You'all scare me...................

[Soetekouw]

I really love my Boxster, but ...........is the Porsche Boxster a dependable car, or not?

I read about IMS failures, and bigger IMS's that can't be fixed without engine teardown, and that we have to have Jake install his mods for a more dependable engine, etc., etc.

I have a 2007 Boxster S with 45K miles, and I am scared to death that at any time my car will blow up and become a piece of junk. Should I be worried, or is there a good chance that this thing will last me another 50K+ miles (without spending a king's ransom)? I drive it daily (mostly highway) and I drive it normally; don't race or abuse. All services are done when scheduled.

Anyone out there that has a boxster with 100K on their original engine?

Maybe, for carefree driving, I need to start looking at the BMW Z4, Lexus SC430, Nissan, or maybe even a Mazda, while i still have some trade-in value on my Porsche.

[JFP in PA]

Look, the M96 engine is known to have some issues. Some don't live to see old age, but many do. I'm aware of more than one with over 200,000 miles on them. Enjoy the car, but don't immerse your head in the sand thinking that all (or any) of them are guaranteed bullet proof; they are not. But then neither are any of the others you mentioned.............

[jcb986]

2007 engines are a lot better than the 97-99. I believe this is where most the d-chunk and IMS failures are. Worried, get an extended warranty and in the mean time, drive and enjoy.

[JFP in PA]

Actually, anyone that has an intermediate shaft can (and do) have the dreaded IMS failure; so that is right up to the latest, and shaft-less versions of 2009………….

[Steve Tinker]

I contribute to a couple of the UK Porsche magazines and the general consensus by the British experts (Autofarm & Hartech Engineering) follows the same advice as Flat 6 and LN Engineering - change the engine oil & filter more frequently than Porsche recommends, use a very good synthetic oil, and keep on top of the maintenance schedule, ie don't put off what needs to be done.

About 8 years ago I bought an early MX-5 (Miata in the US) and then started reading about massive failures of the short nose cranks, diff failures, water pump shafts snapping etc etc. I was kept awake at nights and continually checking the crank pulley for the tell tale wobble....
I kept the car for 4 years and never experienced any of the above, nore did I hear of any breakages in the MX-5 club here in Australia.

I then bought a Mazda RX-8 and found the websites full of blown apex seals, huge replacement engine $$ costs for high oil usage, Mazda building an engine re-man plant in the US to help stem the flood of broken engines, having to add oil to the fuel to assist seal wear etc, etc.

Sound familiar ??

Honestly, the real truth lies not in listening to ALL the hype on the internet but taking a long carefull look at what reputable, knowlegable experts tell us and see if their recommendations fit in with what we expect from our cars.

[dennis]

It's like anything....the more you obsess about it, the more you will find negative press to bak up your fears....like plane crashes or cancer or....I was the same way when I first bought mine ('01 Boxster) but now I just try to enjoy the hell out of it and take very good care of it.

[mikefocke]

Let me know when you find an engine design without faults.

I own a Honda and an Acura of around the same year/miles as my '01S 58k Boxster. All maintained better than by the book. Boxster most reliable by far. Least expensive to own. Least trips to repair shop. Best miles/gal too.

[pothole]

I believe the consensus is that actual engine failures are in the low single digit percentage region. On the one hand, that's pretty bad if true compared to what you might expect from a properly engineered engine. On the other, think of it this way - if you ran 50 Boxsters in parallel, you'd probably only expect one of the engines to fail. In that context, if you only buy a single Boxster you'd have to be fairly lucky for it to be the one that dies.

The way people talk about it, it seems like you're really rolling the dice on a 50/50 chance of the engine going pop. But I don't think it's anything like that bad a risk.

[Brucelee]

My subjective take is that yes, the Box engine has design flaws and yes, they are more than one might find in a chevy small block or Lexus V8.

The larger issue is the cost of the flaw. I think that gets to the heart of the issue. If one could find a rebuild for three grand or so, this may be less alarming.

If it were me, I would run Red Line Oil and change it out at no more than 7500 miles or 6 months.

[SeaNile31]

I've had previous Boxster cars but didn't know about any of the RMS or IMS issues. I drove the cars all over and never had a care in the world. More importantly. never had an issue with either of the cars. Now I find myself thinking about getting another Boxster S (987) and all I can think about is the IMS issue. Upper $40's for an 09 is too much for me now so I will be looking at an 05 or so. Hopefully for us buyers the winter months will bring the prices down even more....

[SoK]

Originally Posted by dennis

It's like anything....the more you obsess about it, the more you will find negative press to bak up your fears....like plane crashes or cancer or....I was the same way when I first bought mine ('01 Boxster) but now I just try to enjoy the hell out of it and take very good care of it.

I was the same way. I freaked out when I found this site after buying my 01. Luckily the dealer OK'd my IMS, repaired anything it needed, so now I just drive it.

My dad did get scared out of buying one though after surfing this and a couple other sites. He was going to trade his 03 350z for a 04 05 box, but opted to keep it after hearing about the IMS issue. I tried to tell him that you're really only hearing from the people that have the issue and that all the satisfied owners usually go unnoticed, just like with anything. But the damage was already done.

It seems like if you just get the PPI done, change the oil every 5k, and have the preventative maintanance done, they'll drive for a long time. So at that point, what's the difference between this and any other car?

[Jake Raby]

I've not had a single Porsche in our facility this year with over 95K miles on the clock...

Last year we only had one, it failed at 103K.

Keep in mind that we generally don't see cars that don't have issues, serious issues that can't be solved by others with confidence.

This year the failure of all failures were water pump related issues resulting in intermix and lost engines.

Luckily more and more people are scheduling preventive procedures with us to keep these things from occurring, its taken several years for people to wake up to the fact that if the preventives aren't done some failure that could have been avoided will take the engine out.

[SoK]

How many IMS updates do you do a month?

Originally Posted by Jake Raby

I've not had a single Porsche in our facility this year with over 95K miles on the clock...

Last year we only had one, it failed at 103K.

Keep in mind that we generally don't see cars that don't have issues, serious issues that can't be solved by others with confidence.

This year the failure of all failures were water pump related issues resulting in intermix and lost engines.

Luckily more and more people are scheduling preventive procedures with us to keep these things from occurring, its taken several years for people to wake up to the fact that if the preventives aren't done some failure that could have been avoided will take the engine out.

[pothole]

Originally Posted by Jake Raby

I've not had a single Porsche in our facility this year with over 95K miles on the clock...

Fact: The classifieds have plenty of cars over 95k, at least the biggest classified car website here in the UK does.

136k

121k

Etc, etc, plenty more cars north of 100k.

Any suggestion such cars don't exist is clearly false. I very much doubt it's any different in the US.

Admittedly, I don't see any cars north of 150,000 miles. Whether that's because people tend not to use cars like these as daily drivers or because the cars are failing before this mileage is impossible to say.

[Jake Raby]

We have 4 IMSR procedures scheduled for December...

I never said that hundred thousand plus mile cars don't exist, I said we haven't had any in our facility this year with that many miles.. And like I said, most cars have been at our facility because they have failed- we don't do general service work or simple repairs like an INDY shop.

Like I said, finally people are seeing that issues can happen to anyone and any car and they are taking the required steps to ensure their engine is properly protected. All the cars we saw this year with intermix could have avoided that failure with a simple water pump replacement..

We see more failed engines than anyone in the US, because the failure prevention and repair is our primary focus along with engine development.. I expect tomorrow to be a busy day on the phones, any "failure Monday" is busy but after a 4 day weekend we might set another record!

[fatmike]

Originally Posted by pothole

people tend not to use cars like these as daily drivers.

Precisely. So as a group they tend to have lower mileage.



Add to the fact that we are dealing with a group of cars that can be (in the case of the '97) up to 14 years old. In general how reliable is any 14 year old car??? I strongly suspect the Boxster is better than average.


Need to keep some perspective sometimes. My 1999 BMW is long gone...





/

[pothole]

Originally Posted by Jake Raby

I never said that hundred thousand plus mile cars don't exist, I said we haven't had any in our facility this year with that many miles..

Fair enough. What exactly was your point, then, in highlighting that you haven't seen any cars above 95k this year and only one last year? On the face of it, the clear inference is that such cars are at the very least quite rare.

[Jake Raby]

The point was all the failures we've seen this year have occurred with vehicles less than 100K miles.

Many more people use the M96 powered Porsches for daily driving than ealier Porsche models.. Thats because they have creature comforts that the older cars simply didn't have..

Good A/C, real heat, power brakes and power steering are not things my first few generations of Porsches had.. Due to that those cars were 2nd, 3rd of 4th vehicles where many Boxsters are primary vehicles...

[pothole]

Originally Posted by Jake Raby

The point was all the failures we've seen this year have occurred with vehicles less than 100K miles.

OK, and what do you learn from that?

[Highlow]

My car has 73.5k, I bought it at 62k in feb.

I didn't know about the IMS issues before I bought but I did get a PPI (not a very good one apparently)

I lost sleep a few nights due to worrying about the car breaking, but then I realized something.

The cars isn't fun if you worry about it constantly.

I drive the piss out of mine at least once per week, usually more.


The only major issue I've had was replacing the WP even though it had been replaced just before I bought it(or so they say).


If something breaks, oh well, it's just money. But if a 1k repair is going to break the bank, you really shouldn't have one of these anyway.

Buy it, drive it hard.