996 Engines

In a newbie kinda way can someone please just highlight the main differences between a 911 996 (carrera 2) engine and conventional engine (for examples sake an Audi TT's 1.8 engine). I'm taking about mechanics here... Cheers folks. Happy new year too!

Other than being a horizontally oposed, six cylinder, normally aspirated engine against a four cylinder, in-line, turbo charger engine, they operate on essentially the same principals. (Not meant to sound patronising, but how detailed do you require the info?)

In a nut shell, almost everything. Conventional engine are designed very conservatively, so are easy to tune as they have much slack in them, to all allow for all sorts of driving. Also a major factor is cost of manufacturing, thus conventional engine are made on the cheap for mass manufacturing and do not benefit from more exotic materials or technologies, and thus have low rev ranges. Where as both an Air-cooled or Water-cooled Porsche Flat-6 engine is designed and built to be maximised, which is why they are expensive, have higher rev ranges, cost more to maintain, have limited tuning ability but have real supercar performance. E.g. You could drive a base 10 year old with 100,000+ on the clock 993 C2 with a mere 285 bhp and it will still do 170mph+ and 0-60 in about 5.5 secs Drive a tuned VW Group 1.8Turbo engine which could easily be boosted and tuned to 300 bhp, it could not match those figures or engine life. That's why it is a Porsche.

Sundeep, that's brill. So in terms of engine parts, my Audi would need its belt changed at 60k, is there a similar thing with the 996? Or is the engine setup different?

I believe they are all chain driven hence no timing belt to change. At the end of the day a better comparison is the Subaru boxer engine as a comparison. This is also a horizontally opposed flat engine. Porsche engines have such goodies as dry sump lubrication which is something derived from racing which offers the advantage of no oil starvation on long cornering and allows the engine to be mounted lower in the body.... At the end of the day they both require fuel and water to go however development design for Porsche cars was always with performance in mind....

Any engine still follows the same fundamental rules of construction and parts. On a 996 GT3 a polyrib belt is changed at 48k.

Yes but this belt is purely just a "Fan belt" as such, not the typical cam belt you'd change on say mum's Subaru, which might I add is the hardest dam timing belt you'll ever change... I know as I did it... The thing is massive and so much to keep aligned!

Not on the standard water cooled engine. 993 and earlier have dry sumps as do the GT2/Turbo & GT3

Yes true, I forgot they went soft on the 996 non-gt spec models.... Shame really as it's something they should have kept.... all about reducing cost....

I'm sure it says in my 996 brochure that it has a dry sump :?: What always impresses me about 996 engines is not so much the performance, but (aside from the occasional RMS and int. shaft issues :roll: ) the maintenance costs, or rather relative lack of- its a much cheaper car to service than, say, an M3.

I had been told it before they didn't dry sump the non-gt models however looking through the manual I'm not seeing this evident.... Stay tuned ....

From Wikipedia: 911 Carrera 320 hp @ 6800 rpm, 3.6L wet-sump 4.9 s 177 mph/285 km/h 911 Carrera Cabriolet 320 hp @ 6800 rpm, 3.6L wet-sump 5.0 s 177 mph/285 km/h 911 Targa 320 hp @ 6800 rpm, 3.6L wet-sump 5.1 s 177 mph/285 km/h 911 Carrera 4 320 hp @ 6800 rpm, 3.6L wet-sump 5.0 s 177 mph/285 km/h 911 Carrera 4 Cabriolet 320 hp @ 6800 rpm, 3.6L wet-sump 4.7 s 177 mph/285 km/h 911 Carrera 4S 320 hp @ 6800 rpm, 3.6L wet-sump 5.1 s 174 mph/280 km/h 911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet 320 hp @ 6800 rpm, 3.6L wet-sump 5.3 s 174 mph/280 km/h 911 Turbo 420 hp @ 6000 rpm, 3.6L dry-sump 3.9 s 197 mph/317 km/h 911 Turbo Cabriolet 420 hp @ 6000 rpm, 3.6L dry-sump 4.3 s 190 mph/306 km/h 911 Turbo S 450 hp @ 6000 rpm, 3.6L dry-sump 3.8 s 197 mph/317 km/h 911 Turbo S Cabriolet 450 hp @ 6000 rpm, 3.6L dry-sump 4.3 s 191 mph/307 km/h 911 GT3 381 hp @ 7400 rpm, 3.6L dry-sump 4.5 s 190 mph/306 km/h 911 GT3 RS 381 hp @ 7400 rpm, 3.6L dry-sump 4.5 s 190 mph/306 km/h 911 GT2 483 hp @ 5700 rpm, 3.6L dry-sump 4.0 s 198 mph/319 km/h

That's how come you can check the oil level on a 996 C2/C4 without the engine running.

Take a look at the link here to get an appreciation of how the 996 water-cooled engine looked and works. http://www.autofarm.co.uk/engines/water_cooled http://www.idee.demon.nl/996/996.htm Good luck

The brochure (which I appreciate will have some marketing-speak in) says something along the lines of this- the 996 engine has a dry sump integrated into the engine (the water cooled engine needs less oil than an air/oil cooled engine, hence compact reservoir), feeding oil to where its needed by means of scavenge pumps and oil jets.