I emailed with the OP last night to see if I can help. This definitely sounds like an isolated situation and it's actually a 996TT. We have never seen this before. I will try to help him get to the bottom of it and log the current set-up. I agree most OTS tunes including Cobb are pretty safe.

 

OEM tune isn't necessarily better. My car was pulling a lot of timing on the OEM because of the ****ty gas here. With the custom tune I have, the timing pull is much better and the engine is running in a much "safer" zone.

 

Welcome to the unlucky club! Tear it down otherwise we are just wasting time speculating. The motor should have been just fine with that tune though. Your heads and cyl housings probably survived so you can recover some value from your old motor.

 

RR glad to hear that the car is back up and running and that you're getting back in the seat again. I wouldn't worry too much about the thread title. Most folks who read your first post will quickly realize you're asking if there might be a correlation and not overtly accusing Cobb of anything.

In my years of doing this hobby I've learned that things happen and there isn't always a smoking gun. A blown engine can be a demoralizing kick in the jewels but it's great to hear that you got a replacement motor back in the car and are getting ready to take the car back out on the track. I wouldn't hesitate to put an OTS tune back in the car. The guys at Cobb are seasoned professionals and the Accessport is one of the best datalogging tools out there. Load up the tune, run the car, check the data, and have fun with it.

If there is a cost to you associated with tearing the motor down I would suggest foregoing the effort and cost. Just chalk the blown engine up to bad luck and call it the price of tuition. Moving forward, if you continue to track the car, keep an eye on the condition of the oil. In fact, you may want to consider sending the oil out to Blackstone at the end of the season for an analysis. It's inexpensive and provides peace of mind, or an indication that something is amiss. Given that you're running a 996 I would recommend adding a proper oil temp gauge because, for some unknown reason, Porsche did not include an oil temp gauge as part of the factory instrumentation.

This is a great place to ask questions, learn, and contribute. Hopefully the motor in the car now will provide many years of trouble free service.

Edit: OP, I would suggest reaching out to Sam and picking his brain. He is extremely knowledgeable, very patient, and genuinely loves the hobby. When I built my 996 he was there every step of the way with great advice and openly shared his knowledge. As a result the car ran great and was very reliable.

 

im going to suggest this.

talk to your tuner and learn what "datalogging" means. then log on the street before you race the car to get used to the operation and try to understand what the logs mean.
fuel. if your not familiar with "detonation " you have more research to do. what fuel you are using can mean the difference between fun and boom.

theres so much more to racing cars then getting in the cabin and driving the car. un less you have a fully prepped race team to do all your dirty work then it is upon you to do it.
you now have a used engine in your car which you know little to nothing about. my suggestion is cylinder leakdown, compression test and datalogg on a very mild tune to see how the engine responds. this could literally be waiting for 1.2 bar and low oil pressure to grenade yet another engine.

listen to pwdrhound. he road races more than most anyone on this forum and has a very good understanding of what is needed to be fast but also what is needed to keep the car running week after week

just my .02 and sorry you had this experience. welcome to the "my porsche blew up and im out a butt load of cash!!" there are more of us than you know!

 

Thanks again to all for your comments. I really appreciate the education including comments about logs, fuel, oil, etc. I feel comfortable now understanding that the tune probably had nothing to do with my engine blowing. I'm planning to send the old engine off to someone that can do a post mortem and shed some light on what caused the failure. I talked to Sam at byDesign who is helping me with the logs. I'm going to see if we can move this thread over to the 996tt forum (for future reference) where it belongs.

 

That's what these forums are for. Good luck and your in good hands with Sam.

 

Sorry to hear about your situation. Feel free to reach out and we can chat. Happy to help answer any questions.

mitch.mckee@cobbtuning.com

-Mitch

 

Thanks for the offer Mitch. Sam is doing a great job of helping me.

 

Nice chatting with you Rick. For those not sure of the exact details this is a 996TT with exhaust and stage 2 pump gas tune. Stock K16's at about 1bar with any OTS tune just don't have the grunt to bend let alone throw a rod. The car can do so many things especially at this level to protect itself it doesn't make sense. So I would also bet that something seized up or was worn out in the engine which could have been the result of a multitude of things really. This could have happened on a stock tune just the same. There is definitely some great advise here.

We went over it and he can log the car on the same OTS map in the next few days just to see how it looks. I am willing to bet it's all within safe parameters. Hopefully we can have the motor looked at and shed some light to share with everyone.

Maybe take bets?! I also agree that Rick has a great attitude about it. It may have come across differently but some of us are not up on all the details so we post for info thinking out loud. It's rare but random stuff happens. Good luck!

 

Just got through reading this and am glad to see you have the right attitude and got a replacement engine up and running.

​​​​​One thing my tuner was very clear about was confirming the engine condition before tuning with data logs and then getting more data logs after tuning and again after break-in of new turbos, again at cold start, again at the track, in the hot in the cold....you get it by now certainly even without my example.

Definitely put a stock tune back and log it before hitting the track again. Pressure test for sure and a new fuel pump won't hurt. If there's the original in there still it is on borrowed time.

I may have missed where you or your Pexpert confirmed what FPR, injectors and plugs were in the motor before tracking?. My car had a new crate engine because the previous owner had a bad combo that killed the engine.

After my first year of tracking I had to rebuild the gbox because they don't like extended running hard w/o a cooler. Now I log during every track outing with Kevin's slick little obd port logger so I can have the files reviewed and save them to document/track performance.

If you like the track a lot, just follow Powdrhound's setup and enjoy many hours of reliable fun. The track is so much harder on a car than any street driving dishes out.

 

While the OTS tunes seem to be safer I still don't care for them. EVERY car I have seen logs from an OTS tune from Cobb does show slight knock sums at higher rpms under load. Is it enough to cause a rod to kick out the block? I highly doubt it but it's there and IMO I would like to see minimal knock if any at all.

 

I've blown 2x 996tt motors. +1 on the importance go logging.

You track a car hard, **** breaks. pay2play.

 

My bet would be the FPR vacuum line popped off.

 

Ill take that bet.