If you fail for PCNA and you have to pay out of pocket to fix motor or you wanna anything like that. Feel free to contact me.

I blew my motor and I did a lot of research and found really good shop in so-cal. And It not as expensive. Honest and knowledge guy.

 

I'm still debating that question myself... My car 80K miles. No smoke on start, no metal in oil, so no signs of badness as of yet. Like I said, I'm taking steps to cool her off as much as possible and reduce friction in the cylinders. I think I can keep it from having a catastophy but the cost of doing so means no flogging it to the point of high temps, which kind of sucks... that used to be the whole point of buying a 911. You knew you could flog them and they'd be fine. Now that only applies to Turbo's and GT cars... I knew back when Porsche went away from true dry sump motors that the writing was on the wall. So seeing as I haven't had it that long I feel weird trying to sell it already but I may. Plus the fact that if something does happen it's in debate what is the correct fix...replace whole motor or try to rebuild. Neither are real cost effective options. Just look at how many are starting to fail...the forums are starting to collect failure posts like mad. Scary for sure...

Slypilot and I use the same indy shop and they tell me that Porsche is stepping up to the plate on his car and have agreed to pay for 85% of the repair and his car is out of warranty. So that's good news for him but I wonder how many people Porsche will do this for. I know there is rumor of a IMS class action law suit flying around on the MY 2005 cars, I wonder if this will be the next one?

 

thanks for the link.

now i definitely have to add the 3rd radiator..

 

With the 3rd radiator, do you *have* to add the "smile" upper air grill on the bumper for airflow purposes?

 

i don't think that is necessary since the third radiator will be purged with the other two.

u do need a manual tranny for the third radiator, tho. It is not for tiptronic.

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but the Tiptronic 997 already has the 3rd radiator. It's the manual tranny ones that have the option of installing the third radiator.

 

Dcreed10, thanks for passing along the next chapter in my story -- I have been out of the country on travel and have not had a minute to get back to the board to pass that along. Yes, despite having taken it first to an indy (RennSport in Reno), the facts is the facts and the photos that they provided me of the cylinder liner crack, coupled with only 30K on the car, seemed to appeal to the basic decency of Porsche who concurred that this kind of thing shouldn't be happening. At the same time, I feel pretty lucky as I am not the original owner (although the car was in the family).

I have to really thank Dolf and Jeff Leathers at Bill Pearce Porsche in Reno for carrying those photos and my story to PCNA without making me pack up the car and carry it in to the dealer before I got a read on what Porsche would do by way of help -- that was a game changer.

So, now the good folks at RennSport are reassembling the motor and the car, as the dealer will not take a wrecker full of parts. While that is maddening, knowing that it will all just come apart again, I guess that I can see why they need to bring in a complete car for overall liability reasons. Ryan and the team at RennSport has also been great and certainly agree with the decision to move the work over to the dealer -- hey, you can't turn down that kind of mfgr assist when you're looking at an $18K bill just for a rebuild motor!

 

Greetings!
Today I picked up an engine from a customer. First they gave a 2009 Aston Martin Vantage V8 engine for rebuild and now a 2007 Carrera S 3.8. Number 5 cylinder cracked, causing smoking and coolant in oil.

Dealer wants $5,800 for bare block and $16,xxx for remanufactured engine. That is discounted cost. Retail is $7,900 and $20,xxx respectively.

Tomorrow I will complete disassembly for full inspection.

At this point there are 2 solutions for block repair:
1. Bore out cylinder, weld aluminum cylinder on both sides, bore again to remove weld seam inside the cylinder bore, install iron sleeves, perform final bore/hone. Plan is to sleeve all 6 cylinders and source appropriate rings.
2. Lightly bore cylinder, send out block half for hard chroming (This will build up material and retain proper piston clearance). This is a tricky option which will be discussed in detail in the next few days.

Hard chroming damaged/undersized components is common practice in motorsports. We did this all the time on valve lifters on VW SuperVee engines.

 

Do it the best way send case to LNengineering.com for new billet sleeves

 

Do you have more detailed information regarding their sleeve job? Do they cut out the old sleeve, press in a new sleeve, and recoat it with nekasil/equivalent; or do they bore out the sleeve and press in steel liners?

 

LN bores out the case for their billet aluminum sleeves with Nickasil coating, presses them in place, then mills the deck. They also supply JE pistons, pins & rings made for this application. All this cost approx. $4,300 with shipping. Go to LN website for more pics.
Here's 1 of the pistons:

 

Called LNE today and discussed the situation. They quoted me $3,800 with a shop discount. Can't seems to make reason of any of these prices they provide. I had CP Pistons make custom pistons for a 2009 Jaguar XF supercharged and 2009 Aston Martin Vantage V8 I recently rebuilt. Both cases pistons cost $1,600 for full set including rings, pins, and locks. That was the price for 8 pistons. Making 6 pistons will be even cheaper, about $1200. If LNE has JE make pistons in higher quantity than 1 set, then the price will be even cheaper. So if pistons cost $1200, that leaves $2600 for labor and new sleeves. I dont know how much those sleeves cost but I sleeved aluminum Nissan 4 cylinder engine for about $650 in labor. Sleeving a 6 cylinder block should cost about $1000. Unless they bore, hone, deck mill, and align hone mains all for that price, then it doesn't add up.

LNE said the block cannot be sleeved with steel liners. No real explanation why but apparently "it will never work with a Porsche" was the explanation. There are plenty of aluminum block/steel liner motors out there, Chevy LS1/2/6/7, Subaru 2.0 and 2.5, just about every Nissan. We'll see I guess.

 

Raby`s shop is expensive. Full stage 2 rebuild they do costs $24K now. cheaper shops can do same for, like, from $9K to $13K.
LN says they use much better materials and non of M96 engines they made for GrandAm series ever blew. So, it is all relative what to choose.
core of the problem is that most racing shops do not even consider M96 engines to be worth opened and a lot of people did not even bother to fix them.

 

Pay attention to how many 3.8's you come across with cylinder scars or cracked liners and it's almost always cylinders 5 or 6. That Hartech report is spot on... those guys put a lot of time and thought into that report and it's really worth reading all 72 pages.

Slypilot... keep us up to date on what Porsche decides to do. Dolph down there is a super good guy. Was your car serviced there the majority of the time? Or was it brought to an indy? Just curious if that had any effect on Porsche's decision to step up to the plate.

 

How about buying an extended warranty, I ask the other day at the dealer and they told me it can be for 11 years after purchase the car, it has to pass an inspection and the price is around 1000 usd for every year until the eleven comes then you are on your own!!
Just wondering if you are so preoccupied!!