Another RMS

[MikenOH]

I'm no mechanical engineer but looking at how Porsche has picked at the edges of this problem for the better part of 7-8 years, if it was an easy fix, they'd have done it by now.

--If it was an installation problem, you retrain hans & franz or replace them, but we continue to have leaks; the installation tool has changed also,BTW.


-- If it was a seal material/ design problem you make the necessary changes and you're done; Porsche has been through several design changes IIRC and we still have leaks

--Epoxied bolts have been tried to increase rigidity of the cradle structure, yet we continue to have new cars with leaks.

As i see it, they've done all that they can do, short of a major design change on the engine to either eliminate or reduce the incidence of RMS. On the 987 they reduced the crank weight a bit at the unsupported end to help lessen the "forces"? working on the seal. But in one of the publications testing the new 987S last year, the car was leaking with less than 5K miles on it.

I would think major design changes to this engine to fix the problem would cost a lot in engineering and probably tooling. it's probably less expensive to deal with the individual leaks as they arise and hope the customers aren't too persistent.

One question I haven't heard anyone address is:
if this leak is a symptom of the crank not being ( or staying) concentric with the block, does this indicate an eventual catastrophic failure because of this imbalance? I ask since Porsche does replace some engines after mutilple RMS failures or if it excedes a particular concentric tolerance. If there was no chance of engine failure, why not keep replacing seals? @ $10K a pop for a new engine, you could buy& install a lot of replacement seals.