Blown Engine 550 Spyder AE

[Adam]

Originally Posted by Paul

Bruce, re: our continuing discussion, is this evidence that driving our cars hard won't hurt them?

I agree with what Paul says. Driving it like a 90 yr old woman isn't saving your engine...and besides what fun is that anyways.

[Jake Raby]

The next M96 Excellence article will cover this subject of hard driving and engine failures Vs easy driving and those same failures.

[Lil bastard]

My take on all this is that there are inherent design issues which will cause your engine to 'grenade' regardless of how you drive (or maintain) it, in addition to issues which cause your engine to 'genade' if your drive it 'hard', there are those which will cause it to 'grenade' if you drive it soft.

That's not an endorsement to drive it 'hard', though it may not matter in the long run if you drive Hard or Soft.

It seems like not 'genading' your engine is a roll of the preverbial dice insomuch as the 'Morrocan' assemblymen were asleep at the switch ... or not.

The bottom line being that the 'myth' of Porsche 'reliability' is just that... myth!

My take is that if you own an M96 motor, it's much more a matter of 'when' rather than 'if''.

[Jake Raby]

Originally Posted by Lil bastard

My take on all this is that there are inherent design issues which will cause your engine to 'grenade' regardless of how you drive (or maintain) it, in addition to issues which cause your engine to 'genade' if your drive it 'hard', there are those which will cause it to 'grenade' if you drive it soft.

That's not an endorsement to drive it 'hard', though it may not matter in the long run if you drive Hard or Soft.

It seems like not 'genading' your engine is a roll of the preverbial dice insomuch as the 'Morrocan' assemblymen were asleep at the switch ... or not.

The bottom line being that the 'myth' of Porsche 'reliability' is just that... myth!

My take is that if you own an M96 motor, it's much more a matter of 'when' rather than 'if''.

Very good observation and opinions..
But the trends point toward many more failures from cars driven easy or by Women than any others despie mileage on the engine.

We have logged every mode of failure with pics from every engine we have torn down and got reports from the drivers to create the stats and we'll continue to do this to create a very detailed understanding of what happens, when and how.

Track failures are few and far between.

[Paul]

As I've stated before (too many times, probably), I've been flooring and shifting Porsches near redline since 1974 and have yet to experience an engine failure.

I'm either very lucky or Porsches are not hurt by driving them at full throttle and high revs.

Regardless, I've been having fun for decades.

[Paul]

Here's a scan of my 2001 986 that I bought new. It currently has more than 74,000 miles and uses no oil at all between 10,000 to 15,000 mile oil changes (once a year).

Notice the 16,251 revs in range 1.