WANTED Boxster for daily driver

[Richard]

Hello to all,

I'm looking for a Boxster to use as a daily driver.

Small engine size.

I have a budget of £6k, from what I've seen there are a few options.

Please PM me if you know of anything out there.

Thanks.

Richard

[Berny]

Take Care yes there cheep Boxters out there I have seen lots that have been poorly maintained and need as much money spent on them as they cost!

[Chris_911]

Might be worth posting on boxa.net

[cubist]

Possibly mums.net too...

[richkaz]

From todays Honest John in the Telegraph.


Q. My 2004 Porsche Boxster S was purchased in 2007 from a main dealer with 10,000 miles on the clock.
The car has been regularly serviced but a catastrophic failure has been diagnosed as a jumped timing chain.
I have been advised that a new engine is recommended at a cost of £ 15,000 - Porsche GB has offered little support.

A. It's a well documented problem with the 3.2 engine in the 986 Boxster S and 3.4 ( 996 ) 911.
The most common fault seems to be the rear main bearing oil seal failures and engine intermediate shaft
bearing failures that lead to the jumped chain. The seal costs about £ 700 to rectify at an independent.

[Le Samourai]

Might be worth posting on boxa.net

This. RMS is no big deal, unless oil is gushing out, generally speaking a small weep or drip from the rms is to be expected (ie. very common) most specialists would advise to leave it until the clutch needs replacing then your rms can be done at the same time for around £20 for the part plus fitting. There is no guarantee it won't start leaking again tho, 'they all do that sir' and in no way does a leaking rms mean impending ims or engine failure.

IMS is a bigger worry but figures recently released from Porsche on the m96 engine state a fail rate of around 3% (that's 3% of all boxsters and 996 produced worldwide) It's blown somewhat out of proportion on the internet although it does happen. As long as it's had regular services and oil changes you should be okay. £6000 should get you a well looked after 986 or 986S. Definitaly sign up at boxa.net and feel free to ask questions, everyone's very helpfull.

[Bruce M]

IMS is a bigger worry but figures recently released from Porsche on the m96 engine state a fail rate of around 3% (that's 3% of all boxsters and 996 produced worldwide) It's blown somewhat out of proportion on the internet although it does happen. As long as it's had regular services and oil changes you should be okay.

As I understood it, the problem is, good or poor servicing isn't a major factor. Unlike older designs one end of the shaft is supported by a sealed bearing with no oil feed, relying on the pre-lube grease. As the grease ages, breaks down or leaks out if the seal fails, the bearing overheats & wears. Older sixes had a proper oil bearing.

[Le Samourai]

IMS is a bigger worry but figures recently released from Porsche on the m96 engine state a fail rate of around 3% (that's 3% of all boxsters and 996 produced worldwide) It's blown somewhat out of proportion on the internet although it does happen. As long as it's had regular services and oil changes you should be okay.

As I understood it, the problem is, good or poor servicing isn't a major factor. Unlike older designs one end of the shaft is supported by a sealed bearing with no oil feed, relying on the pre-lube grease. As the grease ages, breaks down or leaks out if the seal fails, the bearing overheats & wears. Older sixes had a proper oil bearing.

Your correct it is a design issue, and regular servicing will not necessarily protect you from ims failures.

[richkaz]

If those figures are correct, that must have been one of the worst engines ever produced .
I never believed Honda's claim that they never had a warranty claim on any VTEC engine, but a failure rate of one in thirty three can't possibly be correct - can it ?
Surely they mean 0.003% ?

[Le Samourai]

I don't have the figures to hand but Porsche settled a class action in the US last year re IMS failure and I remember reading on rennlist the IMS fail rate on US 996s alone was estimated at between 4-10% so even higher! I had a quick search for the thread on rennlist bu t couldn't dig it up I'm afraid.

[Le Samourai]

Found the post I was looking for on rennlist:

Quote:
Originally Posted by golftime
I too am a bit confused by this settlement. First of all, it doesn't appear that my VIN is included (WP0CA29974S650302) although I would appreciate any assistance in confirming this. That said, I am also not sure what it actually means if your VIN is not included, yet your car is pre-2005. Are they saying the problem is limited to a certain production run of bearings, because if so, from everything I have read, Porsche seemed to stick in whatever bearing they had on supply at the time of production. Additionally, for those of us who haven't had the IMS upgrade done yet, if our cars have known defective bearings, it seems silly to wait for an engine failure if Porsche has acknowledged the bearing is likely to fail. By only paying after the bearing has failed, it almost seems that Porsche is waiting us out with a problem they know exists, hoping we get to 10 years or 100k miles first.

By using GMP that comply with the ISO 9000 and 9001 standards they can track by s/n which bad bearing lot # went into which car. So you are not wrong in your thought process but it involved a design change and bad bearings.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Cefalu
What is the basis of knowledge for your opinion?

Reading when they went to the single row design and working with GMP's and ISO-9000 standards.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike J
Because they have not included the 1999-2000 cars, nor any cars more than 10 years in service. Most of the 2001-2002 cars will be excluded, and some in 2003 depending when the deliver was made. You telling me that the 1999 and 2000 996's do not have this issue?

They went to the single row design in 2001. So if the 1999-2000 cars all had double row with good bearings then why recall them?


Quote:
Originally Posted by Cefalu
The following paragraph was pulled from the documents posted in the link above which explains the core issue of the lawsuit. Basically, the single row design experienced failures of 4 to 10%, where the dual row design has "far less than 1%"

"Discovery and investigation establishes that Porsche adopted a single row design for the IMS in 2001. The payment of warranty and goodwill claims of owners of Porsche vehicles with this design of the IMS (all Class Vehicles) spiked up to between 4% to 8% of all such Vehicles in the United States, and 4% to 10% of all Class Vehicles in California. Warranty claims for Porsche Boxster and 911 vehicles relating to IMS issues, which had different versions of the IMS, have uniformly involved claims of far less than 1 % of such vehicles. Indeed, to date, Porsche has spent over $20,000,000 reimbursing customers for the parts and labor necessary to repair vehicles experiencing engine damage or failure as a result of the defective IMS shaft. (This entails approximately 3,100 claims granted under warranty or good will.)"

The suit requires that if you suffered a IMSB failure prior to the date of settlement agreement you will have 90 days to file your claim once the settlement agreement is finalized.

The law firm for this matter seem to be pretty experienced in class actions. Interestingly, they have represented many strippers in class action suits against strip clubs in So Cal.

Presumably the acceptable failure rate is less than but not greater than 1% when you read the above. When their rate quadrupled and then went up 10 fold in California lets assume that alarm bells were going of left and right in Zuffenhausen. Based on my experience with some manufacturing design making a rolling change is not an easy thing to do.
I think the discovery documents would indeed be fascinating, but dry, to read. I suspect that Steffan Reinerts , based on the Germanic name, is the Porsche engineer/manager who has the most knowledge of the problem.

[PSut]

Comedy comment from Cubist about mums.net
Wife goes on there all the time and I don't think cars are a common topic.

I had a 986 Boxster S and it was great.
Bought from Portiacraft and who honoured their warranty to replace some bits.
So cheap to buy now amazing value for the money - I'd have another if I didn't need 4 seats.