You can't log on to a water cooled Porsche forum and "swing a cat" without finding a IMS thread. Just a bit ago I almost completely crapped a thread here on 986 and I probably did enough damage as it is. Instead of doing a 9 page rant I decided to bring it to my own thread, since I've obviously stunk this place up enough.
What caused me to post in that thread was the always present remarks pointing out that comments about IMS failure are suggesting that a M96 powered car is any less reliable than any other vehicle.
Here goes:
In the 90s I ran a type 4 VW bus (I know that is technically an incorrect term, but VW people will know what I mean) 196,000 miles. That was a 2 liter air cooled four cylinder pushing a rather substantially built tool shed at 80mph no problem. The entire fun of driving the bus was that you drove the snot out of it and didn't go to jail. At the end its compression was so low that in a wind storm it would move across the parking lot but it NEVER broke and NEVER left me stranded.
More on point, my MO is to purchase 4-10 year old cars that I loved when they were new but could not afford. I have had fantastic value from purchasing cars that had 100-165k miles and doing service myself as they needed it. There's a 2004 V8 Touareg in my driveway that runs like a Rolex and has 124k as of this morning. Everything, and I mean everything (it's my woman's car)
works. I've done the transmission valve body and sometime soon I'll be doing the lower control arms to get rid of a bit of shimmy on braking. BFD, right? I've owned three BMWs. Two of them needed gas, tires, oil changes. Oh and two turn signal bulbs.
The third was a really, really old car. It was a chapter of life where I needed to tighten the belt just a bit (was trying to buy a house). I sold my turbo subaru and went low. Over the time I owned it I did the valve cover gasket, the front lower control arms (both really common and not particularly difficult to DIY) and my water pump crapped a few blocks from my house. The replacement took possibly 45 minutes. I got it for $5000. The window sticker for $39k was in the glove box. To fund my 986 I sold it after 18 months for $4500. That's driving a great European sedan for CHEAP. I could have driven a Camry. Way too beige for me.
Tell me it's ugly and that I should have got a Camry.
The M50 engine found in the BMW is easily a 300k mile motor if you do your part and keep oil in it. I loathe that BMW went away from the straight six. I wouldn't own a bmw newer than the e46.
The M96 was introduced when Porsche was trying not to go broke, and had brought in the consultants from Toyota to teach them how to actually produce a car without having to hand build them. If they had not, Porsche would be uttered in the same sentence as Saturn, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Saab and actually a number of other manufacturers (Aston Martin, Lamborghini, Jaguar, Maserati, Volvo, Bentley, etc) which were rescued as more of a hobby by financially sound companies. In that same breath I'll mention that without the dreaded SUV line, it would not be possible to buy a new Porsche.
The M96 is a throw away motor as designed. I don't really care who is the CEO or the chief of engineering, that there is really stupid. Evidence that they did not really look to the future: You cannot grind the crank undersize, line (or align, I can't recall the term) bore a crankcase and go oversize on the outside dimension of the main bearings. You can't resize connecting rods, bore the cylinders or do diddly crap with worn cam journals except replace the
entire cylinder head and cam cover(can I get a WTF?).
You can do all of the above on a type 1 VW motor except bore the cylinders because it's cheaper to throw them out and a set of pistons and cylinders. Now here is a motor originally designed to produce 36hp, and ass hats like myself were extracting 200hp (mine was more like extracting everything possible from a normally aspirated 1600cc on a college budget , but my high school friend's cars were MONSTERS). Case savers, shuffle pins, welding behind the #3 cylinder, offset oil coolers, align bore, counter weighted cranks, using a dual oil relief case, full flow oil filters - these all became well known things that you
must do to expect any service life out of a VW engine. It allowed things like 2110cc, dual 48 IDA [insert Tim Allen grunt] without flying apart in chunks. Built correctly a type 1 VW motor is incredibly tough.
It
will be the after market which rescues the M96 because, get this: It
won't be Porsche.
Jake comes on various forums and says "I've seen X number of these failures in the past 24 months. This if a flaw. EOM". He's very specific as to which engine he is talking about. He stands to gain nothing if your engine doesn't actually fail, he's just trying to say "hey, watch out for this stuff". Some would add that the sentence continues "...but I sell this".
Whatever. Don't believe him. Don't buy LN products. Don't talk about failures modes. Let's talk about car wax.
My old man used to bring home vehicles and right after it was in the driveway he would go in and get out one of those old school label makers. Not the kind that prints on a white strip. The kind that embosses one character at a time. He would create a label which he would affix to the dashboard. They all said the same thing. "Machinery doesn't care". That's it.
It begged the question, of course. Explained it was like this: "This is a machine. Unlike a horse it will deliver everything you ask of it without question. You can run it out of oil or let it overheat or continue to operate it when it clearly has a problem and it will not complain. It's up to YOU as the operator to watch for signs of trouble and to make every decision".
One thing that keeps me from being a fanboi of Jake is when he remarks that he wishes he patented something he has no intention of using. Before anyone steps up to defend him, first off he's a marine and doesn't need anyone to defend him (please). Second, I have a great deal of respect for the work he has done. He's already posted in this thread and if he wants to take me to task for anything I've said he's welcome to. It's called discussion and it's the reason every one of you logs on to look at Porsche forums.
Crushing competition doesn't mean crushing innovation. There is plenty of room in this multi hundred thousand unit production run (which will wear out over and over) for everyone including Jake
and the bottom feeders. There is always going to be cheap bastards like myself who cannot on any terms cough up a check for $16-18k for my $10k car.
In fact, given what I've written it is obvious I would buy the nicest $17k Porsche I could find and consider it better money spent.
I once interviewed at Aisin Automotive in Kentucky as a tool designer, and they offered me more money than I had ever been offered to work there. Aisin makes basically every die cast part of every Japense car made in America, and that crosses many manufacturers.
While I was there on tour they showed me a new proprietary piston treatment that Mazda was implementing (and had F'd up a seriously full 5x5 bin overflowing with pistons). I knew that there was a tour from Toyota minutes behind us and I asked if they had any requirement to keep the Mazda pistons from Toyota.
An oddly Japanese thing but none of them gave a crap what the other manufacturers found out. They freely shared information because it worked to make cars better.
I'm trying to remember the last time a Japanese car company went broke. Mmm, yeah I got nothing.
My point is that for the example I used of the type 1 VW engine, the aftermarket stepped up and filled a market demand to toughen a motor that was never intended to produce anything more than modest power. The aftermarket
can eventually do the same for the M96 which was thankfully produced in large numbers. The Boxster is a fantastic car to drive. My S model has the same hp as the early model Turbo Carrera, which I grew up thinking was a bad ass car. The Boxster puts the engine where it belongs (sorry 996 folks, it's true).
I'm driven to learn more about the entire car because it's the only flat six powered Porsche I can afford. I learned right away that other than the engine itself, it's just a car. Hell my car has no glove box, no heated seats, no cup holders - it is about on par with my early Miata for luxury (that is: sit down and shut up). Actually the Miata had cup holders but they sucked.
The design of the suspension is not exactly befuddling, the transmission is everything it should be, the brakes are fine. If the top goes up and down (okay even up is optional for me), I'm
in.
Damn I hope this thing runs.
/rant
Oh, and update. As of this evening my front engine mount is about 1" from putting the bolts in. The wiring harness is in the trunk, my brand new $57 dip stick tube is in place, nothing pinched. The A/C compressor is in place with the front two bolts just started. Looking good.
Boxster 986 S
BMW 330d
2001 Boxster S
Engine options abound and then of course there is the option of just getting another 986 or move on to something else. If it came down to fixing or another 986, I would lean towards one of Jake's engines. Reason being, I love the way my 986 is right now and putting a used engine is too big of an unknown for me. Yes, Jake's engines cost more but I believe it would outlast what ever used engine I would put in there. But, everyone has different situations, wants and realities. That's why I agree there is a place for everyone in the aftermarket. The 986 is still a fantastic vehicle for the money IMO. It has outstanding performance and classic lines. Still a winner in my book.
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