What % of 996 engines are going bang?

[Diesel130]

ORIGINAL: Richard Hamilton

Martin's comment inspired me to do a search on Autotrader. I selected Porsche 911's up to 10 years old and found there are 1679 cars advertised. I then put "new engine" (with quotes) in the keywords and it listed 8 cars. By my maths, that's 0.4%. ...

Hi Richard ... I thought about your search and it seemed very low from my experience when buying - then I realised your search would include all newer 997s as well as turbos and gt3 etc that are different engine. So, I refined the search as follows ...

Price range 15K to 30K, up to 10 years .. that produced 360 results.
Then filtered with "engine" and manually checked each of the 14 results and found
6 * "new engine"
1 * "new porsche engine" and
1 * "engine not running" (and it had bumper requiring paintword ... and they still wanted £18K for it)
[the remaining 6 that I discarded were things like 'engine warrantee', and 'we rebuild engines', and 'german engineering' etc. etc.]

So, that makes it 8/360 which is 2.2%.

Then, of course, we need to factor in any sellers - especially traders - who either don't know its had a replacment or don't want to put off potential buyers with the fact that somethings gone wrong. So, my (revised) guestimate is between 2 and 5% for the 996 wet sump.

 

[Richard_Hamilton]

Thinking about it, your search would give a fairer representation of the situation with early cars. Reluctantly, I give in. At least you and I have one of the 95-98% [] [].

 

[Rotorhead]

As ChrisW pointed out above, the cost of the Warranty is a good guide to the attrition rate, and less than 5% would seem about right.

Renewing a BMW or Land Rover warranty can be far more expensive, with an 'any one claim' limit. And, some prestige sports car manufacturers don't even offer extended warranties. I believe that Porsche provide 2 years worldwide, with the renewal option, but PCA pick up the cost of years 3 and 4.

Don't let internet scare stories put you off. Just buy one with the warranty and keep it renewed. Problems are unlikely, but we have insurance to save us the worry.

 

[sawood12]

I thought the Boxter/996/Cayman engine had cylinder liners as one of the early problems was that the liners move causing catastrauphic engine failure and has lead to the Hartech / Autofarm solution. If this is the case the the pistons are not running in a cast bore of the cylinder block - they are running through the steel liners.

 

[Peter_Bull]

ORIGINAL: VITESSE
Only my opinion & might get moderated if thought likely to upset someone.

Why should this be moderated? It's a very good description of the process and as you say, it's your opinion. You have not slagged anyone off - just a good explanation.