RT930turbo

I’ve been meaning to tell this story for quite a while now, in hopes that some others might learn from my experience.

I have been a Porsche owner for almost 20 years, and owned many different flavors, so when my wife was shopping for a “minivan” 6 years ago with the expectation of our first child, the 957 Turbo was a natural choice. She fell in love with the car, and it gave us 30k flawless miles (101k on the clock).

Then it happened.

One early winter day she drove the Cayenne to work on the summer tires, I had been busy and not had a chance to switch them over to the winter set. As murphy would dictate, we were blessed with a 5” snowfall, followed by frigid sub-zero temperatures. This prevented my wife from making it to the top of our very steep, long driveway. The Cayenne spend the night at the bottom of the drive, and I went to fetch it in the morning. When I went to start the car, it sounded like a cold 2 Cycle Detroit, with the smoke to match. I knew we had major trouble. By the time I coaxed it to the shop, the dash was lit like a Christmas tree, and it would not run without significant throttle input.

I shared the bad news with the wife unit, and after some discussion, we decided to fix it. I knew of the cylinder scoring problems, and after some conversations with Flat-6, LN Engineering, and JE, I was confident we could bring it back to life better than factory.

The damage was significant, and the block had to be cut and sleeved with Nikasil liners. Custom JE pistons, and every mechanical component was refreshed or replaced.

The Process was straight forward, and it was a very fun engine to put together. I’ll share some photos of the process in the following posts. Here is what we started with…

RT930turbo

Fresh upper crankcase from LN engineering.

RT930turbo

Getting ready to mate the rods to their new slugs

RT930turbo

Let's put it together...

RT930turbo

And she's home!

TomF

OOOH! Engine ****!

Very well done and thanks for posting. If I may ask, what did you end up investing in your project? I am assuming around $11k... $5k for the block and about $6k in parts...

RT930turbo

Thank you.

You are certainly within the rounding error. I never really tallied it all up (not sure I want to know!) ...but it was cheaper than throwing it in the trash and buying another one that could potentially have the same issue.

She has put almost 10k miles on it since the rebuild, and it's as good, probably better , than new.

user 83838290

Nice :-) did pretty much the same on my 08 TT, just had to do it twice since the guys rebuilding it must have missed something on the first try.
Wish I had the time to do it myself or at least help out.

Vivid7

I remember you posting about leaving the car at the end of the driveway. cheers to not worrying about scoring anymore.

nodoors

Great work. Which method did you use for pulling and replacing the engine?

chassis

Looks great, thanks for sharing the build.

RT930turbo

Right out the bottom per the factory manual. I built a fixture for the mid rise scissor lift, and put it on car skates to maneuver it I to place.

nodoors

Badass. How long did the whole project take from start to finish?

Also, that is one heck of a shop (warehouse?!) you have there!

Petza914

Excellent work and congratulations on the successful rebuild.

BTW nice 928 too from a fellow 928 & Cayenne Turbo owner.

RT930turbo

Thanks! We just call it the toy barn I'm fortunate (maybe insane?) to have a great place for big projects a short walk down the driveway.

The project took a long time all told, it wasnt a high priority. It was apart for 2 years. Had I not taken so many breaks, it would have been much shorter.

Thank you!