Cylinder sleeves

[DVST8]

I was reading in Excellence magazine that in the 98/99 Boxster's they re-sleaved previously discarded casting due to the high demand for these cars, and that these sleeves were prone to failure

I found a '98 that had it's engine replaced about 5000km ago due to a sleave failure. How would I know if the replacement engine dosen't have this or another 'defect'? Is there a manufacture date stamped on it somewhere?

Does the fact that this car has had the engine replaced make it more, or less valuable?

Or should I be looking for 2000+ year Boxters?

[Tool Pants]

What month is the article as I am behind in my Excellence reading.

It has been said that sleeved engines were only on some model year 1999s, not 1998s. Cars made in late 1998 and early 1999. But there has been a lot of guessing over the years since Porsche will not release a list of the sleeved engines, or even acknowledge that it happened.

The sleeved engines usually failed early in their life. But since the Box is a second or third car you still see a current report once in a while. I have not heard of a replacement engine being sleeved. I think Porsche learned their lesson 7 years ago.

I don't think a replacement engine effects value. There were a lot of 986 Boxsters made, something like 160,000. Not a rare car. And a lot of engines have been replaced over the years.

http://www.pca.org/tech/tech_qa_question.asp?id={F3EA752A-E838-43E5-A43D-BB4F445F5A8F}

[MikenOH]

to the lack of blocks being produced by their supplier during that time frame of the '99' model year, I would not think there is much of a chance that the replacement block would be prone to the same type of failure. As tool pants said, Porsche learned from that experience--I hope.

[DVST8]

Originally Posted by Tool Pants

What month is the article as I am behind in my Excellence reading.

September 2006. The article starts on page 117.

[MNBoxster]

Hi,

The issue was not a lack of blocks. It was a production run of reject blocks, something like 3600 in total ('99 MY production was 22,063 units, so maybe 16.5% of all '99's were affected). Demand for the car was so high that Porsche chose to sleeve the substandard blocks to prevent interupting supply of '99 model year cars only, and they were distributed worldwide, not specifically to the US Market.

Most failed early in their life/mileage and had their engines replaced with standard non-sleeved engines.

The odds of coming across one today which has not been addressed is probably 1/10th the odds of having RMS failure. It simply isn't an issue which should concern you.

Excellence may have done a recent article, but they either found one of the few remaining cars (beating the odds as I said), or in a need to come up with a few column-inches resurrected the past. The Press and Hearsay have blown this all out of proportion.

I own a '99 and if buying another, I wouldn't even consider this issue at all...

Happy Motoring!... Jim'99

[Brucelee]

I think Jim's facts are accurate.

[DVST8]

Originally Posted by Brucelee

I think Jim's facts are accurate.

So what about the 98 that I'm looking at that that 'says' it had an engine replaced due to a sleeve failure? Sounds like this should have never been the case; anomaly?