Premature Engine Failure - Boxster

[jcb986]

Originally Posted by Chase53

Hello, this is my first post to the forum, I'm going to be purchasing an early Boxster soon, I have my eye on one in paticular that's a 1999 with 50+++ miles on it. The carfax report shows that the front crankshaft seal was replaced 4 months after the car purchased new and the transmission was replaced at the same time with less then 6000 miles on it in August of '99.

At 16,000 miles in April 2000 the engine was removed, but does not say why. After that it has a pretty clean record other then failing smog at 44,000 miles, it has since passed smog several times including just a few months ago.

At what point did Porsche use the updated seals? Is the past service record any clue as to what I might be buying? Any way to check that I don't buy a hand grenade waiting to go?

This will be my 4th Porsche, I have had a 914, 944 & 911SC before, the 944 had a rod go with only 600 miles on the engine, of course Porsche replaced it, but it took 6 months to get the car back!

Thanks in advance.

The front seal could have been defected originally and needed a few miles for it to start leaking. Engine replacement is a good thing. The earlier models 97-99 had block casting problems, D chunk and RMS bearing failures. In 2000 they had made improvements in these areas.