I have heard from several sources that AWE TUNINGs 997 Twin Turbo car , Toad Sager’s the owners actual car, with his “ AWE Tuning/ GIAC USA 750R package” has DESTROYED and GRENADED his 997 Twin Turbo engine. Has anyone else heard of this and is this TRUE? The engine is all apart with signs of major detonation, destroyed and hammered pistons and destroyed rod bearings. Total engine failure.

Anyone with info please chime in....one scarey thought for AWE.

 

Dude, you need to calm down. I responded to this in the GT2 thread.

 

Dude, believe me this stuff doesn't get me excited. It's fine that you had clarified what happened. This sort of stuff is common when you are doing R & D. Best of luck with getting that headache rectified.

 

When I read stuff like "major detonation, destroyed and hammered pistons and destroyed rod bearings. Total engine failure", I gotta throw cold water on that. That is purely the rumor mill talking. If you want pics of the torn down engine, shoot me an e-mail and I'll gladly share. The engine never stopped running, it just developed a cold knock.

It's already handled. Thanks for the good wishes.

 

It was pretty gruesome and inoperable from what I saw, so I don't know what your getting at.

 

Here comes the rumor train, folks.

Anyone that wants pics, send me an e-mail. Nothing to hide here.

 

my god @@ i feel really sorry 4 Toad Sager

 

Ok, before I sign off for the weekend, I have one more post for this thread.
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I know that the rumor that we “blew our engine” seems like juicy gossip, but the only reason people even know about it is because our car has been sitting at a local dealership for the last month as this fiasco got settled.
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We’ve been in the tuning business a long time. Does anyone really think we’d take our development car into the dealer for an engine warranty if we were not 100% certain it was not related to anything we did? Our business name is on the registration card, so there was no “hiding” whose car this was.
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After all was said and done, Porsche tore the engine down on their own dime and could not find any reason for the failure and decided to blame it on “possible evidence of DME tampering”. Bogus, but that is a whole other story.
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So if anyone wishes, they can have a field day with rumors of “total engine destruction”, but in the end this story is a non-starter. This is not the only 997TT engine that’s been replaced nationwide in the last month. When our car went in at the end of September, there were 5 engines in stock at various Porsche US warehouses. As of yesterday, there was only one left.
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It sucked when the drama was being played out between us, the dealer, and Porsche corporate, but everything has already been handled and is behind us.
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Have a great weekend, everybody.

 

any idea on the actual cause despite Porsche not owning up?

 

This stuff happens a lot stock or not. The failures and the rumor mill that is. When you data log the AWE kit as we did the cars data looks fine and "happy". Back in the day I remember very concervative big euro tuner cars with k-24's, exhaust and 1.0 bar map claiming 530hp...going into the dealer for new engines but it was handled poorly by pointing at the aftermarket as soon as an exhaust was seen. It is a touchy subject with Porsche. Hope it all works out and I'm sure it will.

Good luck.

 

Sorry for your misfortune.
I don't know the particulars, but I'll give my opinion.
I doubt it's any kind of 'design flaw' in the engine being covered up by porsche. Engines fail for a variety of reasons, the fact that the porsche NA wharehouse has replaced 5 is anecdotal and meaningless. At my dealer, a brand new tt was having the engine replaced bc of an 'emissions issue', these days it is common to replace the entire engine as a core, that's where the rebuilt engines from porsche come from anyway.
As far as 'spinning a bearing', I've had a lot of experience in this with american v8 racing engines (600+hp sprint car motors, etc) back in the day. When you spin a bearing, I assume you're referring to the rod bearings as opposed to the crank or main bearings, which rarely fail. These fail for a couple of reasons, usually distorsional forces at high RPM. The factory forged steel con rods will eventually flex/fail at that hp level. This is why top engine builders often use the stronger Carrillo forged chrome moly steel rods or titanium versions(ala GT3/2). In drag racing, we actually used lightweight but strong forged aluminum rods, accepting that they had a short lifespan ,but allowed the high RPM /high HP stress usage.
I think that if you're planning on pushing 800hp, you will need to beef up the internals a bit more. But, this stuff happens in racing development, it's good that you're open about it anyway. Please don't take this as a criticism of AWE in any way, merely pondering why it failed.
I would fully expect porsche to point to the DME as a cause and decline coverage, can't really fault them there I'm afraid. Can you post some pics? GL
c

 

I did not mean to suggest there was some kind of design flaw. I was saying the same thing as you. These engines do not have a zero percent failure rate, and they are regularly replaced for a variety of factory reasons.

Yes, you are correct, and it is fairly common knowledge that the rods are the limiting factor on this and the 996TT engine at big hp/tq levels, but that is one of the reasons we limited bolt on power development to the mid 700hp range with our kit. There is a lot of evidence out there that this is a safe level for stock internals.

First thing we did was use this incident as a data collection exercise, and we were really pleased with what we saw on the forensic teardown. All 6 rods were straight as an arrow on all planes, piston crowns were 100% free of deformation or any sign of detonation. Valves were perfect. And there was even no sign of oil carbonization on the piston backs or anywhere else in the engine. The only damage documented was to cylinder 5 rod big end bearing shells, which lightly scored the crank journal there, and a small witness mark on the cylinder head overhang where the piston was kissing the head slightly after the rod shells stacked themselves. You could grab the #5 rod/piston assembly and pull up on it slightly after the shells spun.

No range 2-6 ignition counts which shows no incident of over-rev.

All in all, this was the silver lining to the issue. No evidence of mechanical fatigue or failure from excessive power application, which is what we expected.

Well, if they had taken that approach from the get-go, I would not have been surprised either. But they instructed the dealer to tear down the engine. After there was no evidence found of external "abuse", they then ducked responsibility with a generic "blame the aftermarket part". The official cause for warranty denial was the possible DME tampering evidence, and I point blank asked them if anything that was found in the engine contributed to that denial, which they responded no to. That's what the Magnusson Moss act exists for... but that is a whole other story.

Our main concern was about the integrity of our 750R kit, and we were pleased with the results of this unplanned extensive evaluation.

Cyl 5 rod pics: