2.5L Boxster motor with slipped sleeve

[Justin@Athens]

ok, so I borrowed my neighbors truck and went and collected all my "parts" that were formerly an engine.

My questions are:

How much is it worth in its current state?
How much is it worth if I put new head gaskets on and get good compression results?
and
How hard would it be to break the whole thing down an rebuild it?

Here's the carnage....





















I'm going to need some help here boys...I don't even know what most of this crap is!

[Justin@Athens]

[Scuba Steve]

bump because it's an interesting thread... unfortunately I don't have any answers.

[syncroid]

I certainly don't see a slipped sleeve in any of those pictures.

[bell]

you're going to need alot of little seals and gaskets to put her back together......
i'm moving this weekend (tomorrow morning) but early next week if no one else posts the info i'll use photoshop and point out what's what and what'll need replaced so it won't leak......
i'm curious to know what the cam timing/deviation was and also why there are 2 air/oil separator bellows there.......

[Justin@Athens]

Originally Posted by bell

you're going to need alot of little seals and gaskets to put her back together......
i'm moving this weekend (tomorrow morning) but early next week if no one else posts the info i'll use photoshop and point out what's what and what'll need replaced so it won't leak......
i'm curious to know what the cam timing/deviation was and also why there are 2 air/oil separator bellows there.......

First, thanks to both ops bell and kaisen for your educated thoughts.

As money is tight, this project hasn't really gone anywhere and I really don't have a legitimate reason to fix it other than to gain the experience/improve the resale value.

I really want to fix it because its just my nature, but at the same time I know that my limited expertise isn't going to do anybody justice down the road--there are too many upgrades this thing needs to be truly reliable for anyone else.

With that said, anyone interested in this core for dirt cheap?

[Zeke]

Did you contact Jake as I suggested in the 2nd post?

[Justin@Athens]

Yes, a couple months back I did speak with his assistant, however I couldn't provide a definitive mof and he didn't seem that interested in the core--maybe I'll try them again though. I have purused the flat six innovations website thoroughly and would like to see this motor fixed properly--and it seems he is the man for that.

[azasadny]

Call Tab Tanner at Autobahn Garage in Findlay, OH. He may be interested or know someone who is...

European Auto Repair Findlay, OH ( Ohio )

[techweenie]

There's a Boxster/996 engine specialty rebuilder in the Long Beach area called UFO. You might contact them and see if they buy cores.

ufomotorsport - Home

[Justin@Athens]

Because I am a curious sort of fellow, and apparently not that bright either--I decided to take it apart. Mainly because that is what I do with things that don't work at my house. Financially, it was a stupid idea--I know that already.

So, some of the things I found:

-Water pump fins had disentegrated into pieces, found many in various coolant channels.
-Most likely had a bad air/oil seperator.
-NO IMS bearing failure evident upon my cursory inspection.
-Some unusual damage found on the camshafts themselves and on the inside of the engine halves and inside edge of the cylinder walls. (see pics)













Heads are also damaged on the side opposite from their surface, most likely form my inexperienced removal techniques.

I have misplaced the pic of the camshafts, but can only observe that they appear to have strange wear markings between the lobes? These could be manufacturing marks and may be present from new--but they appear odd to me.

[Zeke]

Those cylinders look nasty. Maybe due to overheating?

[speeder]

It does seem that you had some type of catastrophic internal engine failure from your description. I had not heard previously of water pumps disintegrating and polluting the coolant passages like that. That's a new one.

Most M96 motors have been OK, the failures trend pretty heavily on the earliest engines. You cannot gauge the reliability of anything by simply reading Internet trouble-shooting boards. They are obviously slanted towards representing owners with problems...depending on the popularity of the car, there could be 100 or 1000 people who did not experience the given issue for everyone who did. Your issue could be extremely rare if I'm reading your description correctly.

[syncroid]

I still see no evidence of a slipped sleeve. The tops of the cylinders do look like crap and so do the bore linings, but I see no failure here. I am quite confident in saying that the air/oil separator was the source of your "genie".
Kudos to you though for taking it apart and seeing what makes it tick.

[Schumi]

I believe those odd marks on the aluminum are weld spots, from the factory. Many of the early motors had porosity issues / inherent cracks that were welded at the factory.

I see nothing else majorly wrong with that motor. It maybe overheated a bit due to the failed waterpump.

I would care to bet that a good cleaning, flushing, new seals and a new pump and AOS and it would be back to normal. Or, as normal as a pre-2000 motor can be.

This is a major problem n the Boxster/996 community- a general lack of knowledge by many owners on anything engine related whatsoever, paired with a relatively modern (at the time) and complex engine design that many small town mechanics don't know jack about. People read about the slipped sleeves or D-chunk issues on the early cars and that is assumed to be the problem. I wonder how many cars bad mechanics 'wrote off' thinking that the sleeves slipped or the IMS failed when in reality, the AOS just died, which is a relatively inexpensive fix as long as the car is not driven long.

[speeder]

What people are calling the "air/oil separator" is an extremely common failure on these engines. It happened to mine and the symptoms are nasty but it's no big deal either in expense or dificulty to repair.

[syncroid]

Originally Posted by speeder

I had not heard previously of water pumps disintegrating and polluting the coolant passages like that. That's a new one.

We see it all the time. When the pumps get really bad, they hit the housing and the blades disentigrate. You never find them until you take the motor apart.

[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by Schumi

I believe those odd marks on the aluminum are weld spots, from the factory. Many of the early motors had porosity issues / inherent cracks that were welded at the factory.

I see nothing else majorly wrong with that motor. It maybe overheated a bit due to the failed waterpump.

I would care to bet that a good cleaning, flushing, new seals and a new pump and AOS and it would be back to normal. Or, as normal as a pre-2000 motor can be.

This is a major problem n the Boxster/996 community- a general lack of knowledge by many owners on anything engine related whatsoever, paired with a relatively modern (at the time) and complex engine design that many small town mechanics don't know jack about. People read about the slipped sleeves or D-chunk issues on the early cars and that is assumed to be the problem. I wonder how many cars bad mechanics 'wrote off' thinking that the sleeves slipped or the IMS failed when in reality, the AOS just died, which is a relatively inexpensive fix as long as the car is not driven long.

Yup. Internet forums are a great tool, but they can also be a spectacular source of fear mongering. When I had an E34 540i they were known for sometimes losing compression as the Nikasil cylinder liners broke down due to high sulfur content in US gas, the issue became the greatest fear of all 540i owners. The initial symptom of Nikasil issues is a rough idle, which lo and behold is the same symptom as failing valve cover gaskets (very common). I read an interview with a mechanic from a nationally known BMW engine rebuilder, he stated that the significant majority of "Nikasil" motors that they received as cores actually had bad valve cover gaskets.

[speeder]

Originally Posted by Zeke

Those cylinders look nasty. Maybe due to overheating?

Please educate the rest of us; what looks nasty about them? I see nothing wrong in the pictures. They have some weird reflections from the screwdrivers behind them in the photo, that's about it. They look perfectly fine.

[rfuerst911sc]

If you ever just want to get rid of it let me know I'd like to make a table out of it. No joke. I'm in Marietta and can pick it up.