Engine Failure Class Action

[insite]

Originally Posted by MikenOH

You've made a definitive statement that Porsche fixed all these cars N/C to the owner. What facts is your statement based on ? Do you have any info from Porsche on this? I ask since I've never seen anything publicly said about this from Porsche.

define low mileage. i have yet to hear of an owner of a '98 / '99 car with a sleeved block that failed and was NOT replaced IF it had under about 30k miles. if these engines failed, they tended to fail very early in their life cycles. if they made it past 30k, they generally never slipped a sleeve (apparently there was a 'good' tool and a 'bad' tool; if you got the good one, your sleeves didn't slip).

there MAY be some owners who got left out in the cold by this; i don't personally know of any. the assertion that porsche replaced these motors comes from an article i read awhile back from an independant warranty company that was researching M96 failures. i'll try to find the article.

[MikenOH]

I look forward to see that info--I'm sure it would be an interesting read.

I have corresponded via email with 2-3 guys on this subject that had under 20K miles and have gotten zip from Porsche; these were people mostly off Pete's boxster board but here may have been off of this one. They sounded legit.


Here's' one guy--the email was from April 2006. Last I hear he got squat

Hi Mike: Thanks for the response. Car is now at the dealer so I can't get
you the build date sticker. Will the VIN # help? A little more info. Car is
mine since it was delivered new in Dec 98. Car was already on its way from
the factory when I got involved and the car was delivered to
Pioneer/Porsche in San Diego. A true garage queen. several concurs and 2
wash'n shine first places and only 14,850 until last week when the
catastopic engine failure occured. We did a Porsche driving experience and
one autocross since the car was new.
I've been hearing about cylinder sleeve failure- have you? Let's keep in
touch. I appreciate your help and interest.
Les,

ike: The build date on my '99 is 12 nov, 1998. The local delivery was 28
decmber, 98.
To bring you up to date, I can safely say that I am being stonewalled by
the Local dealer, the So Cal rep and by the National PCA "Customer
commitment" on the East Coast. They just refuse to help on the engine. Do
you happen to know if there is a central Porsche guy that could help
document the engine sleeve problem? All I have is heresay to work with and
I afraid it is not going to cut the mustard when I write my strongly worded
letter (in progress). Anything you can add will be appreciated....Les

[insite]

wow; sucks for those guys. didn't think porsche left any with the slipped sleeve issue hanging in the wind unless there was more to the story.

at any rate, this is the article i was thinking of. it doesn't mention porsche having fixed all of the slipped sleeve issues. must be another article i'm thinking of; i'll keep looking. this one shows all of the failure modes common to the M96 and discusses metal matrix composites in detail.

FYI, the company called autofarm out of the UK who is sleeving these blocks w/ nikasil is not the only company doing this now. i'm pretty sure that phillip raby from autofarm and jake raby from flat6 innovations are related. at any rate, jake has the capability to bore and sleeve our motors for reliability and power. this is great news, becuase THEY HAVE STOPPED making 2.5L replacement motors at porsche. there are like six left; that's it. still expensive to get the rebuild done, but probably about the same as a replacement from porsche. plus, more power & way more reliability. they can get 260HP from the 2.5L.

anyway, here's the article:

UPDATE: the article is 48 pages long and 2.7MB PDF file. it won't let me post it here. anyone have a place i can upload it to & link it here? thanks.

[c4s]

As a person who's been on the receiving end of a class action notice I can illuminate a few basic facts...
1. To have a judge certify a class is not easy to do (they don't like to waste the government's time).
2. the majority of class actions never go to trial
3. the lawyers get most of the dough and the class gets peanuts (with the exception of the guy bringing the case on your behalf)
4. this is a pr blemish for Porsche... no more no less

Lastly I know at least ten box/box s owners... no blown engines in my little universe...

[fragdude]

I believe, as stated previously, that this really is capitalism at its best. The fact that someone buys a second hand Porsche and the engine fails sucks. Yes it is second hand and beyond warranty, but it may have a "reasonable" amount of miles on it. I know that on my Honda s2000, which had a complex valve adjusting system, the first tune up was needed at 90,000+ miles.

What makes me say this is capitalism at its best are two facts that come to mind. First is the build quality of 74-77 Porsche 911s. At this period in time Porsche SUCKED. The metallurgy was just flat out bad and the design had serious problems that, IMO, were easy to foresee (i.e. increasing displacement and not increasing heat core size). Porsche worked on it and in 78 the engines were extremely reliable. By 84 the engines with regular maintenance could last 250k+ miles.

Another factoid that came to mind was Mercedes. Around '93 they traded off their extremely high build quality for profits. Since then benzes have sucked IMO. I know plenty of people that have had silly problems with their benzes.

I do think that Porsche is cutting corners with their engines, but not with the cylinder sleeve. That part was fixed. Im more concerned with the IMS bearings.

Do I think Porsche should replace his engine? If the milage was higher than the warranty figure No, but I think they should help OR offer rebuild parts that were defective. One doesn't see many water cooled engines being disassembled because they just get replaced...