I am signed up to instruct for OVR-PCA at a DE at Mid-Ohio in April. Today I received an email from them stating that ALL 996/997 TT, GT2 and GT3 will be required to either have the welded coolant pipe fix, or certify that they are running only distilled water + water wetter as coolant. Otherwise, failed inspection and not allowed on track.

I had already ordered the repair kit, and scheduled the repair for next month.

Probably won't be long before this spreads around the country...

Jon

 

I'm kind of surprised that this would be coming from PCA. Would this not be something reported to NHTSA that would then require a recall for the defect at Porsche expense?

Obviously this is a safety issue.

 

Quite a number of us have reported this to NHTSA. I don't know of anything being doen about it, though.

I believe that this requirement is coming from the local club (OVR) and not PCA national.

+1 on that!

Jon

 

It does amaze me Porsche hasn't stepped up to this issue even given the age of the cars , They (Porsche) have the highest profit margin of any car maker (75% gross) on the turbo.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/...e_cars/11.html

You would think they would at least want to avoid this kind of bad rep for a model that makes so much money.

 

You would think they'd at least pin the fittings like Sharkwerks does to fix this at the factory. Geez.

Glad I had mine done when the motor came out a while back.

 

Reported mine as well with zero response back. I'm only partially repaired with rest requiring engine drop.

Clutch slave-accumulator now leaking as well. Urrrgghhh

 

My motor is on the ground right now getting this done after shutting the track down for a hour on Saturday making only a half lap two weeks before that the one behind the alternator blew, making it go bad as well.

 

Interesting... Would be a little surprised if this doesn't at the very least get a TSB issued. The cars are meant to run hard, and it's quite clear thats not an option with the way they are setup from the factory.

Thanks for the update Jon

 

Very bad news Jon because if PCA recognize this problem it is because it happen often (more than I thought) and will eventually happen to anyone who owns one of these cars...The only difference I have found between atmospheric and turbos are the water pump delivery. 14,000 liters per hour for the turbo and 10,000 liters per hour for the atmospheric. Glued fittings not sufficient for this high flow? I am also getting ready for this big job but not too happy about this other failure....

 

I'm all for putting Porsche on blast. We need to contact a major media outlet to get anything done though. They won't pay attention to a few people grumbling about it. They will continue to pump out new cars while 10's of thousands of people drive around at risk.

Places like inside line, and some of the major auto blogs have worked in the past. Let's get it done!!!!! For every 996 and 997 owner out there.


BTW there is a thread on rennlist of a DIY fix for the coolant issue. It's drilling and screwing instead of welding, but looks pretty decent to me. I'd certainly take it over massive failure.

 

Just had the one behind my alternator fail. I was doing about 110 mph when it happened too! Maybe http://jalopnik.com/ would take the story as well.

 

I don't even track the 996TT much, I have a z06 that I flog at the track, it's just going though a new build that's taking forever(finally picked it up in dec after the shop having it since late June, drove it 20 miles and spun a bearing on a brand new HKE built dry sumped 434 ls2 because of OIL STRAVATION BECAUSE THE DRY SUMP WAS NOT DONE RIGHT sorry about that had to rant somewhere) anyway the first fitting went on the street under normal driving

 

Jon, did you know why it has to be welded? Sharkwerks has a simple fix:

 

We do not weld these fittings, however we have done many of these cars with the fittings pinned as described in this thread. I'm not sure of the number (maybe Alex or James can help w/ that), but I'm sure in the range of 30-50+. Some were done 5-6 years ago, many have over 20,000-40,000 miles by now.

Zero have leaked to date as far as I know.

A GT3 came in last week for a 3.9L upgrade. A well-known shop performed a coolant fix for his car. Their solution was to weld the fittings. The car has had around a dozen track days. When we took apart the car we found this:



Tiny pinholes in the welds, that were probably invisible at the time of completion, lead to leaking coolant.

Every Shark Werks 3.9L, every 996 / 997 Turbo engine we've built since 2005, and many cars that dropped in for this repair are running the pinned pipes and none have leaked yet that I'm aware of. There are several Rennlist members who might not even be aware of how we do the fix and just about all are taken to a track.

 

There are 6 coolant pipes in all. Do you pin all 6 or just the two in the picture?