P1-EH

With a heavy heart I must report that the engine in my 2005 C2S died while at a track day.

The car was running great up until I experienced a loss of power, a simultaneous low oil warning and an immense plume of white smoke coming from the rear of the car. As I pulled off the track there was what appeared to be a mixture of coolant and oil coming out of the bottom of the car.

I had had the IMS bearing work done last year, and the car was in the shop a month earlier to replace a faulty water pump. She had 92k km on her.

The initial report from my shop is they suspect a D-chunk failure. I'd never heard of that before. I now know what it is, and am not sure what to think about it.

Here's a picture of 2 of the spark plugs they were able to extract. They were able to remove #4 to #6. One didn't come out at all, and one was destroyed.

I've started researching these failures and they appear to be very rare for 997s. I'm obviously disappointed. I'm being quoted $26k CDN for a new Porsche warrantied engine.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Mark

2K7TTMIA

Sorry to hear. Is your engine an M96 or M97? There have been a few RL'r stories where the Pcar dealer has stepped up and contacted PAG (or PCNA) and a reman engine has been delivered gratis with only the labor being paid by the customer. Could be the RL'r was a longtime PCA member and may have had a good rapport with other PCA members with "connections". Other than that, a local Porsche mechanic may have a lead on a used engine .
Good luck

Renzsport

Are you at liberty to share with us what a "d-chunk failure" is?
Is the one spark plug melted or sheared? Maybe someone planted a thermonuclear device in your engine during the water pump work and didn't let you know. dang terrorists.

Macster

Words fail me. So sorry to read about your engine's demise.

While I'm no expert I do not think D-chunk failure happened.

Briefly, D-chunk failure is a crack that starts at the top of a cylinder and continues down the cylinder wall and then over and back up again until a D-shaped piece of cylinder wall breaks loose. And then from this all Hell breaks loose.

However, D-chunk failure is based on my info rare in the later model engines. It was common (so to speak) with the early pre-3.6l engines, IOWs, the 3.4l engines in the early 996's.

A busted engine casting suggests a rod let go. But course it could have been almost anything. Rod. Rod bolt. Crankshaft. D-chunk. Valve broke. (This can beat up the plugs to the point they can't be removed.) Timing chain snapped. If you tell me the engine stopped all the sudden I'd suspect timing chain. Maybe.

If the engine continued to run, albeit poorly (very very poorly to be sure) and with a lot of racket then it could have been almost anything else.

Regardless whatever failed took out the engine.

Have you approached the dealer and pointed out this kind of severe failure is so out of character with modern luxury sports cars that you would like it very much if Porsche could offer some goodwill to help cover the cost the factory sourced replacement engine? If not consider it.

P1-EH

Thanks. I'll hopefully find out next week what actual root cause is. I bought this car in part because of the reliability and its track robustness.

P1-EH

I have a 2005 C2S which I believe is an M97, but I'm not 100% sure.

Quadcammer

you may have been mislead there

Jack667

So sorry to hear about the incident. That just sucks - no two ways about it.

cairo94507

It never hurts to approach Porsche and see if they can offer some goodwill help with the engine replacement. Anything they might do is better than nothing. Good luck with this and I hope your car is back on the road soon.

mgordon18

You have (had?) the M97 engine. All 997.1S engines are M97.

My condolences to you on your car...

997_rich

Chin up brother. This kind of thing does happen (rarely) and it's frustrating. But, knowing that you could afford a P car in the first place and you're doing track days puts you in the class of person that will solve this **** in a few months and you'll be out there again enjoying this car or another one.

Interested to hear the root cause and if they can ascertain. The white plume sounds like a head gasket failure (maybe partially initiated by a previous overheat from the waterpump failure). Once you have water(incompressible) in the combustion chamber, the piston coming up can develop tremendous pressure and break-out the cylinder sidewall.

As another option may also want to consider selling this car to someone who wants to do a track build or something and just getting a new car if you'd rather have another color etc.

Good Luck!

LexVan

Looks something like this example:

USMC_DS1

Wow... I hope you get her back in good order shortly. FWIW, here's some night time reading material from a Porsche engine builder in the UK... he has some interesting theories re why some of our engines fail. If your "D" chunk occurred on bank 2 where the #4 and #6 plugs came out off then his theories may give insight into what happened here. As others have mentioned... try approaching Porsche. You never know. And please keep us posted on the outcome. GL

http://hartech.org/docs/buyers%20gui...20part%205.pdf

P1-EH

Thanks, Rich. That's kind of you.

You're right. I should have her back in the next day or so and with a new engine with a 2 year mfg warranty. I haven't fully decided what to do, but I'm giving serious consideration to getting a track car (Atom) and selling the 911 so I can fit both of my kids in the car at once!

The root cause was identified as D chunking. We didn't tear the engine apart fully (I wasn't going to pay more for that), but what we did see today indicated a catastrophic failure in a cylinder that breached the engine casing in 2 places.

Here's a couple of pictures I took today.
Mark

CORSASCHNELL

Sorry to hear about your troubles. For what it's worth, the car died in battle instead of in bed.