Engine failure

[DenverSteve]

Originally Posted by ASpec818

threads like these really push me to get rid of my S. I always fear something disastrous will occur whenever i hop into the driver's seat.

That's like saying "I saw a bicycle accident today so I am going to quit riding mine to work" which I do too. I would recommend that if you are scared of your car to sell it. There's nothing worse than living in fear. Only a very few Boxster's have a problem, and most have not been maintained or driven properly. In every forum, regarding every car, suv and vehicle there is rampant paranoia about something including catastrophic failures. Relax and drive......or not. It won't make any difference with what will happen.

[Frodo]

Originally Posted by DenverSteve

That's like saying "I saw a bicycle accident today so I am going to quit riding mine to work" which I do too. I would recommend that if you are scared of your car to sell it. There's nothing worse than living in fear. Only a very few Boxster's have a problem, and most have not been maintained or driven properly. In every forum, regarding every car, suv and vehicle there is rampant paranoia about something including catastrophic failures. Relax and drive......or not. It won't make any difference with what will happen.

No, it's like saying "I keep seeing bike accidents, like at least every couple of weeks. And the weird thing? There are never any other vehicles involved, the bike just sort of implodes on it's own, without warning. AND, they all involve the bicycle model that I'm riding, which are really kind of expensive bikes---ones that you'd expect, through superior engineering, NOT to have this kind of problem---that suddenly, in the blink of an eye, become nearly worthless."

BUT (having said that)...I do agree with the spirit of your post.

[Overdrive]

Do remember though, Frodo, that this car is the result of Porsche learning from Toyota how to cut costs.

The results, to name a few: Lokasil cylinder liners that can lead to oil/coolant intermix, remanufactured blocks going into vehicles coming fresh off the line, poorly reinforced frames/suspension mounts for the first model year, poorly designed IMS seal leading to failures, problematic RMS, D-Chunk, barely capable cooling system, crap shoot AOS, 3 to 5 chains all with the potential to fail, plastic impeller water pump, barely capable (in my opinion) oil cooler, and drain holes that seem to get plugged more than drain moisture.

I could go on, but my point is that this was the entry level vehicle to get people into the Porsche family. Popular though it did become, Porsche basically expected people to get this, own it for a while, and then want to upgrade to the flagship 911. And even the 911s from that era had some of these problems, too, especially the IMS failure.

For me, while I know all of these potential problems exist, I can't sit and be worried every second I operate the car. If it fails, I'll only be upset if it happened while I was sitting idle at a light rather than when I was actually enjoying making the car do what it does so well. I'm getting my money's worth, and if something major or catastrophic happens then it gives me an excuse to simply save up and make the car into something very awesome and much more bulletproof.

[Perfectlap]

I think its more like:

I keep seeing these bicycle accidents where the rider falls off and hits his head on the concrete and the ambulance has to take him away on a stretcher.
I'm going to sell my bike!!!

See I ride with a bike helmet. No exceptions. Is the crash hat guaranteed to save my skull? Not entirely. But do I ride with whole hell of a lot less stress? Can I ride my bike and just enjoy the feeling of the wind at my back? Yes and Yes.

With the factory IMS as-is you are in a very very small chance of having an failure. Smaller still if the car has had regular miles put on it with regular oil intervals.
If the car sits, seals dry up, get brittle and the new owner comes along and starts racking up the miles: virbrations and stress on a compromised part lead to IMS failure.
If you have the IMS upgraded and take care of the car you are now in an even smaller chance of grenading engine. At that point I bet you probably have a similar likehood of a catastrophic failure as any BMW M3 owner or other German build.

[Perfectlap]

Originally Posted by Overdrive

I could go on, but my point is that this was the entry level vehicle to get people into the Porsche family. Popular though it did become, Porsche basically expected people to get this, own it for a while, and then want to upgrade to the flagship 911. And even the 911s from that era had some of these problems, too, especially the IMS failure.

in what way was the 996 substantially better as far as engine/cooling design than the 986? Seems to me that Porsche was trying to reduce costs across the board at different level of "cutting back" of course to maintain the margin. From what I understand the 986 was more expensive for Porsche to produce than the 996. The 986 was sold for nearly three years in Europe before the 996, borrwoing heavily from teh 986 parts bin, was unveilded in 1999. If buyers, according to Porsche, were being groomed for future 911 ownership then they were being set up to buy another cost-cutter because the 996 borrowed heavily from the 986 and not the other way around.

[Overdrive]

Originally Posted by Perfectlap

in what way was the 996 substantially better as far as engine/cooling design than the 986? Seems to me that Porsche was trying to reduce costs across the board at different level of "cutting back" of course to maintain the margin. From what I understand the 986 was more expensive for Porsche to produce than the 996. The 986 was sold for nearly three years in Europe before the 996, borrwoing heavily from teh 986 parts bin, was unveilded in 1999. If buyers, according to Porsche, were being groomed for future 911 ownership then they were being set up to buy another cost-cutter because the 996 borrowed heavily from the 986 and not the other way around.

Just to be sure I'm not misunderstanding your question or maybe where it's coming from, I don't believe I said that the cooling system on the 996 was superior to the 986 in any way. All I made a point of is that the cooling system for the 986 barely gets the job done.

By no means am I saying that the 996 is better than the 986, especially not because it borrows parts, and not disagreeing with anything that you've stated, because you are correct. The 996 is certainly plagued with its own problems as I learn from what I read as I learn more about these cars. However, how many average Porsche consumers (read, not the wrench turners and knowledge seeking folks who frequent a forum such as this) with the disposable income to drop six figures on a car think in that way? I think we know that most of them think the more expensive car's simply got to be the better one (and then proceed to complain about how their car looks just like the budget car when you see it from the front). While that logic shouldn't be flawed, it is, because Porsche was indeed cutting costs wherever it could. You're right, they were setting up their buyers, but how many of those buyers really knew that? Most of them probably followed their 15,000 mile oil change intervals like they were told and would be looking to "upgrade" to a 911 some day, provided they weren't one of the unfortunate IMS failure sufferers.

Yes, the two cars were essentially the same from the doors forward for a period. If you were Porsche, why not do it that way? The important parts that made up the differences between the two were behind that, so why not save the company some money like they desperately needed to do to back then? It got them back on their feet enough to start differentiating between the two and bring about a fleet of over a half dozen vehicles for their buyers to choose from, running a whole gamut of 5-to-6 figure price ranges.

I guess I can see how my original post could be misunderstood as kind of saying that the 996 was of better quality than the 986, but that wasn't really my statement. Again, while the logic may seem flawed, I do feel that Porsche expected that their customers would enjoy their Boxster experience and come running back in to trade up in a few years to the only other model in the lineup (at that time) that wasn't fading out of existence, and that just had to be even better for another $30k+

[stephen wilson]

I think his point was, the engine problem is not exclusive to the Boxster, and it's lower price. The 911 had the same design flaw, and resultant failures.

[Frodo]

In any case, while Porsche may have picked up a few pointers from Toyota on cost-cutting, they seem to have dozed through the lesson on reliability. And the one on keeping customers happy when bad things happen to their vehicles waaaay before they should.

I know Toyota would love (just as much as the Porsche corporate types) for Corolla buyers to quickly develop the itch to upgrade to the Avalon. But you know what? Corollas and Camrys will go 200k miles with the best of them, typically without a lot of expensive repairs along the way. Oh well, I guess with the 986 (and other P-cars) it’s a package deal, take the bad with the good, all in the nature of owning a sports car. Intuitively, I probably knew that when I picked up mine…