marcusLondon
New member
Hi all,
As promised, separate post about the engine failure I suffered at Snetterton on 16th April in my '99 2.7 Boxster race car. Hoping for any insight others may have who have track-day experience/problems of their 2.7s or any more mechanically minded members who may have direct experience of cleaning up the mess! Any of you who have extensively track-day'd your '99 2.7 and not had problems, please put your views too - I'd love to get positive news on this!
On 3rd lap from the start, after a reasonable warm-up and whilst still probably not at 100% race power, the train of events was:
- after the long, fast Coram right-hander (90+mph) and whilst braking and changing down to second I caught a flash of the oil pressure light;
- getting back on the power after the Russell chicane I immediately realised I was down a cylinder so throttled back to maybe 50%;
- the oil light flashed on again briefly and then within a 100yds came on permanently;
- I pulled up just past the pits and the engine stalled
- back in the pits we re-started the car and it ran on 6 cylinders but with a slight noise from the engine. Better trained ears than mine believed the sound to be big-end related; we may also have seen a puff of white smoke on the re-start.
So far the guys at Harvey Racing have only just removed the engine and then inspection plate, having drained the oil. They found tell-tale metal shavings which they suspect are a broken-down bearing shell. Further investigation uncovered gasket sealant smothering the grate of the oil pickup in the sump.
So, here are where your comments could be very useful to me:
Marcus
As promised, separate post about the engine failure I suffered at Snetterton on 16th April in my '99 2.7 Boxster race car. Hoping for any insight others may have who have track-day experience/problems of their 2.7s or any more mechanically minded members who may have direct experience of cleaning up the mess! Any of you who have extensively track-day'd your '99 2.7 and not had problems, please put your views too - I'd love to get positive news on this!
On 3rd lap from the start, after a reasonable warm-up and whilst still probably not at 100% race power, the train of events was:
- after the long, fast Coram right-hander (90+mph) and whilst braking and changing down to second I caught a flash of the oil pressure light;
- getting back on the power after the Russell chicane I immediately realised I was down a cylinder so throttled back to maybe 50%;
- the oil light flashed on again briefly and then within a 100yds came on permanently;
- I pulled up just past the pits and the engine stalled
- back in the pits we re-started the car and it ran on 6 cylinders but with a slight noise from the engine. Better trained ears than mine believed the sound to be big-end related; we may also have seen a puff of white smoke on the re-start.
So far the guys at Harvey Racing have only just removed the engine and then inspection plate, having drained the oil. They found tell-tale metal shavings which they suspect are a broken-down bearing shell. Further investigation uncovered gasket sealant smothering the grate of the oil pickup in the sump.
So, here are where your comments could be very useful to me:
- following the failure there was talk in the paddock of problems with this engine - oil scavenge pick-up being starved of oil by high cornering forces and under braking
- however this appears only to have been when the engine was in the 996, and in that configuration is 180 reversed (ie front-rear) and I have no evidence that a Box has suffered the same fate. The problem in the 996 was under right hand corners and hard braking. My problem occurred after prolonged acceleration and a right hander - not the same circumstances given the reversed engine mount. Can anyone here categorically put a bearing failure down to oil starvation? or is the gasket material we found the likely cause? has anyone had this problem or am I just damn unlucky?!
- on reviewing this and other forums there is much talk of 2 recurrent problems (and I'm not going to get into the thorny issue as to whether Porsche Cars will officially recognise either): RMS (main bearing oil seal) leaking/failure and "intermediate shaft" failure.
- the first of these cannot be a factor in my problem as it's not catastrophic; the second also sounds highly unlikely to be the fault - though until the engine is dismantled we won't know for sure. The failure of this shaft results in immediate engine destruction. Mine still runs, but with noise.
- I have seen sporadic posts referring to main bearing failure on the crank - but at present I'm inclined to believe that (given the numbers of Boxsters out there) this is just simple probability theory working, even on a solid and reliable engine. Anyone have a view?
- On the second recurrent fault (ie intermediate shaft), does anyone know of a solution to reduce the likelihood of it happening in any instance? My (thorough) review of the postings here and elsewhere suggests it can occur on 97-03 cars (though more frequently on 97-99 ones) and then at anything from 2,000 miles upwards (though again, at higher mileages seems more common) - and I'm sure that a large majority haven't suffered the fault at all. Yet. The numbers of posts to forums suggests that this fault is however more prevalent than Porsche openly admit. Conjecture, I know - but I have personally read perhaps 100 different accounts of the failure and that is statistically significant across the boards I reviewed - even given people's propensity to complain ahead of praise in such places!
Marcus
