Silver_TT

I'm sorry to hear it. A couple thoughts.... before you scrap the engine it would be worth knowing what happened. What kind of metal is in the oil? Small bits of ferrous metal? Given that it's not the IMS bearing, I'm wondering where it came from. Without knowing anything more, I would agree though that when there's metal in the oil the engine is usually toast because it's hard if not impossible to flush it all out. I'm not familiar with the market in Canada but in the USA there are numerous companies that buy wrecks or cars such as yours and part them out. I have found their prices vary widely and it's all about what you can negotiate. You would want to do your own due diligence but my guess is the car wont be worth too much without an engine...I would think a few thousand bucks if it's in good shape and not much more....

When I think "plastic bits in the oil" variocam wear pads is also one of the first things I think of......but those are brown, and he states the rubber/plastic is white.

Very nice shot! :welcome:

Great pictures. Welcome to the best Porsche technical site on the 'net.

Nice pic! FYI, I don't think a boost leak is going to cause that behavior.

+1, the Turbo's do have a "rattle" at idle like that -- sounds like a loose chain with poor tension or so as you said. On my car you could even see in the records that the first service appointment the original buyer made at the dealer was to investigate a "rattle" from the engine, exactly like we are stating. You can see in the notes that the tech says this is perfectly normal and nothing to be alarmed about.

It is when you're purporting that someone paid that much over market value for your m96.

So are you saying someone paid $20k for your m96?

I think this was part of JFP's initial point: first focus on building a solid foundation so you minimize the possibility of needing to replace the engine in the first place. If you have to, then at that point it's a sunk cost anyway because your car is only worth its weight in scrap metal without a working engine. I made the point that the Turbo doesn't have the vulnerabilities that are inherent in the M96 so that should be priced-in and narrows cost spread of the two vehicles. Three pages into this thread and you still seem naïve to the point. The only thing I'm a "purist" about is making poor financial decisions.

Indeed, nice one JFP! ha-ha Well, I don't know near as much as JFP but I know a good deal when I see one. If I am a Turbo-evangelist it is not because I want others to feel inferior or bad about their M96. I just say the things I wish I had read or that someone that knows had told many years ago.... I only want the best for the Porsche community and I hate seeing folks disappointed or wasting money. Happy Holidays!

Loren can answer your questions more accurately and definitively, but I believe the fluid replacement interval is ~60K miles and the gear oil is Mobilube PTX. Loren will correct me if I'm wrong on that I'm sure and he's the go-to on the official source. I just wanted to tell you as friendly advice (and maybe you already know this) -- I speak from deep experience on this topic -- don't even think for a millisecond about using anything except the OEM fluids on these gearboxes. It doesn't sound you plan to, but I just want to save you a whole lot of time, money and worry.

That's in fact what got me into a TT (and on the bandwagon). I previously had a M96 and when I figured out all the money I was going to have to spend in preventative maintenance before even thinking about enhancements -- and then still have a much lesser engine -- it was a no-brainer, the cost difference is too small. While what first attracted me to the vehicle, the additional horsepower is really only grazing the surface of what the Mezger brings to the table. From an engineering perspective it's near flawless. Even at stock the car is just downright nasty on a track. Makes my heart skip beats under full boost on the straights.

That's fine and for folks that are attached to their car, I get it. Another user on this site recently had their engine rebuilt by Jake Raby despite the age of the vehicle and cost of the car/repair. They said they like their car and have changed various things to be exactly the way they want it. They plan to keep the car and didn't want to part with it. Fine. I get it that all decisions aren't always an exercise in economic optimization. If you are happy with your car and all the money you spent to mod and rebuild the engine, I certainly don't have a problem with it. I just think it would have been misleading to give the "simple" answer to the original poster's question.

I know some of these software tuners offer 30-day trials, etc. Before you spend your hard earned money for good, see if you can do a before-and-after using a dyno.... then make the decision if it's really worth the money and giving you what you expected before your trial period expires and your money is gone.

After my experience I became interested and wanted to know "how can a company claim a tune adds that much HP and when I took it off, I couldn't tell a difference?" The shop I have always gone to has a dyno. Local PCA has had events where we go over and use his dyno for the day. From what I have seen for the modded NA 996s, you would need to haircut those stated figures...they are giving you the best case or there is some other caveat like the power increase is only at certain [moderately useful] points on the curve -- not linear like you said. I have even heard people retort things like "Well I don't care if it isn't really faster, it mentally feels faster and that's good enough for me." Whatever floats your boat but in my experience "tuning" is much lighter on the scientific rigor than what the people buying it perceive. I'm still baffled by the tuning hype out there given the lack of actual, verifiable, real results. Assume for the moment that these stated claims of HP increase are correct and it's the cost/HP you state. Even if that were the case, all of this and trade-offs just to get an extra 25-30 HP. Like someone already said, the view isn't worth the climb or toll it could take later. And all of this is assuming you have a dedicated track car, because if you want to be able to drive on the street you need to pass emissions...... and I already gave you the surface of a story of the type of thing you could be leaving yourself vulnerable to. They aren't horsing around with emissions anymore. In the state I was working in the 3rd party emissions software vendor told me flat out on the phone, "look man, I know you're running a flash on the car even if you just bought it and didn't know it's there. I can see the checksum of your ECU binary doesn't match what comes from the factory and is on the 100+ other registered 2002 911 Turbos in my database. You won't pass until the stock flash is back on there." Meaning it was not legal to drive my new car. Not to mention the other issues that flashes present such as suppression of codes as part of their defeats strategies, which makes troubleshooting using the data from the ECU sometimes unreliable since the software is sometimes giving false or dummy signals to keep the car from coding.

Have you tried any of the parts dismantlers? Oklahoma Imports, LA Dismantlers, etc in the USA.... there are quite a few of them and I'm sure they would ship to Dubai if you pay for it. I've bought good-as-new parts from these guys for 1/10th of the price. It only make sense for certain parts but a cluster may be one of those......... The compatibility question would be one for Loren but my guess is that I don't think a non-Turbo cluster will work on a Turbo.

My response was quite direct; the point was that there is no easy and cheap way to add horsepower and performance to his car. The benefits of tuning are little to none on an M96, despite the trade-offs. I just hate seeing folks spending thousands of dollars and getting the idea that it's actually going to make a difference. The point about DE is simply that there are cheaper ways to get more performance out of your car than thinking software is going to magically make your car go faster than what the Germans figured out. I am not the resident expert but it's a well known fact that trying to get more horsepower out of an M96 is like squeezing water from a rock. My 996 TT came with a tune on it and when I took it off I couldn't tell a single bit of difference. The original owner told me "it adds 100 HP to the Mezger." The reason I took it off was because it wouldn't pass emissions in the state I brought the car to, and because the device that it came with that was supposed to be able to switch between stock and various performance/octane modes didn't work. Further, their technical support was horrendous and when I had to drive four hours roundtrip to their "authorized" shop to have the tune taken off because tech support in England told me it required special hardware and software, it turns out they just have some junky Dell laptop with their garbage software running on it. Their authorized tech was an 18 year old kid who was very nice but didn't know how to use a PC, I had to do all the work for him. When I asked him how many Porsche's they have worked on he said that was their first. Anyway, while there may be a handful of decent tuners out there I can really only see it being justified on a Turbo if you're so inclined. I just hate to see folks get the wrong idea and waste money on stuff like this. I made the mistake of doing it so I feel compelled to let other people know because I'm not happy with the experience.

great info, exactly what the OP needed to know....

Sorry but this is completely bogus. A "custom tune" is getting you nothing on a M96 except a lighter wallet and probably pushing your engine out of spec.

What JFP says about taking some DE is really good advice. You really will be amazed how much better you can drive with some DE and practice (the DE is necessary but not sufficient). I don't mean to be a Debbie-downer, I just hate seeing marketing making claims about filters adding 30 HP. Or "high performance" filters that cost ten times as much as the OEM filter. Unfortunately if you read what's out there there's a lot more false information than good information (this site would be an exception because it's moderated). If all it really took to get more HP was adding a different filter, Porsche would have done that from the factory. Congrats on your new car!... they are a blast to drive.

You're not going to be able to add any cheap noticeable horsepower to that car. A lot of people spend money to mod their cars which only places additional stress on the components of the vehicle. Sometimes they get away with it, sometimes it ends in disaster. It also doesn't make any sense economically with your car because for what you would have to spend doing a major overhaul of several components of the vehicle to accomodate the additional stress of more HP, you could just spend the money on a Turbo, for example, which is still going to be better than whatever you are able to do by modding your car. There is no gain with the K&N filter despite what folks say, to me it's just an expensive air filter, that is all. Anyway, I know all the modding folks are going to jump on my case but if you think about it objectively and don't just read some tuners' websites making all sorts of unproven claims, you will see that it's just throwing money away. Conversely, you can add lots of horsepower to a Turbo (a block built to take much more intense punishment).......but it ain't cheap.

Each of those listed ranges refers to a specific range of RPM. So in the case of the engine hitting very high RPM and dramatically exceeding what's tolerated in spec, presumably you would get ignitions in the lower ranges "on the way up" as the engine worked its way up to high RPM. You could be right but I've never seen anything convincing that there's a software bug or that this ECU information is generally not accurate or trustworthy. I would imagine that metering RPM has to be one of the more accurate things the car needs to do and that the tolerance for error would be engineered to be very low. There are folks out there who have had their warranties voided by Porsche because of the like so there's obviously some merit to it. I'm not at all saying that's the case of the original poster or even that it occurs that often, but if you will look around you can see it's happened to more than one person at more than one dealer. Anyway, not a shot at you but I think most tuners are full of it.

Figured it likely was but I'm glad it was that easy for you. Thanks for reporting back the solution and closing out your thread.

Be sure pin 2 on connector B isn't bent/damaged and is generally making good contact per jpflip's diagram. It's not impossible but still seems unlikely that the electronic cluster itself just died for this function only but completely works otherwise. You should maybe speak with some folks with experience on fixing clusters as jpflip already stated. I don't have a lot of experience with this problem but the first question you might ask them is if they have ever seen this particular behavior before, etc. Obviously if it's just a bent pin, that would be the best possible solution.....

Have them load test your existing battery. Any place like Autozone can do it quickly. Last time I replaced my battery I used an Interstate but any reputable brand that is compatible with your car should be fine. The shop you buy the battery from should be able to look your car up quickly and tell you what they have that's compatible. Keep it on a CTek charger going forward when you're not driving it. It will help prolong the life of your battery and avoid issues such as this.