High Mileage Boxster

okay, I have to pipe in.

My car has 82k, and needs a 3rd engine.

If you want to delude yourself into thinking that bruce is overstating the problem, free country, delude away!

The reality of it is, these engines fail at a higher rate than a ford escort, and your are taking a very expensive gamble.

For those with high mileage engines...I envy you, and will keep you and your engine in my prayers. I wish you many miles of trouble free driving.

[johnsimion]

I think it's kind of ridiculous to say that the forum is on the take. Do you think Brucelee just makes these posts up? HAHAHA.

I read dozens of horror stories on these posts and concluded that there is a definite failure problem compared to other cars. I also agree that the failure percentage cannot be quantified for a number of reasons. It is scary, but we can draw a pretty good guess that the percentage isn't really high enough to worry about:

NHTSA: 11 reports of Boxster engine failures
BBB: 7 complaints to PCNA about Boxsters, NONE specifically mentioning engine failures
Consumer Reports lists most years of Boxsters as "Much Better than Average" for "Major Engine Problems".

Some people have obviously had more than their share of problems, but with over 200,000 Boxsters produced, if there was a failure rate of even 1% on that amount of production, there should be over 2000 blown engines. People here will cite a bunch of anecdotal evidence to the contrary and even claim a failure rate much higher than that, but their estimates are biased by their own experience. In point of fact, nowhere will you find anywhere near 2000 complaints of blown Boxster engines. In fact, you'll be lucky to identify 200 separate cases (many of the reports out there are duplicates). These well-meaning folks would extrapolate from their own bad experience that there MUST be a huge failure rate, and that is faulty logic.

If there is a major engine failure problem above, say, 1%, then we must logically conclude that 99% of these failures go completely unreported and UN-complained about. However, such a conclusion runs contrary to human nature, especially in the day and age of the internet. There is no logical reason why the 2000 people who supposedly suffered engine failures would remain silent about it. Certainly those who had engine failures in this forum are vocal enough. SO, if these people complain, why not the rest? Why aren't there a whole lot more complaints than there are???

I suspect the actual failure rate is probably 0.5% or less overall. That may very well be 3 times the failure rate for other engines, and therefore I do not excuse Porsche for it. However, if the failure rate is 1% or 0.5%, this means there is about a 99% chance you will NOT have an engine failure. And that's why I think the problem is greatly overstated.

[vath2001]

So if I read this correct, there are no posted "facts" of how many Boxster engines fail. Many guesses.. 1%, 2%, 3%... but no hard numbers.

So lets look at other factors. What else fails? Transmissions, wheel bearings, alternators, power steering pumps. Are there other components of the car that fail prematurely? This info may be available from the aftermarket suppliers and re-manufacturers... which would show a trend of the overall realiability of the vehicles.

[Brucelee]

Originally Posted by vath2001

So if I read this correct, there are no posted "facts" of how many Boxster engines fail. Many guesses.. 1%, 2%, 3%... but no hard numbers.

So lets look at other factors. What else fails? Transmissions, wheel bearings, alternators, power steering pumps. Are there other components of the car that fail prematurely? This info may be available from the aftermarket suppliers and re-manufacturers... which would show a trend of the overall realiability of the vehicles.

This is a reasonable question. You thoughts on the aftermarket as suppliers of data is good but I am not aware of anyone who tries to collect these data.

Based on the posts we see here, the trans and clutch set ups on the Box seems pretty robust. Ditto the Tiptronic. Don't remember any bad Tips but that's just a guess on my part.

We do see certain parts that seem to fail often, oil seperator, coolant tank, interior plastic parts, ignition switch, rear plastic window and seat belt receptacles. he stereo seems robust but folks hate it anyway!

I have no idea how this stacks up against other sports cars.

Oh, there is the RMS but that has been death. You can just duct tape that bad boy and drive around!

[jmatta]

I'm a long time Chicago PCA member and track instructor. We see alot of Boxsters at DE events, as well as autocrosses. In all this time, only our club president had a Box motor let go on him; this was a documented D chunk on a '99 2.5 that Porsche promptly replaced with a remanufactured.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my 3.2 holds up and am taking as many preventive actions as prudent sense mandates (LN billet oil filter adapter, ditching Mobil 1, frequent oil changes, etc).

I'm hoping I'm in that 99 percentile...

[Lucky]

Originally Posted by jmatta

...ditching Mobil 1...

What brand and weight are you running instead? And how did you arrive at that choice?