I've done the teardown on the 70k 01 Boxster S. Overall, engine looks great, much better than I expected. Here is what I know with respect to the 'greenies'.
1) I went through the entire engine and there are no missing or damaged seals. In fact there are no seals with this same color of green. I thought it might be a damaged seal under the wear pad of the Variocam hydraulic actuator. But, no, thats not it. (pic attached).
2) I DID FIND a small part of the dreaded greenies floating inside of the hydraulic actuator control shaft. (picture attached). It was floating freely and appears that it did not come from the actuator shaft but instead was carried there by oil. Ironically, I could find one other picture online from a person in Canada who discovered the same thing. (see attached pic that is actually a screen grab). I could not find any other greenies anywhere else in the engine. Given thee few datapoints, one could conclude that there is a strong likelihood these came from the Variocam actuator piston and floated into the actuator shaft and became lodged.
3) I tested both of the electric solenoids. Both showed 13.0 / 13.1 Ohms @ 0 volts. When activated by battery both functioned properly and appeared "very firm" in there force. I estimated the force pressure/resistance to be ~ 5-10lbs (just a rough estimate).
4) Prior to disassembly, the car clearly had a change in driving behavior the ~3500 rpm range. It happened at the same general time I discovered the greenies in the filter. The problem also seemed to get progressively worse over time. The local Porsche shop in Minneapolis (Imola Motorsports) confirmed that neither bank was responding when they activated the variocam with the computer.
With all of this, one could logically conclude there is an issue a green seals from inside the variocam disintegrating over time, and working their way into the rest of the oil system. Such a scenario would totally support my experience, research and online research of others.
On the other hand... the gaps (tolerances) of the hydraulic actuator seem reasonably tight and would could argue the no seals are even required inside the actuator; there is a constant flow of fresh oil and high pressure. Whey did Porsche build it this way???
Net net: Im ordering new L & R actuators assemblies and biting the $2k bullet.
Coming soon... im bringing the disassembled block, heads, crank, cylinders to the local and respected hi-perf machine shop for a cleaning, valve grind, Magnaflux, wear measurement, etc. Im going to have them cut in half the old actuator to see what we can learn. Keep in mind, if the seals have failed they could all be flushed out already and we learn nothing and the mystery will continue.
Will keep you folks abreast as a learn more.
