I think my engine just took a #$%!!

[Brucelee]

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.

[brp987]

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.

do tell...

[smiledrs]

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.

[hdpt73]

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.

[blue2000s]

Originally Posted by hdpt73

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.

[Tool Pants]

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.

[Brucelee]

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.

[smiledrs]

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.

[pinball22]

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

[Tool Pants]

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.

[blue2000s]

Originally Posted by Brucelee

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.

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.

[Brucelee]

Originally Posted by blue2000s

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.

[blue2000s]

Originally Posted by Brucelee

Why would you think it hasn't???

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

You can run, but you cannot hide.

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

[prOk]

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.

[Brucelee]

Originally Posted by prOk

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.

[smiledrs]

Originally Posted by prOk

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.

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.

[Perfectlap]

Originally Posted by prOk

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.

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.

[blue2000s]

Originally Posted by Perfectlap

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.

[Perfectlap]

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.

[tholyoak]

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