Quote:
Originally Posted by spdrcr21
Hang in there!
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Thanks and yup, I hope to have it running again by spring/summer....Not sure what year but definitely spring/summer.
And so with the transmission in a holding pattern, I was about to embark down the rabbit hole of choosing which IMSB to buy but first I would try and find the oil leak that seemed to spring up on the cross country drive. I figured a RMS or IMSB leak but what I found was a bit strange. It turned out that the leak was coming from the front of bank 2 cylinder head at the bottom of the camshaft chain housing.
The RMS and IMS housing, dry as a bone and not the culprits of my oil leak but I kind of wish they were....
Hmmm, the offending oil leak...I don't think this is factory Porsche policy, to JB Weld oil leaks, but would it really surprise those of us who are familiar with these cars? Ha ha...
All cleaned up and the oil leak showing.
There was a thick layer of JB Weld covered by the grey silicone to try and stop the oil leak, unsuccessfully in the long run.
Argh, so what now? A couple forum questions and a phone call to Len Hoffman, the M96 cylinder guru. On the forums, I was told about 3.2 L heads and their propensity to crack so I was suspecting that. However, an email to Mr. Hoffman with pics and he wasn't so sure. Furthermore, no one suspected a bad head gasket as these never fail on M96 engines, a rare but nice quality to have.
Oh, Len Hoffman was great to deal with. He was helpful, knowledgeable and his prices aren't horrible. I have since heard great things about him from others. I may or may not send my heads to him, depending on how deep in I go. I have a couple of broken cam bearing bolts that I will have to have removed and then just normal head reconditioning. The heads look pretty good though so I might just need minimal work on them, in which case I'll do it myself and have a local machine shop resurface them....
Well, at this point, looks like the engine must come out. So, deeper and deeper I go with this car instead of the simple detent change I had been expecting.
And, long story short as there are definitely some new things to learn when removing a mid engined car's engine for the first time.
1) Learn how high to raise the car BEFORE you begin because it is quite high up, 24-26 inches to be exact. That's without removing the rear bumper cover.
2) Remove the rear bumper cover. Gives you more room and you don't have to raise the car up as high. I'm not sure how much lower you can go as I made the mistake of disconnecting the battery as well as all the wiring harnesses and ECUs needed to remove the engine. Then I found out that you can't remove the rear bumper cover with the rear spoiler in the down position. Anyway, I was able to get the engine out by removing the lower suspension brace and then spinning the engine 90 degrees once on the ground, or in my case, on three very small furniture dollys from harbor freight. These dollys were perfect for the engine with one on each side on the exhaust manifolds and one at the front engine mount. Other people told me to just put the engine directly on cardboard and then slide it out which I tried but I could not move the engine in the slightest and really wonder how they could. The M96 engine weighs around 400lbs so it's not light, aluminum be damned. I also thought about trying those furniture sliding discs but couldn't find any near me to buy at the time. Those may work on a smooth cement garage floor but they tend to be quite small so may be tough to keep them in place.
3). Be careful about hoses and wires still connected. It's very easy on a mid engined car to miss these and then when lowering the engine, they will break, tear and become damaged before you can even tell something's not right. I broke two wire connectors on the right side, one for the aux air pump and one for the engine compartment fan. Then my fuel lines, although disconnected, became wedged in something on the chassis and I didn't notice until the engine was tilting up at the front. By that time, I may have damaged the fuel line connector, hopefully not but won't know until it's reconnection time. Also, I never noticed the broken wire connectors until the engine was out. I've since heard of many others having trouble with these same connectors, both fuel and electrical. So, tread lightly!
The dollys seen in the next pic were a big help. They are very low and when you see them in person, you may think they will just collapse under 400lbs of angry M96 weight but they were fine and were never overstressed. Also, I noticed HF now sells what looks exactly like these but now in shiny silver metal so that may be an even better choice.
Engine about to come out but first, that grimy center brace must come out. Also, you can see the HF small dollys I used. I can't recommend these enough! They are cheap small, roll easily and fit lots of flat and strange shapes to stay put under the engine.
Now turn engine 90 degrees sideways and the exhaust cut out looks like the perfect shape to clear the top of the engine. But in my case, it wasn't or at least not quite yet. I still didn't have the clearance so I removed the passenger side front jack stand and lowered that wheel to the ground. That raised the rear bumper clearance by quite a bit. I was actually surprised how well that worked and it was easier than removing intake runners and other parts to gain clearance.
And so out comes the engine finally.
Lots more room with just the right front wheel lowered to the ground.
Yay, engine out...
So, to speed this up, I'll skip much of the engine disassembly and get to the cause of the leak. Apparently, the heads much have been off at some point and when the engine was being reassembled, a tiny speck of dirt or metal landed on the head gasket and right next to the sealing lip. And so the gasket was never able to seal at this point. I've since learned that this exact point on the head can cause problems with the effective head gasket sealing even with all things perfect and no specks of dirt in the way.
***Len Hoffman told me during a phone conversation and then I saw Yogi doing this on youtube to spray copper gasket spray on both sides of the head gasket just in this leg area of the gasket to create a better chance of sealing especially during the initial heat cycling of the new gasket. You can see this practice on yogi's garage videos on youtube when he puts the heads on.
***Furthermore, note the torquing of the small M6 Allen bolts in this area. He begins by torquing these bolts, then torques the head bolts completely. Once the head bolts are finished, he goes back and retorques these M6 bolts. They are all slightly loose now and a couple are very much loose.
The above two ideas are important things I've learned from others along the way in this time studying Boxsters and working with them. They are simple things that I have only heard rarely and which surprised me as these are fundamentals that anyone in a modest rebuild or M96 engine work will come across and which may be the difference in a successful project and dealing with leaks down the road. And that is what most surprises me about these cars, in that there are so many secrets and undivulged knowledge or even shared information amongst people at the top. Unfortunately, this began with Porsche themselves and this water-cooled engine. Want to know an official torque for internal engine bits? Well, you think you can just look in the Porsche service manual, do you? Nope! Want to hear what causes IMSB failures from the original engineers? Good luck! Want to call a reputable seller of Boxster upgrades? Well, be prepared to pay for the knowledge and then again for the part and then again for the instructions to install them and then again for when it might fail and then again for more parts.
It's mostly the fact that in 35 years of strictly European car ownership (Alfa, VW, Porsche) I had never come across this strange pricing, gouging and secrecy until the Boxster. Sure, some items were expensive and some experts were cranky, but nothing outside the scope of the normal world. And while M96 cars run the gamut from $3000 to $50k?, it's still relatively low budget compared to modern cars so some of these prices are just not worth investing in a car that has literally 30 issues that can cause catastrophic engine failure. It just seems with more sharing of knowledge, all owners and sellers will advance and many more engines will ultimately survive.