Ugh... one morning copious amounts of white smoke / steam begin appearing from the right bank exhaust. No abuse / racing / nonsense / any other trouble leading up to this -- no "event."

Towed it to the independent of choice in Reno and -- survey says... -- cracked cylinder liner. As I understand it, this essentially means a new motor of one flavor or another (rebuilt by someone, obviously).

Firstly, has anyone heard of this happening in the 997.1 3.8 before? Second, is there any value whatsoever of appealing to PCNA? Obviously, I am out of warranty, but this seems so unusual...

Lastly, any leads on the best place to look for a deal on a short block motor? I'm getting quotes of around $18,000 - $19,000. Does this seem right?

Thanks...

 

These motors are rebuilt by Porsche in Germany, your core is worth some money, approximately $6000-7000. You may even try to find a used motor, you should save a bunch of money.

You can try a PCNA route, but you will need to go through a dealer for them to even consider it.

Sorry about your loss.

 

they will take care of you. call your service manager and ask for help. they will call on pnca for the 'good will' support.

 

Hey cracked cylinder liner normally has to do with overheating.....Good luck and I hope PCNA helps you out...

 

I agree with you completely... And that's what is so weird. There has never been an o'temp event of any sort.

 

I have seen some postings about a local shop to you that does custom rebuilds... one guy said it was about $10k total. Might be worth checking them out.

http://www.ebsracing.com/

 

Brumos Porsche helped me with a non warranty motor in a 964 years ago. I wish you luck. It does take a little time to work through the process.

 

SAME THING HAPPENED TO ME!!! You don't want to hear this, but mine was under CPO. I thought Porsche was going to go short block/rebuild, but I advocated strongly that they could not prove that my engine was not further compromised. They tore the engine down and found scoring on my crank, decided to reman my engine. Porsche stood behind my CPO. My engine had 23K on it and was definitely not abused, I've got the DME logs to prove it..2007 Carerra S. Porsche says the reman/long block is 20K. Rebuild, 14K or so.

Do you have any leverage on PCNA? Are you active in PCA? Are you willing to make a fuss? I don't know how many miles on this motor, but these should not fail, no way.

I know that Porsche has a fund for this stuff, out of warranty....Perhaps they will pay parts, or something. Hold them to #1 ranking...Call me if you want, 541=840=3615 Bob

 

And another thing: I know I did not overheat my motor, or overrev it. it just cracked after 5years.....I had coolant and oil in the cylinder. By the way, a short block for 18K, don't do it, get a factory reman for 20K....I just got my car back with a Porsche reman, and while I haven't fully broken it yet fully, have not explored the upper reaches of the powerband, It feels like its gonna be better than the one I had. If you're gonna spend a pantload of money, get the factory reman with a two year warranty. You'll be unhappy in your checkbook, but in the seat, it'll be very ok.

I'm very fastidious about my car, drive the gauges, always warm up to operating temps before driving it, but I drive the powerband, as a Porsche should be driven.

Call Atlanta, be persistent in asking to talk to a senior official, and make your case. This is a Porsche, g-damn it!!

 

There was a recent article on water pumps deteriorating and small pieces blocking coolant passages. I suppose that could lead to a cracked block. This was with pumps that had plastic impellers.

I would as others have suggested contact your dealer. This is where having a relationship with a service department pays dividends.

I hope this all works out in your favor.

 

That was actually a thought of mine -- could something have blocked one of the coolant galleys? I am going to start the process with a call to Atlanta on Monday morning. I've never been on an adventure like this before, so fingers crossed that Porsche is still a reputable company willing to right the inevitable but hopefully infrequent wrong.

Thanks for all the great feedback!

Karl

 

Let me guess: cylinder #6 ? Google Hartech in England for the reason this is not unheard of with 3.8 engines.

 

wow I hope I never had an issue like that on my car exactly same year!!

 

I just bought a 2006 Carrera S and brought it down to Rennsport for them to check it over and the first thing out of their mouth was "Hey, want to see what your future holds?" and then they showed me your motor. So being paranoid, and then dissapointed that I just got rid of a bomb-proof Metzger engined 996 Turbo X50 for this car ( I traded bomb-proof for bomb waiting to happen). I started doing some research... here's what I found. It's 70 plus pages but worth the read....

http://www.hartech.org/docs/buyers%20guide%20web%20format%20Jan%202012%20part% 205.pdf


Moral of the story... Porsche kept the same block for the 3.4, 3.6 and the 3.8 and every time they enlarged the displacement something had to give, and that something was the coolant passages. Then in order to save a buck they got rid of the old head gaskets which were side dependant and actually allowed for differing amounts of coolant flow for each indiviudal cylinder (some cylinders naturally run hotter than others and need to be cooled more) and replaced them with a generic one gasket fits both sides part which doesn't allow for differing amounts of coolant flow to different cyllinders. This causes some of the cylinders to run hotter than they should and it's usually these cylinders that have the problems. Hartech actually did a lot of their own research and found that the coolant flow to the cylinders is aprox. only around 5% and that most of the coolant gets directed to the head. The other problem is an inherint design flaw. The older 993 and back motors had the oil squirters on the top of the cylinders and this allowed for gravity to disperse the oil down too. The M96 and M97 motors have the oil squirters on the bottom and so oil doesn't get to where it's needed on the thrust side of the cylinder in some cylinders and this leads to cylinder liner scars due to overheating and bad lubrication. The temp gauges in the cars are set to read very conservatively too. They and LN Engineering have done their own tests and both showed the car gauges to read about 15 degrees cooler than actual.

These cars are like the old 2.7 liter cars, they need to be run cooler in order to survive. This doesn't apply to the Turbo or GT cars as they use a better engine with true dry sump systems and they run a lot cooler.

So if you have a M96 or M97 car, it's needs to be cooled better.
* Replace thermostat with 160 degree unit.
* Add Porsche 3rd radiator kit, Suncoast sell it for $250.00 direct bolt on.
* Use the best oil you can... (I'm actually in contact with a company that is making a Tungsten Disulphide nano-sphere oil additive which is proven to lower heat and reduce friction by about 50% and has a tribofilm property that will start to fill in cylinder scars, it's very trick stuff that the government and NASA has been using for years to lubricate the moving parts on sattelites that need to operate for a decade or so with no maintenance.)

If you go with a new motor, it could have the same problem too. But if you're not planning on keeping the car then the only guy that cares is the next buyer. Hartech has some advice on what to do in that report.

It's funny to me that Porsche has such good reliability ratings... I love the cars, but in my humble opinion it's only because they don't get driven like a comparable daily driver. Now the old 911's, and the Turbo's and the GT3's will probably fair better. But the M96 and M97 engines have some issues. Hopefuly Porsche fixed them with the 9A1 motor. But I bet if you take a per mile driven comparison of Porsche reliability with all the other brands you'd find that their reliability isn't so great. There are just too many fairly major problems with them on cars that don't have that many miles on them. After reading this Hartech report you get the impression that these things need to be driven with kid gloves on in order to make them not blow up.

It's sad, but it almost sounds like the car companies are going through another planned obsolescence phase again. They rely on new car buyers and so they could care less what happenes to their product after 5 or so years. They cater to the buyer that always buys new and therefore doesn't care about true longevity, as long as the car gets him to the next new model he's happy and so is the car company. BMW has been blamed for this thinking for years...

 

Wow Dcreed10 - that was sobering... So are you going to hold onto yours?