Ray S

Yep the air-cooled engines were all perfect......

Clogged SAI's, valve guides, etc, etc.......

pcar964

Comparing wear items like valve guides, and the non-issue SAI problem, to unpredictable CATASTROPHIC engine failure, is just intellectually dishonest.

Ray S

Yep, I'm sure Porsche designed them to wear out every 30,000 miles.

Trying to make it seem like an engine failure is just around the corner for every M96 is intellectually dishonest.

Boy Pcar, it's so out of character for you to come trolling around knocking the 996's......

You've always been our #1 fan!!

swmrdrn

Your are absolutely correct. Technically this is known as a self selection bias and any conclusion derived from a sample of this nature is worthless.

dresler

is that how you grow hair on your knuckles?

blk on blk

Like someone earlier said every car maker has some engine replacements. Heck look at the year Toyota has had recently with the big lawsuit over oil sludge and engine replacenment. I had engine replacement within 6 months of ownership anf 5k miles. Car has been a dream ever since the new one was installed. I cannot imagine driving anything else.

swmrdrn

???????

dresler

ok, it was a stretch. you know, self-selection... hair on the palms....

pcar964

I don't think every M96 engine will fail, I just can't imagine owning one when you simply don't know if it will fail. And by the way, I don't know anybody with valve guides wearing out at 30k miles, or even 60k miles, on a 993. My car consumes 1 quart per 1900 miles, so I guess I "dodged that bullet" .

swmrdrn

hair on the palms I understand, it was the knuckles that had me confused. I thought perhaps it was an ape thing. Self selection, self satisfaction, I understand them both :-)

Ray S

I'll tell you what, I'd be willing to bet you could take a 10 year cost of ownership for a 996 and a 993 (take out fuel, insurance, and tires) and you would be WAY ahead with the 996.

It (the 996) is just a far less maintenance intensive vehicle. The 996 has much longer service intervals, less expensive parts, is easier to work on and has fewer little problem areas. All in a car that will leave a 993 begging for mercy (equal drivers of course) on any road course in the world.

I'm sure you'll disagree. However, even if you look at the worst case and my motor lets go (I've got two M96 motors with almost 12 years operation between them and I have not had any problems with them). I can plop a new motor in with a new warranty and be way ahead of a top end rebuild on your 993.....

Try not to......

pcar964

Well, you got me there - there's no question the 996 has longer service intervals, if I recall the manual correcltly:

30,000 mile maintenance: Replace engine
60,000 mile maintenance: Replace engine and transmission
90,000 mile maintenance: Replace engine, transmission, and interior

Gotta hand it to those engineers, they really have simplified things

To your point, I would guess the running costs are slightly higher on the 993 (assuming the 996 doesn't grenade or a blow a gearbox), but not by much.

newport996

Huh? 993s have shorter maintainance intervals and are usually DOUBLE the amount for services....Isnt a major service about $2k? Mine is $800....I cant see how it woul dbe "slightly" more expensive....I did lots of research before I bought a 996 and I thought of a 993....The upkeep on a 993 was drastically higher, and if you really put miles on the car, it can be a nightmare....I can say in almost 4 years of ownership, I have spent only about $2k in upkeep....not including tires...lol...oh and I put 100 miles a day on my 996 and I have 135k miles on it. I dont see too many high mileage 993s out there being driven like that but there are plenty of 986's and 996's being driven a TON....Initially because it was a new engine design, Porsche REPLACED the engine so they can get the failed engine back to Germany to figure out WHY it failed and update the engine...they seem to have gotten on top of that...ALOT less failures now....but I wonder how many 993s failed? The quality of the M96 engine is very good, a magazine cracked open a 100k+ mile 996 engine and found it looked almost NEW inside....they summized it would last about 200k miles before a rebuild....by the way a 996 rebuild can be done for under 4k, a 380 hp 3.8L engine can be had for about 10k....thats pretty good....and actually offers a good upgrade path in the future.

cdodkin

OK - lets talk look at a larger sample of M96 engines.

Let's look at all of the Boxster's covered by Warranty Direct, from'96, in the UK.

And let's look at Engine failures specifically:

http://www.reliabilityindex.co.uk/ma...8339010848601#

UK Porsche Boxster's have a failure rate of 20.69%

That's worse than Land Rover, Alfa, all the Japenese manufacturers, in fact they are 3rd last.

Of course, only people who think they are going to have engine failure sign up with warranty direct for their extended warranties.....

If you try to sign up your 996 to Warranty Direct in the US, for an extended warranty - they are no longer accepting new policies.

Of course, that's purely coincidental, nothing to do with paying out for lots of engine failures.

Or that fact that in the UK overall reliability index:

http://www.reliabilityindex.co.uk/ma...28339010848601

They are only passed by Jeep as having a worse reliability rating.

Of course, those UK drivers probably abuse their M96 engines in some way, so let's look at US drivers for the same Boxster model.

http://www.reliabilityindex.co.uk/ma...01&country=usa

Seems like the US cars have a 35.99% probability of failure when you look at engines specifically.

Pontiac, Plymouth and Land Rover are worse - not exactly a stat to be proud of!

And if you look at over all US reliability:

http://www.reliabilityindex.co.uk/ma...01&country=usa

Only Volvo are worse.

Of course the fact that the US and UK numbers both show significant issues with engine failures, is purely coincidental.

The number of cars covered by warranty direct must be skewed in some way, to be comprised of a higher percentage of cars with troubled M96 engines....

Personally I've only had 2 engine failures with the M96, third one is a charm - well for the first 16,000 miles any way.

But I'm sure non of this is significant in any way.

03Targa

I guess I only have a couple observations to this thread.
1)I just purchased an extended warrenty on my engine 3 months ago.
2)It's hard to understand the data you are presenting as it has no context.