Dain Plug Picture, Houston do we have a problem?
 

I changed the oil in my 01 S with 41K on the clock. I've owned it for about 14 months and put about 4k on it. I dropped the sump last summer and installed the extension kit, all looked good no signs of any metal bits. I also installed a magnetic drain plug and a year later below are the results. Is this normal? I also cut open the filter and there is no noticeable metal debris in it either.

I'm sending in some oil for analysis but with all of the IMS concerns I'm wondering how much on the plug is acceptable.


http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01...1345926297.jpg

I do not know what is normal. It could be 41k miles worth of stuff that I would not worry about. The magnetic plug just picked up the old trash for you. A clean start into the future. Good luck !!!

Looks about like mine. I get a grey sludge on the magnet with no noticeable bits of metal. I think thats a good thing. That sludge never got sent through the motor, where the filter probably wouldn't have caught it because it was so fine.

I think the main reason to have a mag plug is that when the engine starts to go, the mag will pick up the big pieces from the IMSB or the bearings and give you an early warning of a problem.

My LN magnetic sump plug looked just like yours after my first oil change.
The second (and all other recent) times the oil was changed, the plug looked much cleaner - hardly any sludge and no metal objects.
I think that the strong magnetic field of the plug pulls all the ferrous particles (that are too small to be captured by the filter) out of the lubrication system that may have been in the engine since day one ....
Once the system is cleaned up, there are very little "new" particles to show on the magnet.

Magnetic Oil Plug
 

Question from a noobie with my first Boxster---Do they come from the factory with magnetic drain plugs?

No, aftermarket part. LN Engineering makes a very nice one (pictured above): Billet Aluminum "Bigfoot" Magnetic Drain Plug for Porsche 911, Boxster, and Cayman models