These type of posts scare the bejesus out of me.

 

Agree with Zook, only way to get peace if mind is get another shop to assess

 

Yes, I agree second opinion and a more importantly a second DME scan. Is anyone near the OP who can do a DME scan for him?

AFAIK (correct me if I am wrong) if the DME scan shows the over rev, then effectively it did happen (cannot imagine a dealer changing the DME, I think it can be cleared but not edited). The dealer is likely correct in assuming an engine failure within 50 hours of a high over rev is cause by the over rev. (I believe this the basic stance).

An over rev such as this could be cause by something like, slowing from highway speed (5 gear) a bit, down shifting after the braking and getting 2nd instead of 4th. Like traffic slowed a bit you put on your brakes then it picked up again and you shifted to a gear appropriate for the speed and got second instead.

You cannot say you do not know how to down shift if you drive a manual as braking for a light from 50 to 20 then having the light turn green requires a shift, one cannot just lug the engine in 5th gear (well one could but it would like be ugly). We are not talking about RPM matching heel toe kind of thing just going down a gear and catching 2nd instead of 4th and letting the clutch out.

Good luck hope this turns out well for you.

 

this and the coolent fitting issue and the IMS, RMS issues they all scare the bejeses outa me, people pay decent money for these cars and this isnt right

 

why all of the negative comments about a blown engine ? Any manuf. cars can have a failure. Here it sounds like a creampuff that sat and may not have had the oil checked recently, that's prejudging. 3 years @ less then 4,000 miles. Driving these cars lightly doesn't seem right but to assume it's a Porsche issue is just as crazy. We have gauges and a very exacting Manual. GLw getting a free re-build. "people pay decent money for these cars and this isn't right" . We don't see the other side per Paul Harvey and what does that really mean ? Garage Queens still need love, attention and maintenance, and care.

 

just stating that it scary nothing negative.

 

That last part is true. This isn't even an old-fashioned "rev limiter", but something more fundamental and reliable. The engine computer monitors the revolutions of the crankshaft contstantly because it needs that data to control the amount of fuel and the timing of the spark plugs firing. The speed of a modern computer compared to an engine is not to be believed. To a computer geek, the engine events happen in slow motion.

We don't have a distributor on modern Porsches, just a computer that sends signals separately to each plug. And it has time to 'think' about a dozen other things between each ignition event. That computer is simply programmed to decline turning on the fuel flow or the plug when the rpm is above redline. (There are distinctions about 'hard' and 'soft' shutdown of these functions but those are not relevant to this issue so I won't bother.)

As for the records being wrong, anything is theoretically possible, including somebody hacking your on-board computer, but it really isn't a plausible problem. The 'records' are simply a place in its memory where the computer logs that it had an opportunity to fire the plugs but declined because the crankshaft rotation was too fast already. The computer, also known as "the digital motor electronics", prints out that log along with a lot of other data on command from an off-board maintenance computer. Thus we call it a DME print-out. Aside from outright computer failure, which stops the engine completely, a failure of the logging method is next to impossible.

The trouble when persuading Porsche is that you can cause those values while driving very conservatively. The most frequent cause is while upshifting from second to third and accidentally hitting the gate for first instead. The car jerks and slows abruptly until you get the clutch pedal back in. If you shift up at slow engine speeds, this still happens. If you shift from second to third at the very conservative engine speed of 4400 rpm and accidentally hit first, then the engine will jump over 7500 rpm. That recorded incident of exceeding 9500 only requires that you hold off shifting out of second until 5600 rpm -- and then miss third and catch first. Bingo, 9500 rpm. All it takes is a run to 55 mph in second before shifting into third, a brief moment of inattention that lets you hit first, and you've damaged the engine.

So far, it doesn't sound like anyone is trying terribly hard to help, but the trouble is people can (and often do) create those problems when they think they're driving conservatively. That weakens your case for getting Porsche North America to pay for a new engine.

On the other hand, they still have that fund for out-of-warranty repairs and they don't keep it for legal reasons. It is purely because they want to accommodate people they see as potential future customers and sources of good (or bad) reputation. The accounting term is "good will" and an account of that title appears in the books of all consumer businesses. It is so traditional as to be part of the accounting standards.

The trick is to get someone with the authority to dispense from that fund willing to do so. For encouragement, let me point out that something similar happened to me, though in the days before engine computers were this advanced. I promised another small businessman a lift to a nearby Air Force Base so he could turn in a proposal by the deadline. He flew in, walked out to my car, and turned out to be a giant of a man. Well, in sports car terms anyway. 7'2" I think it was. I gave him the ride and as we came off the base and entered the freeway, he was relaxed, I was glad the chore was done, and we came around one of those circular on-ramps we use in California. I'm looking in the mirror at a cement truck I'm merging ahead of, he's balancing against the g-load, and his knee rides over the shift lever without my seeing it. Being a race driver staring at a heavy truck coming downhill, my 2-3 shift was quite brisk and made up near the redline. Except I couldn't get into third because of his knee. The car went into first, not third, and only the fact that part of race training (and experience) is handling missed shifts kept me from destroying that engine. I realized the problem from the feel of the shift in my wrist but couldn't keep my foot from releasing the clutch in time. I did manage to slam it back to the floor in perhaps a quarter second.

We never figured out how many rpm that engine reached, for lack of our current sort of computer, but the noise alone was scary enough. And the noise didn't quit. Turned out I had damaged the transmission. Drivable, but noisy.

I took it to the dealer and honestly described the situation. Ditto the factory field rep. I blew an upshift and this is how. "Is there anything you can do for me?" In fact, I got a new transmission at no charge. And they paid the dealer for some thorough diagnostics to make sure the engine was okay.

You might not hit them in a similarly congenial mood, but pride means a lot. The comment the factory had in my case was: "You should not be able to damage our transmission that easily." Mind you, it doesn't say that in the warranty. It says that in the corporate culture. Neither you nor I had a legal claim, but people who build cars they're proud of like to stay proud. You have that going for you.

At this point, you should do two things. First, get a copy of the DME print-out, and scan a copy for us if you know how. Otherwise, just type in what it says as faithfully as possible.. We can tell you more by looking at a copy of the data, but I really doubt anyone is pulling anything. I suspect it does say what they say, but at least we can interpret it for you a little further.

Second, call Porsche. As I said, be sincere, but be emphatic and let your emotions show in the conversation. One reason, probably the biggest one, that Porsche runs driving schools and "experience centers" is that driving a high-performance sports car requires skills that are nothing like what is taught in high school driver training, at least not in the United States. The portion of the existing owner base that are sports car fanatics never is sympathetic, but the truth is Porsche could not stay in business if they didn't have buyers like yourself who just like the car, but don't care to take race training to be comfortable driving it.

Porsche make the schools available, but fully understanding that most owners never will go; they help and encourage training by organizations like the Porsche Club of America, but again realizing that leaves out a bunch of their owners; and they try to design the car to have the traits we love while still protecting against mistakes that ordinary cars tolerate. The truth is designers can't protect against the mistake we're discussing without giving control of shifts to a computer, but they -- the Porsche corporate culture -- don't want that sort of transmission exclusively any more than do we fanatics. When all three of those fail and someone manages to bend a car or break the engine while driving in a reasonable manner, then they do sympathize. At the corporate level I mean, not just the person on the phone. Selling to owners like yourself is crucial to the company and they don't like to be seen as just turning away when you have an expensive problem like this.

The only thing to be aware of is the other direction. People who abuse these cars never get any sympathy, not from us sports car fanatics and not from the company. What you have to make clear is that you really are trying to drive the car with respect and you still don't understand how it's possible to damage it this way, even after an engineer explained it to you. (Don't bother to convey the idea that someone is ripping you off. They will read the DME report after the dealer faxes it to them. They won't see anything that looks like a rip-off to them, and then they'll decide you're not a reasonable person.)

The dealer doesn't sound as helpful as I'd expect, but possibly that's because you aren't a regular customer. You bought the car somewhere else and so forth. That means you are basically a stranger to them, and you can imagine how many people they get claiming they never do anything racy at all, but it turns out they've replaced the suspension members with racing parts and they spend ten days a year at a race track. They aren't engineers so that bit about conservative shifting still causing those over-revs won't be obvious to them unless they've taken a course on the subject. All they know is: here's a car that some stranger says he treats gently, "but the computer says he over-revs it all the time."

If you had a regular dealer who knew you were a conservative driver, that part would be different, but you'd still have to convince the factory. That's what you want to do now. Well, not the factory directly, but PCNA, the North American arm of Porsche.

Oops. Cindy needs me. Haven't time to proof this, but I think it's readable. I'll check it later. [Came back and made a couple of editing corrections. Nothing substantial. GWS.]

Gary

 

1) As Gary mentioned, get the DME and post it here. Find out for sure when the over revs happened. Perhaps your friend missed a shift, Then I'd say he owes you more that just a beer for your bad luck.

2) Take a look at this pic: http://dcauto.gotdns.com/illustration/index/437750733

And use it to describe exactly what is wrong with the crank. Did the pin (3) shear or bend? Is it bent where bearing (12) is near the main seal? Does the seal (4) leak? Or did the screw pulley bolt (7) just bend? Or is the the lip where the shear pin buggered. If you do not know, ask your mechanic to explain it to you and then tell us.

Things like the shear pin can be drilled out in place by a competent machinist. If the lip is buggered, depending on the extent, it may be possible to salvage it in place as well. If the crank is bent where it exists the engine, then there's not much you can do. I would expect the bearing there is toast as well and the seal would leak too.

3) Never blame conspiracy on what can easy be explained with incompetence. Given that, I don't think your dealer is intentionally trying to screw you with the price changing. I think they just don't know their shiz. Which worries me about trusting them with any repair.

 

Thanks everyone for your help. I really appreciate it.

As I mentioned I don't know how to gear down to slow the vehicle down, I've only done it to speed the vehicle up (like I go from 4th gear to 3rd going up hill). But still, I'm not saying it's impossible for me to miss a gear every now in then. However, second gear has never been as smooth as the other gears in the car (i don't know why) so I like to baby that gear, because of this the only gear I would shift down to would be 3rd, 4th, and 5th gear. I never shift down into first gear unless I am at a complete stop (i had a bad experience trying to do this once in my Subaru WRX so I've never done it an any car since).

My friend and I talked about it all night and here's what we currently understand:

1. The engine ran fine. It made no unusual sounds, didn't run rough, and the dealer said it started and ran. I talked to my father who was a mechanic in the past and he told me if there was an issue with the crank where it was damaged that you would know when you started the engine. He also told me if the crank is damaged where the wheel attaches to the crank that it will be very difficult to repair it without replacing the crank because that wheel has to fit onto the crank perfectly.
2. While it is possible that we could have missed a gear here and there, we did closely monitor how we drove the vehicle and neither of us could specifically remember more than one or two times when we got the engine past 6K RPM (not to 7K). We don't ever remember the car jerking to slow down or the engine being extremely loud from high RPM which you would expect from a missed gear. Now I'm not saying that I'm a flawless driver so it is possible that we could have had more instances that this happened, but nobodys perfect. The dealership said that if you added up all the times in the vehicles life that it went above redline it would equal about 7 seconds. I don't know if that's a lot, but I would imagine a high performance vehicle would be able to handle high stress a bit longer than that (I could be wrong though).
3. The Porsche dealer's stance on this is that I drove the car too hard which "blew the engine". The feel that because of this I most likely damaged other parts of engine and that I should have them replace the entire engine to be safe.
4. The porsche dealer in my area is very small. They don't even have a used inventory and my friends Stepfather confirmed through his contacts that our local dealership is about to go out of business this quarter.
5. I believe my young age may be hurting my ability to convince my local Porsche dealer of my driving habits. I'm will turn 26 in May and look like I'm 22-23. The reason I feel this way is because whenever I would tell them I didn't drive my vehicle purposely hard they would look at each other and smirk/smile (which really irritated me). I will try the approach of saying that I'm inexperienced at driving a high performance vehicle and may have had made a few shifting mistakes in my past, but that I didn't understand how I could damage it while trying my best to respect the vehicle.

I currently feel that since the engine starts and runs, there was no loss of power, and no bizarre sounds coming from the car in it's last moments that the only issue is where the wheel attaches to the crank.



I have attached two images below which describe the problem to the best of my knowledge. One of them is what the engine looked like before I took it to the dealership and the other is the damage I saw at the dealership:

 

I would like to get a copy of the DME, but the person I talked to just took pictures of the DME readouts with his cell phone and didn't give me a print out (he just showed me the pictures from his phone). I will try texting/emailing him to see if he can send me those pictures though.

 

If you get no love from Porsche on the repair and are looking at a 20k bill. I would examine the scratch on the crank closer. If it does interfere with the seal and is not that bad and can be deburred and still allow the balancer and pulley to still ride concentric I would try that before buying a new engine. But the is a lt of ifs that have to line up.

 

One other thing, it sounds like the screw on the pulley came loose and the pulley walked off a bit and started to wobble, damaging the crank.

Total aside... I would assume the Porsche puts thread locker on the pulley fastener. Or do the use a lock washer? Anyhow If they are supposed to use thread locker I would have a look at the screw and make sure it has some residue on it. May help your case if it didn't.

 

Hi in reading your posts I believe you need to out all the warranty repairs that were performed from day one. It is highly possible that an intermediate shaft seal seal was repaired along with the rear main seal. If this is the case some guys locked up the crank pulley with a locking stud and may have forgotten to remove it at start up and possibly stripped the threads of the crankshaft pulley bolt. Second thought process is that the vehicle was hit in rear in the past and body shop could just have tightened up a loose but already damaged crank pulley. 18k to 20k is about right for replacement cost at a dealer, but be aware if you don't contribute to the cost of the motor there is no 2 years parts warranty. You need to call up a good dealer and ask if they can check your vin on porsches data base and review every warranty repair made. In terms of the dme report, there is no basis of abuse unless you have activity in range 5 and 6. Good luck

 

Lets see if I can help here

 

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