Well, something horrible happened yesterday and I am trying to keep my spirits up about the whole thing.

Here are the cliff notes.

While driving (going pretty quick) I notice there was a sudden loss of power. I would apply on the gas pedal but there was nothing there. I knew there was something wrong so I began to slow down.

Within about 3-5 seconds I saw a bunch of white smoke coming from the back of the car (mind you there were no loud noises, booms or anything like that). The car got squirrly from all the oil but I was able to keep the car under control. Within another 3 seconds or so, my "engine oil low" warning light appeared in the dash and the motor began making a chattering noise.

I coasted to a stop and shut off the motor. When I got out of the car, the whole rear section, hatch and everything on the back of the car was covered in oil...yuck! Another quart of oil or so was still dripping out of the car and I could not determine where the oil was coming from.

The car got towed and lifted to see if we could find where the leak was coming from...nothing. We added 5 qts of oil to see if we could determine the leak - nothing. We decided to start the car and see if under pressure, we could see where the oil was coming from. It started right up with chattering nevertheless and only the passenger side was running. The left side was not and actually it was sucking air through the exhaust pipe of the driver's side. Shut off the car. Oil started gushing through the top of the motor and came down on top of the pulleys, belts, etc...but we could not visually assess where the leak was originating.

We have no idea what happened but there is obviously something very wrong. We will now bring the motor down to find out if something came out through the block and busted a hole on top (that is our theory since there was so much oil coming out of there so quickly) and then determine what to do next.

I know a new motor from Porsche is around $ 40,000 (yikes!) and that is with a core - if no core, that is an additional $ 18,000. Needless to say, that is a whole crap-load of money but if I want the car to run again, this is probably the easiest way to do it.

What options would one have to consider?

If I am going to have to shell US$ 50-60,000 I would like to feel like I am getting something more out of the deal. Who would you consider having build a motor for your 997.1? I currently have the EVT775 kit and have enjoyed it very much for almost 4 years. The car itself only has 24,000+ miles and the kit was installed some 11,000 miles ago. It was bullet proof until yesterday. Maybe this is a good time to go up to a 1000 or 1200hp kit?

Has anyone had a catastrophic failure of the sort? What options or suggestions could you offer?

I am trying to stay positive because nothing good will come out of me getting upset. Things could have ended up a lot worse and nobody was hurt - except the engine, of course.

Thanks everyone!

 

Sell your car off and by something else. In the end you will have 120k in a car worth 50k.

 

Sorry to hear that, got the shivers just reading it. Hope it looks worse than it actually is after they bring it down. I would think a re-build of the motor would be more economical than buying a new one (and you could upgrade select engine parts along the way, if you wanted). Hope they identify the cause, to avoid repeat!

 

Im sorry to hear this.

I guess it depends on what is damaged first before we can advise. But yes it would be nice to build the engine to take more HP.

It would also be nice to know the cause of the damage if possible.

 

That is a good point and something that will be considered. However, I did buy the car 4 years ago for the price that I could have sold it today (if it were running ) so I don't want to make economical sense out of that quite yet. The car has 90k in mods, so I guess I could part it out if I decided to go that route...that may not be a bad thing to consider.

 

There is a 2007 turbo motor with a reported 22k miles on eBay for 21,999 plus a 3k core charge. Hope that may help

 

What happened? If there isnt a chunk missing from the block I woudl rebuild it. You can buy sleeves that put it pretty much back to stock or youc an go bigger with lower compression and UP THE BOOST

 

how soon will you have the engine out of the car for confirmation as to what is toast.
youre not gonna have to spend ANYWHERE near 60k, or 40k. you can scoop up a 996 turbo motor (exactly the same, and better cam design than the 997) for 12k all day, and depending on what still works on your current motor, you can sell that. lets wait and see whats actually damaged.

 

Probably in the next 2-3 days - definitely by this weekend. I was not aware a 996tt engine could be retro-fitted - that is something that will also have to looked into.

I did a quick excel sheet of different car parts, body panels, tranny and a bunch of stuff and I quickly came up with $ 65k in parts (based on what they would sell for quickly)...of course, I will have to put in the labor (or pay for it) to get everything pulled and shipped but it is such a great car that I would much rather see it put together.

I guess I am just a little heartbroken and just want it fixed or gone. It is going to kill me to see it sitting there on the lift... for what seems may be a while.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions, feedback and looking on ebay and other sources for an engine.

 

can you get a datalog of how the car ran prior to the incident ? i see in your profile the car is heavily modded, so that makes me wonder wtf happened even more now. dont stress (yet).

worst case will cost you 20 grand if you need a new motor.
just an fyi, a friend of mine had an audi s4 that blew its motor, he was able to do a claim through his insurance company (they paid for a new engine).

i have a feeling we'll be seeing a freshly built motor with rods and 1000 hp soon lol

 

That truly SUCKS................. $65K for an engine for these cars is just insane even accounting for the Porsche tax.

If there was white smoke, most probably you blew a had gasket and water got into the engine. It may be salvageable as the first gens have sleeves you can replace along with other stuff. I had a 944 Turbo do that to me and when all was said and done, the entire cost was under $3K as the damage was limited. So keep up the hope.

But if you are going all out with a new engine, there are 4, 4.2 Liter possibilities out there that I salivate over.

 

My friend my stomach sank reading that bringing back memories of last year (no oil issue, but gasket damage that damaged other part of my engine).


Pending what is salvageable in your motor, you can have a better then stock motor build for 25-35K that can handle 1000AWHP!!


Either you can see what your current turbo kit can do with boost turned up or a big turbo set up!!


Sorry to hear about your situation, but if you were even considering to put 50-60K on a STOCK motor....something tells me you are going to fall in love all over again with a fully built one with ALOT MORE POWER!!

 

I say you contact all the big Porsche shops and see what options they have, I can tell you that this has happened before and I'm sure there are some decent rebuild solutions.

My old 775 kit also had motor issues, not catastrophic but there were leaking head gasket and camshaft issues but a lot of the motor was salvageable and since I caught the issue quick. Leads me to think its something in the 775 tune that makes these motors blow... well moral of my story is my local tech built the motor using rods, studs, and obvious gaskets and then I had EPL custom dyno tune the car and have not had any issues since. Its all in the tuning...

 

You have a PM

 

Hope its sorted out soon, its truly not a good feeling when you put so much time, energy and effort into building it to your spec.

Like many suggested on here, you can pick up a motor from ebay or a breaker for way less. I am interested to know what caused your engine issue. Like Salerno hinted, could it be something to do with the tune?