Jake Raby

A "rebuild" without doing any upgrades would not be smart at all.. While all parts that fail are accessible it only makes sense to address those areas. Doing this will prevent future failures that could occur before the "rebuild" is more than a week old. We are only offering completely upgraded units for several reasons, the biggest being liability concerning a failure on an engine we had recently "rebuilt". I am sure as time goes on we'll see some companies with lesser morals completing such "rebuilds" and their reputations will go down the drain fairly early from that... The issues that these engines have are real and they can occur to any engine, at any time if not addressed thoroughly. Cutting corners and saving pennies is exactly what Porsche did that created these issues! 1K for labor to rebuild a Boxster engine will get you no where, the engine is difficult to assemble and work with in general.

One can't confuse Porsche "pre BBoxster" with the post Boxster and 996 days as far as vehicle build quality, especially the engines. I have always worked with older Porsce cars until the development of our Boxster/ 996 program a couple of years ago. The first time I tore into a Boxster engine I could have sworn it was a Honda or other disposable unit and thats what they intended it to be. Unfortunately the only real Porsches today are the GT cars that still use the aircooled engine as a foundation...After seeing the new 09 engine design I can only hope they have addressed the engine failures that have plagued the Boxster since it's conception.. even if they did there is still more than a decade of marginal units on the road that don't fill the foot tracks of their predocessors very well.

Might be, since the rod bolts broke as wel as the beam too, but the crown of the piston looks baked, like it was well done under boost :-)

Nope, I don't own the Castle, but when I visited and signed the guest book the lady at the desk looked at me really funny ;-) I keep seeing the term "rebuild" with the engines and thats what most everyone is doing.. Few are actually addressing the root of the problem and upgrading the components and developing new, non Porsche parts to remedy the issues. The autofarm method is much better than factory, but its still not an ultimate method as part of the original cylinder is retained and another liner is installed. the LN emthod that we have helped develop replaces the entire cylinder and then Nikisil plating is used for a friction surface. This reduces temperatures as well as reducing the friction that typically causes the sleeves to dislodge. With this method employed the case has the same lifespan as an aircooled 911 cylinder, getting started at 200K miles. The autofarm method still re-uses Pistons and even when the article was written a few years back the price for their upgrade was super expensive, something like 13,000 pounds for a stock engine! The same goes with IMS and timing chain failures as well as oil pump issues as all of these things are either developed or we are developing them now... It takes the same amount of labor to R&R the engine, tear it down and assemble it, so why not take the precautions to ensure future problems won't occur while you are at it?? I'd say that 3.6 saw some pretth bad detonation, maybe it was boosted without a CR reduction??? The pistons in these engines are VERY weak!!! A VW type 1 1600cc piston is the same size, but significantly stronger! Lots of companies and independant repair shops have contacted us about our program already and thats what we want.. Our time is much better spent perfecting performance packages and designing components and procedures rather than assembling stock engines. We'd like to supply tools, parts and knowledge to assist the normal person with the 986 engine rebuild and upgrade.. Tool pants, are those your broken parts?? if so I'd certainly like to study them as part of our research as we are trying to create a data base of failures and components in hopes of establishing trends..

I'd be leery to make any recommendations at this time because they'd not be supported by fact or empirical data... Lets just say that I have seen similar wear in other engines that have used Mobil 1. we have a been working on a 36 month study on oils for Vintage engines and have learned a ton from that experience that can be globally applied to any engine. I am using my Boxster equipped with an Intellistick data logging system to measure oil degredation over time with different oils to try and establish some baselines. I have some graphs that we can post at some point, but I'd want to try several other oils out with the system before ever making any recommendation.

Yep and Mobil 1 keeps feeding them money getting the "recommendation" too.. It's OK, we are certainly on top of solving the problems they created...

The engines that we have torn down to study have had similar reports of failure when the IMS lets go... But most recently we have seen a rash of failures from worn timing chains that shear bits that end up being picked up by the scavenge pumps. This ends up resulting in a jammed scavenge pump that shears the pump drive as well as breaking the drive that it engages into, on the cam sprocket. In one instance this led to a catastrophic failure when the valve timing was advanced enough to contact every piston to the valves as the cam sprocket slipped on the cam drive when the pump seizure occured. The bits in the oil may be from a worn timing chain that has lost pieces... Like this one. That led to this... Which led to this The engine only had 32K on it. The timing chains in these engines seem to wear quite quickly as every engine we have torn into had worn chains. There is another presumption that we believe attributes to this but if I mentioned it a battle would erupt about oils :-) We have seen several IMS that have not totally failed yet that are filled partially with oil and were ready to let go.. We believe that the oil inside the IMS is can create out of balance issues under acceleration and cruise at some speeds and that may work hard on the IMS bearings and lead to a failure. We are documenting every failure we see and trying to establish trends to help understand what happens, when it happens and why, so we can upgrade to avoid future occurrences. We have a solution for this and it is being tested now. It does NOT use Porsche components

Glad to see that you guys have noted our efforts and appreciate what we are doing with the Boxster and 996 engine program. I certainly don't want to be deemed a "salesman" here, so I will keep specifics off line... All I will say is you will be very happy with the plan we have created for enhancement of the Boxster engine. I just noticed the thread and decided to pop in to say hello! Jake Raby