years ago we would get many IMS failure calls. Now most people know about the IMS and treat is as a maintenance item, so failures are far and few between unless someone has been living under a rock. As more and more people are trying to save money by direct plating their blocks, I have seen many more blocks come in to us as of late that have been direct plated and have subsequently had cracked cylinders, even if wasn't a full blown d-chuck or have been honed incorrectly, which wipes the rings out within the first few thousand miles. The other issue is that the bores go out of round really bad, even if they are not overheated or abused in any way (assuming no scoring). I've seen over .010" of ovality and taper at 100k miles and the worse I have seen has been .015". For reference, the wear limit specified by Porsche is .0032". Even if you bore the block, direct plate it, and hone it, the parent metal isn't any good and won't stay round. The Nikasil plating will provide an excellent wear surface but it is only as good as the material it is applied to. It's common to see these engines with excessive ovality and taper not smoke or burn oil as the rings wear to match that geometry. You only really see it cause a problem when you re-ring the stock bore - the new ring can't confirm to the used cylinder bore. I'll also add that these blocks are 100% round and have no taper when new. We've bought numerous new blocks from Porsche over the years, so we've had the chance to measure them new out of the box. And yes, with how thin the plating is applied, that allows for excellent heat transfer (unlike iron sleeves), but again, if the parent metal is the weakest link, then direct plating the block is like putting lipstick on a pig.