aowolf

Earlier last week I had put a deposit on a 2014 Cayman 2.7 being sold by a VW dealer, the car was sold to them by the first owner who had put 66k on the car mostly in the Dayton Ohio area.

The dealer was about 7 hours from my house and the night before I road tripped in to get the car I was told it was going to Porsche in the AM to diagnose a rattle and get an oil change. I went to the Porsche dealer to spy on the car and the GM of the selling VW dealer called me up to say they had found lots of metal in the oil.

I did end up getting the car from them at a wholesale price (I priced in the cost of a new motor) and rolled the dice to see if it was a fixable timing issue or bore scoring.


The symptoms were ticking nosies, metal in oil, and smoke when the car was warmed up.

Today we finally scoped the car and found that cylinder 4 was badly scored:



I had expected / priced this in so it’s not a surprise to me but I did want to post this to share with the community because I’ve seen multiple places including L/N saying they haven’t seen the issue on a 2.7. As always if you’re buying a car make sure you look for this in your PPI!

Also anecdotally I’ve owned 4 water cooled flat 6s with over 100k on them and this is my first bore scored car.

Schwinn

IMO, that looks more like scoring due to oil starvation or something else like that. Generally, the traditional "bore scoring" we talk about shows more broad strokes, whereas these look very sharp and "singular" marks due to debris and such... or short term issues that were later resolved.

That's just my opinion, of course. I'd love to hear from other engine experts to see what they think...

Either way, this certainly isn't good to see on any motor. I'm not saying it's not a bad thing, but I'm just thinking this may not be the traditional "bore scoring" that we see/hear about on the S-motors...?

Charles Navarro

That's either bore scoring or piston seizing, both resulting with the same scoring/galling. I'm assuming they scoped it from the spark plug as I'm not exactly sure if you could get a scope in through the sump unlike an M96/M97 engine, so what you are seeing through the spark plug is much less than what you'll find at teardown at BDC.

Oil starvation is not an issue with the MA1 engine unless the oil pump sprocket spins on the shaft and the engine loses oil pressure completely. That's a catastrophic failure we've seen several times over the years.

aowolf

I’ve put over 1000 miles on the engine since I bought it.

(I bought it after the ticking showed up causing owner one to offload a to a dealer).

So that rules out a catastrophic oiling issue. I strongly suspect this car was just driven short distances and never got warm. I’ve noticed on a 20 degree day like this morning it can take well over 20mins of around town driving to get to the magical 160 degree oil temp.

Or maybe he used the wrong gas. I doubt I will ever know, but the moral is make sure you do a PPI, many dealers are not as honest as the one the I got this car from.

AFRob

Nice to go in with your eyes wide open.
What are the long term plans?
Rob

aowolf

A younger and lower mile 2.7 from a reputable source goes into the car in April, and it becomes my new daily. Good oil and high revs when it’s up to temp will hopefully keep it going for many more years.