2008 CTT nightmare
 

I fell in love with the car. Freshly rebuilt engine, with one year/20,000 km warranty. Purchased at the end of March/17. Aaaand then the ticking started happening in October. Now as many as you might know, ticking could be lifters, a loud injector, etc., but I felt it was worse than this. As the months grew colder, the ticking got worse and worse, first only when it was fully up to temperature, eventually all of the time. Then came the knocking. The car was parked until I returned home from work to take it back to the dealer that sold it to me. They brushed it off and told me everything was fine. I finally convinced them that something was wrong with the engine, and they took it in and diagnosed it as a faulty lifter on the passenger side, so they replaced the whole bank of lifters (at over 4k canadian dollars) on their dime. I live 3 hours away from this said dealer, and when I was finally able to pick it up, I made it 30 mins away when I stopped for fuel and the car was still knocking. So I got it home, and parked it yet again, until I could get home on my next set of days off to trailer it back up to the dealer. They have now had the car for 3 months, and I was sent these pictures.


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Now they are trying to say that they do not have to cover this under warranty because they believe I overheated the engine. This is not true. How can I prove that there was no neglect on my part?

How do they prove there was neglect on your part? A court is likely to believe you rather than them unless they can present compelling proof that the engine was overheated while you owned it.

Why was the engine "freshly rebuilt" when you bought it?

Of course, it is a problem that it waited 7 months to become bad enough to make the knocking noise. Most seem to rapidly progress from a ticking noise to outright engine failure with knocking noise.

If they are adamant about not covering it, given the price of a rebuilt engine + installation from Porsche it may be time for you to seek legal advice, and consider some sort of damages lawsuit. I'm not sure what the rules on this are in Canada - but a failure to complete sort of suit on the promised 1 year, 20,000km warranty would seem like where this should be heading.

I'm not sure, all they said is that they are trying to find a way to prove it. The engine was rebuilt because of a "lifter noise", and was supposed to be for the shops wife. He spent too much money on the rebuild, I guess he didn't realize what these 4.8 engines cost to build, and put it up for sale. I thought I was getting a hell of a deal with a new engine and that I wouldn't have to deal with these issues. I am about to get legal advice and thought it would be a good idea to get some insight with anyone that may have dealt with issues like this. Thanks for the reply! I really loved the Cayenne for the little bit that I was able to drive it.

The "lifter" noise was the piston noise from the scored bore. They may have put new lifters in it - for a lot of money - only to find that wasn't the source of the noise - and figured to pass it off on someone else. Wonder what they put in the oil to quiet it down for a while?

FWIW - I got trapped looking for something on eBay - and was surprised to find a reasonable number of Cayenne V8 engines, turbo, and non-turbo, for sale. Prices varied, but the ones for a 957 didn't seem totally absurd, but of course you have no way of knowing if a replacement engine will suffer the same fate.

Bummer. Hope your legal help can sort it out for you.

Yeah this whole deal seems pretty scummy to me.

I've looked too, however the Turbo model is very rare up here in Canada, and I have yet to come across a replacement engine. I hope so, I've had alot of sleepless nights thinking about this thing. An ls swap would be cheaper than a new block from Porsche.
Thanks again man. Wish my first post would have been on better terms.

A Porsche dealer should be a ble to produce e a log from the me showing that it he's never been overheated. That would be recorded in the DME as a code and when you get the data from Porsche Diagnostics for that code it will have all kinds of data related to the code. Seeing as there won't be code for over temp they can produce what is called a VAL ( vehicle analysis log) and probably ly give that to you if you explain the situation.

Do you know how far back the ecu stores that info for? Only because I would like to go back as far as possible to see what happened to the original engine, if it records back that far

I figured I would throw up an update! They are doing the right thing and warranting the engine, and I'm ecstatic about getting my ride back.

Awesome, that story ended well!

Great to hear good progress.
Don't let off the gas though, make sure they do all work properly and not half ass it to just get you out of the shop.
Make sure to tell them that you will be in contact with Porsche to keep log of engine functions, tell them specifically that the engine will be monitored and diagnosed for proper function after work.

Hope the shop is honest. Good luck.

Liqui Moly Ceratec. Uses engine heat, compression and friction, to form a glass-hard coating over bore scoring. I had Audi guys lose all their oil on the track... and the Ceratec still kept the cylinders slippery, after refilling and replacing the oil pans. Google it.....

Hey thanks! Might use this. Hopefully I'll get my Porsche back in a month or so. Really taking their time lol.

This is a known issue.
 

Just replaced my 2008 S engine with the same issue. It's caused by cold starts, and a defect in the engine, the piston tolerances are too tight and dissimilar expansion rates of the piston and the bore during cold starts causes this problem. Lucky thing I had a aftermarket drivetrain warranty on mine, of course they said I could just fix the one cylinder for $4200, so after about 6 hours on the phone with them and countless hours researching and getting quotes from a dozen other shops and dealerships telling them that it is impossible to fix one cylinder and have a working engine they paid $9100 of the $11,000 bill to swap on a used engine. I will be selling this thing before the winter and I suggest everyone else in a cold climate with the 4.8 that will be staring in the cold do the same.

Good new finally guys, they warranteed the engine by rebuilding a junkyard block. Iron sleeves and JE pistons, hopefully this never happens to me again. Still not going to drive it in the cold out of fear haha!