Sorry this happened to you, but you hardly sound like the "poster child for Porsche preventative maintenance". Good luck with your new BMW toy.

[QUOTE=jhandy;263415]...The oil was about half full that morning and I should have filled it to the top like I usually do. It is a shame that Porsche can not understand that people are expecting much more from a car when the cost is over 50K. /QUOTE]

Sorry again for your loss but you seem to have had an oil problem for some time...and drove it "half-empty" (-/+ 5 quarts low?). You can't blame Porsche or the engine for that. Preventive maintenance would have been to have the seals or whatever repaired that was causing your oil consumption. It's all on you brother. Try to part it out and get what you can. That was totally preventable.

I'm thinking jhandy may be referring to the electronic oil level gauge indicating "half-empty" which would translate to the crankcase being a quart or less low.

If that isn't the case, jhandy, let us know.

Jake,

Thanks for the post mortem pictures...

So school me on what is the "classic soon to fail "in the picture of the sparkplug/head. I am honest enough to admit I don't know what you are pointing to.

Is that a crack half way around the spark plug ?

Oh. Possibly. He still indicates that he has to "usually" put oil in. Which he, this time, did not.

"So school me on what is the "classic soon to fail "in the picture of the sparkplug/head. I am honest enough to admit I don't know what you are pointing to."

Landrovered, yes, you are correct. The head is cracked at the bottom of the channel around the spark plug (where the aluminum is darkly discolored). The crack appears to go from about the 3 or 4 o'clock position to the 7 or 8 o'clock position.

You mean some JB weld isn't going to plug that crack?

I wonder about that digital oil gauge on the dash. I'm always getting weird read outs. Sometimes it says four ticks too low and and on the next start up it will say one tick too low.
Is that thing reliable at all at warning of a leak somewhere?

What I was refering to was the dashboard indicator. In the last 6 months, The oil level would drop every month and in between changes. The car never did that before. So I was trying to make it a habbit to check the oil before my hour long fun drive to work.

That morning the indicator was reading in the middle. I like to have it at the top of the electronic indicator. I did not have oil to put in to it so I was planning on getting a quart or two on the way home. Well on the way home is when the car died.

The loss of the car is on me. I should have kept it filled to the top. I really dont care that it is gone. Its just a car. Over the 9 years of ownership the box was expensive to keep happy. Small parts would break all the time. Maintance was getting more expensive and regular. I have replaced all sorts of small things from fan motors, control arms, plastic latches, sun visors, plastic windows, convertible top, bushings, bearings, window regulators, seats, buttons, switches, relays, AOS, radio, speakers (paper speakers? really on a porsche?) I just expected more than 85K from a car I spent 57,000$ for.
I would buy another one as soon as they increase the quality. Because at the end of the day, I was smiling when I got home after a drive.

You're a big man for typing that, I commend you. Regardless of this situation, personally, I still believe these engines are breaking in a manner that almost suggests the company had about a five year running horizon in mind for the initial cost. I saw less Fiat motors blow over a 20 year span and that isn't a lie. If I'm wrong, I'll be like Jhandy and own it, however the very fact Porsche doesn't even return your inquiry is very disturbing. I'm confident my car is repairable, I only wish I had it in me to do it.

Jhandy,
I'm curious to know how much oil was missing. After watching those silly late night infomericals about how magical engine oil additives could keep an engine running for a few seconds I would have thought that even half full would have prevented total disaster for a few miles.

With 10 quarts of oil in the system, you cannot tell me that being only a quart down is going to make a hill of beans difference and cause you to blow an engine while driving ON THE ROAD. Now the windage tray design and other extenuating circumstances on a track I can see but on DOT tires on a public street, I don't buy it as the root cause of the failure.

p.s.
I find it odd that I had the flashing dash light when all of the coolant leaked out of my car but the same wouldn't happen when oil reaches dangerously low levels? These cars aren't that old to not have some manner of simple dashboard alert.
Seriously..this seems like a very basic feature in a high end modern sports car.

i change my oil at 8k intervals and lose about a litre between changes. this is normal, and can be due to cylinders going off-round, failing aos, etc. this does not mean your engine is going to grenade and does not warrant a trip to the shop on it's own.

the dash inidcatior is a little over a litre from top to bottom, so you were down a bit over 1/2 quart. this will not kill an engine on it's own. further, you went to a heavier cold weight oil, so you can anticipate it to take longer to run back down to the sump and the indicator not measuring all the oil actually in the engine (this is the variation the previous poster referred to). whether your car is level or not also drastically affects this reading.

so, you don't 'own' this; you maintained the car above and beyond what was required by the manufacturer (ie, ims replacement) and operated it as one could expect to operate any vehicle. to suggest that you are somehow responsible for a $15k engine failure is ignorant, but i commend your good spirit about it.

Sorry to hear about your loss, but I'd like to hear what Jake's findings are after the tear down. Losing 1 quart of oil seem a bit of a stretch to blow the engine.

The engine was so bad that I can't tell really what happened first. I pulled the trophies out of it to be inducted as offerings to the Gods of Speed and the rest is already at the scrap yard.

I agree. Seems highly implausible that an oil level half way up the gauge in the safe zone is going to kill an engine in the course of street driving.

oil pump failure?

If you read his post he was in a tight turn accelerating with low engine oil. That could have done it.

And it was poorly maintained, burning oil, and his "solution" was to routinely top off the oil level before spirited drives with a non Porsche approved oil viscosity, hoping the 10W40 would leak out a little slower than a 0W40, 5W40 or a 5W50. He admits it, owns it, and we respect that. Live & learn.

Oil pump had no failure, it was still functional. I "Featured" this failure in my latest Flat 6 Innovations newsletter.