What % of 996 engines are going bang?

Hi, Am thinking of a 996 for the family as day to day car for the wife, thinking of spending £25-32k. How safe are the facelift cars compared to the prefacelift cars? I know a lot of pre facelift are going bang and wonder what % of facelift ones are ? The risk concerns me as from what I have been told it can happen to both. Help appreciated. If I add extra budget are the 997 engines immune? thanks in advance

check out pistonheads. looks like 997 is as 996. but if you speak to a good indie, they should be able to give you some idea of %. there seem to be a lot of complaints lately on all forums. hope its just the minority !

it's a tiny percentage, thing is, when it happens it's very upsetting and expensive so some people make a lot of noise about it - you won't get an exciting thread developing on a forum entitled there's nothing wrong with my 996! with that sort of budget, adding a warranty would be a sensible way of achieving peace of mind. try reading the buyer's guide on hartech's website (no connection to me) for a more technical explanation of the potential issues.

An option which may be appropriate for your budget would be to opt for the GT3 model which, from what I have read, uses a differently constructed engine, somewhat immune to the big bang theory. If you opt for the 996/ 997 I'd certainly recommend the OPC warranty - not just for the engine - more for all round peace of mind - and obtained as a condition of sale to ensure the risk is not yours at the time of 111 point inspection. Peter

The 996 is an excellent choice. But be careful not to believe everything you read on the internet. A lot of mis-information is quoted as 'fact', and a lot of generalisations are made without full knowledge of the truth. I've had two 996s (3.4 and 3.6) and four Boxsters since 1997 and never had a problem with any of them. However, if I was buying a 996 I would take a few precautions: - I'd prefer a 3.6; overall it's a worthwhile improvement over the 3.4 - I'd prefer to buy a UK supplied, OPC serviced example, on the basis of any goodwill - I'd have the 111 point inspection and take out or renew the official Porsche warranty (£875pa) That way, in the unlikely event of anything nasty, at least I would have the best prospect of being covered.

There's a thread on PH with some useful statistics. http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&t=400915

And for those that don't want to wade through the 22 page thread, the last summary is half way down page 18. The answer to life, the universe and porsche engine reliablity is not (fortunately) 42%, but 16.82% according to the respondants of the PH questionnaire. One has to question the liklihood of people responding saying "I didn't have a problem" (like I did) versus those likely to respond if they did have a problem, but it is clearly not an insignificant issue ...

well this survey is like mosts posts on PH, not fit for purpose. Remember, I actually took the trouble to carry out a survey on the whole Club membership of Boxsters and 996 four years ago. There were quite a few RMS reported, over 20% but virtually no full failures. I would expect 50 or 100 RMS for each full failure. Mind you, one failure is one too many, so I am not condoning the problem.[ ]

The answer is in the solution. If the car is less than ten years old and has done less than 125k miles ? --- for £875 you can have a Porsche warranty. Insurance companies make a profit, dealers make a profit, and people with insurance may be a little more care-free than those who do not, so what is the annual value of this warranty ? i.e the average spend in repairs ? £500 ?

thanks for the replies, much appreciated. I love the idea of a GT3 but I think the wife might just make me sell my 993 RS if I have 2 track cars, which I am keen to keep. I have run a Boxters S (2001)4 - 5 years ago which was great. I must say I am concerned at the 996 engine failures, whether it is 5%, 10% or 20% it is still a high rate for what should be a solid car. This will have an effect on residuals I am sure, irrelevant of warranty. If the 997 is going the same way that is not an option either. However I believe there may be a solution, a 996 turbo. I believe these have the GT1 block too? The only downside is fuel consumption/bills.

... and a higher purchase price! I think it is easy to become overly concerned about this, the 996 is a great car. Also, (in case you are not familiar with the terminology and apologies if this is patronising) don't confuse the RMS failure with an engine failure. The RMS is the Rear Main Seal and if it develops a leak there is a high chance that Porsche will repair on a goodwill basis if the car has full history. A leak may also develop which is so minor it does not really affect the car at all. It can be replaced at the same time as a clutch for an extra £20 or so. NicD quotes the most reliable statistics that I am aware are of above - 50 to 100 RMS failures to every engine failure is 1 - 2% of the 20% suffering the RMS or 0.2% to 0.4% overall. The Turbo is, of course, a very nice car but probably 997 money so that choice would depend on whether you proritise youth or performance in your car?

Thanks Rob. The aim is to keep the car for 2 - 3 years, that was why originally a facelift 996 made reasonable economic sense, helped by the fact that we only do 4k miles a year, plus a 4 year old can fit in the back! I have had previous battles with the Porsche warranty department (on my boxster S) in the past which makes me a bit nervous in case an engine lets go, thats all. I think the wife will find the Turbo too fast tbh so I am going to have to make a decision. The RMS doesn't worry me at all as that is what I would term a fairly small bill. Nice problem to have though. I suppose I should thank the mini cab driver for crashing into our last car!

is there any link between engines going bang and use of the car (eg trackdays) ?

a) I'd be surprised if the % failure is as low as 0.4%. Simply judging by 1) the number of vehicles advertised as having had a replacement engine and 2) the number of specialist firms that have 'solutions' to the problem (e.g.. autofarm / hartech etc). I'm sure its not as high as the 16% from the PH survey too, probably 1 to 5% as quoted elsewhere is more realistic. b) Majordom; there is an interesting read of the issue on Hartech's website - length pdf buyers guides with lots of tech detail from Baz's years of experience in rebuilding these engines. It seems there are 2 major causes of failure. 1) Intermediate shaft weakness and subsequent destruction and 2) ovalling cylinder linings with age/wear and subsequent cracking of the lining, with a chunk becoming detatched in the worst case. There is some school of thought that the intermediate shaft suffers more on manual cars (than tiptronics) due to different forces acting on it when using the engine as a brake on downshifts. So, my assumption from there would be that trackday usage would increase those forces, so probably. Having said that, % of distance travelled on trackdays is likely to be small compared to road usage.

thats an interesting point, I did not realise there were 2 areas of weakness. Have any of the 2 areas been addressed on the 997?

I try not to comment too much on threads like this, for fear of perpetuating them. You have to remember that Porsche make 100,000 cars a year now, and in percentage terms failures are low, and I doubt if the percentages are much higher than the average high performance car manufacturer. Martin's comment inspired me to do a search on Autotrader. I selected Porsche 911's up to 10 years old and found there are 1679 cars advertised. I then put "new engine" (with quotes) in the keywords and it listed 8 cars. By my maths, that's 0.4%. If you do the same with BMW M3's, you get 949 cars, and 2 with new engines, or 0.2%.

Hi Richard Thanks for the reply. I am not sure how valid that view is. I know the problem has been highlighted by the internet and potentially blown out of proportion, but I also know that the problem is also on the increase. I don't want to cause alarm or scare potential buyers, I was keen to identify if there were ways to avoid the issues by buying a certain year etc. It seems that there is no answer to that one. I do not think Porsche have handled it as well as they could have, I do hope it does not continue with the 997. If you think that they still only offer a 2 year warranty it does make you wonder though. In the US they give 4 years.

I don't think any model years are exempt, but generally speaking, failures tend to occur prior to 50,000 miles or so, and the 987 and 997 aren't exempt. It will be very interesting to see the details of the new MA1 engine for the second generation 997, and what they have done about the RMS issue too.

Yes, fingers crossed they will resolve all major issues on the new engine! I am undecided on what to do, Was at an OPC today to pick up some parts today for my 993 (my toy) and they were v quiet. What I am a little confused about is if they fit a new engine, what is different so that it won't happen again. I thought that it might be safer to look for one that has had a replacement engine at porsche

A contact told me that there are some "chills" used when casting the cylinder block that lead to uneven cooling of some blocks/cylinder bore areas;later leading to metal failure in this area and subsequently engine failure caused by "pick up" by the piston.This is seperate to the bearing problem associated with the intermediate shaft. "Chills "are commonly used in casting production,both ferrous & non-ferrous to encourage solidification of the poured metal in specific places more so than elsewhere in the same casting.It can be to minimise porosity,etc.Castings can vary slightly and would explain the failure rate for some cars & not others.As an incipient fault,it might not be easily detectable at production stage & I dont' imagine every cast block is radiographed,I would expect crack detection & analysis on a sampling basis. This explains why the GT3,etc uses the reliable but water cooled head modded earlier engine.Only my opinion & might get moderated if thought likely to upset someone.

Hi Richard ... I thought about your search and it seemed very low from my experience when buying - then I realised your search would include all newer 997s as well as turbos and gt3 etc that are different engine. So, I refined the search as follows ... Price range 15K to 30K, up to 10 years .. that produced 360 results. Then filtered with "engine" and manually checked each of the 14 results and found 6 * "new engine" 1 * "new porsche engine" and 1 * "engine not running" (and it had bumper requiring paintword ... and they still wanted £18K for it) [the remaining 6 that I discarded were things like 'engine warrantee', and 'we rebuild engines', and 'german engineering' etc. etc.] So, that makes it 8/360 which is 2.2%. Then, of course, we need to factor in any sellers - especially traders - who either don't know its had a replacment or don't want to put off potential buyers with the fact that somethings gone wrong. So, my (revised) guestimate is between 2 and 5% for the 996 wet sump.

Thinking about it, your search would give a fairer representation of the situation with early cars. Reluctantly, I give in. At least you and I have one of the 95-98% [ ] [ ].

As ChrisW pointed out above, the cost of the Warranty is a good guide to the attrition rate, and less than 5% would seem about right. Renewing a BMW or Land Rover warranty can be far more expensive, with an 'any one claim' limit. And, some prestige sports car manufacturers don't even offer extended warranties. I believe that Porsche provide 2 years worldwide, with the renewal option, but PCA pick up the cost of years 3 and 4. Don't let internet scare stories put you off. Just buy one with the warranty and keep it renewed. Problems are unlikely, but we have insurance to save us the worry.

I thought the Boxter/996/Cayman engine had cylinder liners as one of the early problems was that the liners move causing catastrauphic engine failure and has lead to the Hartech / Autofarm solution. If this is the case the the pistons are not running in a cast bore of the cylinder block - they are running through the steel liners.

Why should this be moderated? It's a very good description of the process and as you say, it's your opinion. You have not slagged anyone off - just a good explanation.