What is the build date of your car? It's located underneath your driver door.

Don't want to scare you but with that kind of mileage and the year of your car you could have a slipped sleeve=bye bye engine.

Good Luck!

The build date is 1998. The sound seems like it came from the rear passenger tire area. With all the engine failures on early boxster's, this is what I'm dreading.

*SLOT MACHING RINGING* Did you tell the tech about this one off Techron treatment? Any response?
Sounds like the additive migh have done its job and the engine wasn't ready for it.
Look into an extended warranty and then do a total diagnostic. Sounds like you have either a big problem brewing that may be hard to pin point (good for the pre-warranty inspection) or roll the dice and potentially take a big hit if this Techron theory is off.

I didn't mention the techron...maybe I should've. I didn't want to give them any reason to say I screwed up the engine. Besides, isn't this stuff harmless and added to all Chevron gas? Could techron make the car knock, especially if it was mixed in properly?

I have used Techron at least twice this year. No problems.

You probably did the right thing but since you said your car was out of warranty I figured it was a safe to ask. I would be curious to hear what they would say about the additive shaking loose a deposit that may have briefly stalled your engine. Question is, does the engine expel the deposits?, in other words did the tech notice dirty smoke after the car was parked for a few days? or are deposits still in there?

No no, the car is still IN warranty because I got an extended warranty until 2010. I did not notice any smoke and the tech didn't mention any smoke either.

I use Techron Chevron gas with no problems and use a fuel injector/carb. cleaner with every oil change. Never had any bad effects. ;)

Ok, I got home and hooked up a diagnostic reader to my boxster and 3 codes came up.


P0301 Misfire, Cylinder 1, Damaging to Catalytic Converter

P0341 Camshaft Position Sensor 1 - Signal Implausible, Short to Ground, Short to B+

P1531 Camshaft Adjustment, Bank 1

Anyone have any history with either. Going to have it towed tomorrow while I'm off.

Hi Smiledrs, I think you will get more info and "play" if you start your own thread/topic. :)

Update:

Ok, I got the car home yesterday and the thing drives and runs like a top now. Whatever gremlin that was in it has left....hopefully for good. This one had the techs over at the dealership scratching their heads. They said they have never come accross a situation quite like mine before.

Update on my boxster: add me to another low mileage, early model boxster engine failure. Porsche dealer wants $15k for new engine with parts and labor. Called Porsche NA and they said "they have NO goodwill for any porsche out of warranty." Told me to write letter to Corporate. No way I'm paying $15k for new engine. Thanks for everyone's help.

Ouch. If it is the dreaded IMS failure, I would do a Google to see if any smart lawyer has stated a class action on this defect.

Any lawyers here want to try this? We will devote a thread if the lawyer steps up!

:mad:

Smile, for less than $15k, you can have a good condition used 3.4 or 3.6 put in your boxster. Take this as an opportunity to make the car wicked fast and you just might get all your money back when you sell it. A 3.4 modded boxster just sold on ebay for $35k and it was an old one too!

Thanks Randall. I was posting on fumes yesterday after dealing with Porsche NA. I definetly need to figure out something. Would you know anyone in Houston that might be able to do that if I decide to upgrade the engine?

If I were you today, I'd be calling Sam Shalala at Pro Teckniks.

http://www.protechnik.com/

Sam does all sorts of engine swaps and has a fabrication shop as well. This man is well respected in the local PCA group and he installed and dyno'd my boxster when I had Che's muffler and headers installed.

I would not be surprised if he could also get you a rebuilt 3.4 at an attractive price... however, if I were you (once again) I'd buy the tranny, engine, ECU and wiring harness and have it shipped directly to him to install. Then you don't have to pay another markup on the parts.

PartsHeaven, LA Dismantlers, and Oklahoma Foriegn would all be good sources for these items.

Also, do a thread search here because this engine swap has been talked about over and over and over (which never bothered me because I'm so interested in doing it).

Lastly, I would search out the users on this forum who have done it and ask them three things:

1) Who did their swap if they didn't do it themselves? For an extra $800, you can ship your car to wherever and then drive it home.

2) Complete parts list.

3) What they paid and if it was truly worth it.

Contact the Porsche Club of America too. Let PNA know that you intend to inform others cough...potential Porsche buyers, of your misfortune.
Not sure how rare engine failures in low mileage/late model 996/986's are, but my personal opinion is that a car company making profits like no other car builder in the world could show some goodwill. I could understand that position if we were dealing with a higher mileage car but even Hyundai or whatever is toying with the idea of 10+ year and lifetime warranties...and those cars are cheap.

Thanks Randall, I really appreciate your help and I contacted Sam and will wait for his reply. I actually considered doing a 3.4 engine swap perhaps 1-2 yrs later, but not now. Guess this gives me a reason.

Perfectlap, I did contact Porsche NA and told them all that, and they could care less. I think they deal with this on a daily basis that they let you rant and rave and they just say the same thing, "no goodwill to any porsche out of warranty" and just be quiet. I sent a letter to Porsche NA, but hold out little hope.

Porsche NA and the PCA are two different organizations.
PCA or the Porsche Club of America is compromised of all the American owners of Porsche cars, most of whom have owned or will own more than one Porsche.

If I were you I would send a letter to the local PCA and National PCA stating your problem (making sure to note its a low mileage Porsche) and what a disaster your Pooor-sche choice was and that you 1-will beg for assistance on Porsche forums like the PCA's forum, your local PCA's forum, Rennlist,etc. and 2- warn other sports car owners (Corvette, S2000, BMW, Audi,etc.) on their websites.
And of course CC ALL the execs of Porsche NA on the bottom of the letter.

cross your fingers and see if a wealthy Porsche dealer steps up and offers you a credit or some sort of good will.

I realized that after re-reading your post. I thought you said Porsche NA and I see you did say PCA. I read too fast. I will shoot PCA a letter as well. Thanks.

I got to tell you that I think that Porsche the company is quite the bunch of sleezebags.

It comes directly from Piech, who could not tell the truth if his life depended upon it.

:mad:

do tell...

After dealing with Porsche, I tend to agree the lies that I encounter at every level. Starting from the service manager to the customer service managers at Porsche headquarters. They all act like they never ever heard of any early engine failures and when you start to mention early engine failures, they say there's no proof. I provided them with message boards, PCA info on slip sleeves, and printouts of the proof. They have all kinds of excuses on why that info is not to be trusted and that it's all hearsay. They act like mine is the 1st early engine failure they ever encountered and tried to lay blame on me and how did they know I didn't drive it hard and damage the engine myself. It's hard to drive it hard, when it barely made it out of the driveway. Every Porsche shop I've called in Houston, said the same thing when I called to see how much they charged for a new engine. They said, "Not another, Porsche needs to provide some compensation for all these engine failures". They obviously know what's going on as well.

It's so funny to look back when I went with my uncle to buy his Porsche Cayman S 3 months ago, after he got the fever riding in my Boxster, that the salesman couldn't stop bragging how they ranked #1 in JD for satisfaction after 90 days of owning a Porsche. I wonder how they would ranked if they took a survey for a longer period of time and whether the customer was satisfied on how things were handled.

I'm taking this as a sign to go ahead and do the 3.4 swap since I was planning to do it 8-12 months from now anyways.

Today's car manufacturers are pretty competitive about performance and bargain price. It's not wise to for Porsche to piss off so many people and expect them to buy another porsche or bring word of mouth customers to the door. If I had to do it over again, I'd have bought an M3 or a Corvette. Why gamble on the reliability of a car and then pay a premium for the name, then get treated like an idiot? Lol, imagine being a 911 ower, paying for the "heritage" and then having your engine take a dump.

It must not really be effecting too many people. Porsche's the most profitable auto company in the world and sales are at an all time high. You'd think if this engine's poor reputation were going to set in, it would have by now.

Wendelin Wiedeking must be an amazing person.

In the mid-90s Porsche sold very few cars. In some of the books it is said the company was on the verge of bankruptcy, or being taken over. I would joke that Honda made more cars in 1 hour than Porsche sold for the entire year.

Porsche is still in small company, with lots of cash. It now owns 31% of VW.

The Boxster turned the company around. It was a big seller for such a little company. To keep up with demand production was out-sourced to Finland for model year 1998. Not that it matters, but that was the same year defective engine blocks were sleeved, to keep up with production of a fast selling product.

When I started Boxstering there was no truck. Now there is going to be a sedan. If you believe what you read, most of the profits these days come from the sale of the truck, the Cayenne.

Porsche is going to be the next BMW. Porsche does not care if you ever buy another car from them - there is someone standing in line behind you. In my mind this loyalty thing to the brand is a one way street.

It is a mistake to assume that the present extends in a straight line into the future.

Porsche is having a good run, hats off to them.

Never piss off the customer. It ALWAYS cost you something, even if you can't measure it.



IBM, GM, Motorola, Sears, should I go on? Arthur Anderson, Digital Computers etc etc.

Guess what I just read in my Nov 2007 issue of Road and Track. Starting on page 140 and a 5 page spread. They talk about the 1997-2004 Boxster engine failure.
Here is an excerpt:

"Then, beginning in late 1998, with model year 1999 cars, there was the dreaded cylinder liner failure. If a Boxster owner was lucky, the engine would merely blow a head gasket and dump it's coolant. For other owners, the engine would self-destruct in a catastrophic failure. It's rumored that as many as 50 percent of the 1999 Boxsters had liner failure."

"Boxster engine swaps became common enough that Porsche mechanics began referring to the CEL on the instrument panel not as the "Check Engine Light" but as the "Change Engine Light".

I'm taking this article straight to the service manager tomorrow and throwing this in his face about there is no proof of early engine failure on early gen Boxsters.

takes a lickin keeps on tickin 99 boxster
 

I drive a 99 and never had the engine light on once. 80k plus miles.
solid car

With a 1998 PCNA in Atlanta is not going to do anything for you, and your dealership's hands are tied.

Just think, 1997 and 1998 only had a 2 year warranty. At least now it is 4 years.

1998 did not have sleeved engines.

I bought Road & Track so see what they had to say. If I had known they were doing a Boxster article I would have sent them pictures of a sleeved engine that went boom.

Or, better yet, I would have told Porsche that if they did not pay me big bucks for the pictures I would give them to Road & Track. :D

This engine's been in production for over ten years now. These issues have been around since the beginning. If it was going to effect sales, it would have happened by now.

Why would you think it hasn't???

Boxster sales (excluding Cayman) are down sharply over previous years.

You can run, but you cannot hide.

:D

Because the Boxster, Cayman and Carrera all use the same engine and these are issues for the Carrera as well.

People honestly want porsche to warranty or throw a discount on a failure of a 10 year old engine? My god. The car itself is only worth 15k or so.

The issue is much deeper than that. The IMS failure that recurs here on frequently is a design failure that Porsche fails to deal with, except to keep replacing the engine.

That is, if it is still under warranty. Ditto RMS issues.

:mad:

Time is not the issue here. It's that they were putting out defective engines out there and never issued a recall to save themselves money. They knew very well how many engines were experiencing early engine failures. People were getting them with just 4,000 miles and when I was at the dealer, another at 10,000 miles. These aren't even making it to the first scheduled oil change. That's why we expect them to take care of it. The engine's they were putting out there were destined to fail due to a serious defect, which they kept hush hush and now deny ever existed. It's not "if" it's going to fail, but "when". I know everything eventually fails, but come on, at least let mine make it to it's first scheduled maintenance of 30,000 miles.

When the 2nd hand market is afraid of buying your out of warranty Porsche, it affects/lowers the resale value. Lower residual values tend to scare off NEW buyers who don't feel like dealing with selling a car that everyone is scared of.
Not all new car buyers trade in their cars, some actually hate throwing away money.
A HIGHLY profitable company has it in their interest to throw out some good will. Promoting a new image of Porsche being a reliable 'exotic' car company that stands by their modern(liquid cooled) line of cars can only help the bottom line.
These stories of people buying their modern cars and getting the shaft does them no good. But when you consider the average income of a new Porsche buyer is well into the six figures, Porsche thinks it can put all their eggs in this high net worth basket and tell those in lower economies to have a nice day and don't let the service department door hit you in the ass on the way out. Porsche made that mistake back in the 90's when they sold less than 1,000 Carreras in North America in one production year.

I consider a car that is still selling for about 40% of it's original price after 11 years to hold it's value very well. I've got a '98 Mitsubishi that was $28k new, now it's worth about 17% of that. I see no evidence in the market that the RMS/IMS/ whatever else failures are effecting new or used Porsche sales or prices. I think the change from air to water cooling has effected used prices more than anything else by holding the air cooled cars above a normal depreciation rate.

Yeah but I think that the average used car buyer will have allot more confidence buying a 10 year old Mitsubishi vs. a 10 year old Porsche.
That's a problem.
I personally know at least 10 guys, maybe more, have the money to buy an at least 4 year old Porsche but want nothing to do with replacing an engine or some other $5K+ repair. These cars simply don't inspire long term confidence in the 2nd hand market and dealers holding used Porches on the lot are sweating out "of warranty bullets" until there is a sale...They are very happy to see Porsches leave the lot ASAP. And let's not forget that Porsche now has the backing of 30% ownership of VW. They can afford to stand by their products.
p.s.
By the way, I think for every Mitsubishi that's lost a ton of residiual value there are example of cars like the S2000 that hold value extremely well. around here 7 year old S2000's with as much as 70K miles are still fetching $14K..not bad for a car that barely averaged 8K units in NA since 1999.

Sorry but I think this issue is completely overblown and people get all emotional because of the significant amount of money to fix the problem.

Yes the '99 cars had a problem, only those cars that have very low mileage will still be affected since if they were driven at all most affected cars blew their motors during the warranty period, including mine, since it typically happened before 30k miles.

The RMS issue, is not an issue in most cases, Porsche has never made an engine that didn't drip a little oil. Talk to any air cooled 911 owner. Replace the seal with the latest seal when you need to replace the clutch, no big deal. Again, my opinion is that this is more of a problem on infrequently used cars than ones that are actually regularly driven.

The intermediate shaft failures are pretty rare and Porsche has been pretty good at taking care of them even out of warranty but can you really expect them to honor an engine replacement on a 8-10 year old car? This is another reason I place no value on very low mileage cars as all the problems that would have normally come out during the first 1-2 years of ownership are lingering for the next unsuspecting buyer.

Look at Porsche's engine history, no engine was without trouble. Magnesium case 2.7s pulled their head studs, 3.0L had collapsed tensioner issues, blown CIS airbox issues, 3.2S had broken head stud issues and valve guide wear issues, 964s had valve guide issues, 993s have SAI and valve guide issues. I don't hear the aircooled guys whining about their engines being junk. These motors were >$30k if you wanted to replace one from Porsche, and rebuilds were not a cheap proposition. Now you can buy a 3.8X51 from Porsche for ~$12k including a core charge. Quite a deal.

The M96 engines are putting out close to 100hp/L, while getting very good mileage and very low emissions, in my opinion these are great motors. Yes their have been some hiccups along the way, but that is nothing new in Porsche engineering history. Again if the cars were driven, most of the issues would have sorted themselves out during the warranty period.

Just my $0.02.

Todd