JFP in PA

Glad it worked out for you; there as many parts on these cars that are Audi or VW components, which tend to be much cheaper than the same part in a Porsche logoed box. Always worth a quick look when sourcing replacements.

Actually, in this case I believe the Durametric will not work because the problem is not a fault, but a system coding issue, which requires a PST II or PIWIS to correct.

Well, I've always been an iconoclast in the oil department, depending more upon UOA's collected over the years than either Porsche or the oil manufacturer's hype. As the direct result, the shop uses two oils for the "Wasser gekühlt" M96/97 and 9A1 engines; for most applications we use Castrol Edge with Syntec Technology in a 10W-40 weight. For cars that see extreme cold, or a lot of track time, Joe Gibbs 5W-40. We have always liked the superior film strengths and life of the Castrol Syntec products, the Gibbs product is hard to beat for high ZDDP levels in a market where it seems to be disappearing from many oils. If we could get in locally, we would be evaluating the Castrol Pro Edge products, but as they are not available for general distribution in the US, that is still a future project.

That obviously totally depends upon what happened to the engine during the first failure, some cases can be salvaged, some not. But all the "AT" engines are recycled used cases.

All "AT" engines are to the original factory specs, particularly as there are no over sized rod or main bearings available for these engines.

We use the Wix/NAPA Gold 51042 as our standard spin on, which retail for about $4.50-5.00 on sites like FleetFilter.com. You should also consider the Wix/NAPA Gold 51042XP which uses a totally synthetic filter media and sells at retail for about $3 more than the standard filter. Both have proven to be excellent filters and way cheaper than the way over priced K&N units.

We have many customers running them, and I have them on my personal cars as well. This design offers several advantages, most of which were discussed in a recent Excellence response to a technical inquiry on this subject. The spin on design is a "full flow" type, meaning that all the oil is filtered at all times, there is no by-pass mechanism to allow unfiltered oil to circulate, which is more important than many give it credit for. The OEM housing has a small by-pass valve in its base, which when new allows oil to go around the filter media under certain circumstances. Unfortunately, as this device ages, it can develop a tendency to allow this to occur more often than it was designed to do, which is obviously not a good thing. While some would argue that having the by-pass available at cold start up, or if the filter became plugged with debris is important; they seem to over look that fact that many modern engines do not use a filter by-pass mechanism and do just fine on cold starts, and the fact that the spin on filter is actually rated to flow more oil than the oil pump can move in a given time frame, so cold flow is not a real problem, particularly with modern full synthetic oils. As for having a by-pass to allow oil to circulate if the filter became totally clogged, if your filter reached this state, the engine would already have experienced some significant internal damage and would be a candidate for disassembly, which would only be worsened by allowing the dirty oil to continue to circulate. While the spin on filters are shorter than the OEM cartridge style filters, the two really critical measurements are the filter's total surface area and micron pore size of the filter media. The spin will sacrifice a small amount of total surface area, but depending upon the filter manufacturer, actually has a considerably finer pore diameter, which yields superior filtration characteristics when compared to the OEM units. As for 30,000 mile filter change intervals, in the real world people should be changing out their oil and filters a lot sooner than that, more like 5K or once a year at a minimum, even if they are running quality full synthetic oil.

From this picture alone, you appear to have leaking spark plug tubes, but I would agree with RFM, clean the engine bay first so you can see what is actually going on:

That being said, it is definitely not from the head gasket. I'd be hesitant to start the engine due to knocking sound and foreign stuff in cyl #4/6. Safe to say there is a leakage somewhere, could you help me to understand why a leak down test would provide useful information? Before I haul the engine to a shop and start burning some serious $$$, I'd appreciate a lot for any comments regarding how I could assess the situation better myself. I could drain coolant + oil and check for intermix. Then drop the engine and open cylinder head, at least that should tell is the engine salvageable or not. The car has never smoked, even the tailpipes are clear as a sky, same thing when this problem happened. 85k miles, original water pump (yes, new one is already coming), coolant level now below minimum(!). At least that is good that this problem happened on the front slope of my garage when I was warming up the engine and not while I was driving in the freeway. Much appreciated JFP for your comments!! I guess my driving days are over for a while, this really really sucks :unsure: If you have suffered a cylinder head crack, which is not that uncommon, you can often (but not always) catch this with a leak down test which pressurizes each cylinder while the piston is at TDC and observes percentage leakage. Quite often, cracked cylinder heads will allow the air from the test to bubble into the cooling system as well during the test, which is another confirming data point. If you suddenly find a cylinder or two that jump up over 10% leakage, they would be your suspects. You can also pressurize the cooling system (using a hand pumped cooling system pressure tester) to see if it will hold pressure, which is working from the opposite side of things: You may or may not experience an intermix with this kind of problem, but it is always worth checking the oil and coolant.

As the head gaskets on these engines are multilayer steel, and never fail, I doubt that is head gasket material. More likely, that is a build up of dried coolant from a crack area. Time to run a leak down test.

Be sure all the drains are clear of obstructions: https://sites.google.com/site/mikefocke2/drainsdiagram

Not without checking to see that the calipers are also the same, which I would be will to wager is not the case.

Most likely what the description says, circuit open or shorted on the wheel speed sensor. Check for resistance or continuity between connector pins 4 & 5, if you don't see any, you probably have lost the sensor. Also check the wiring connectors to be sure they are tight.

The 981 S front rotors are 13.0 X 1.1 inch, rears are 11.77 X 0.80 inch, the non S fronts are 12.4 X 0.80 and the rears are the same 11.77 X 0.80 inch. As Loren noted, the carriers are the same.

Some people retain the cats, some sell them. In many states, the vehicle will not pass inspection without the cats physically being present (yes, they actually look). Selling a cat-less vehicle is problematic as well, as some states place the onus on passing inspection on the seller of the car rather than the buyer; if it won't pass inspection, the seller has to either take the car back or fix it so it passes. I guess it all depends upon where you head is at. We only have a couple of customers running the pipes, they kept the cats to put back on when they sell the car. At the end of the day, removing the cats really does not free up much power in anything short of a ten tenths prepared car (reflashed DME, full headers, etc.) regardless of what the cat bypass pipe sellers say, so taking them off a vehicle with no other mods really won't gain you much in performance, but could end up creating a lot of grief, including persistent MIL codes, inspection problems, sale problems, etc.... But it is your car, so you have to decide what you really want.

Check the market for used but serviceable cats for your car, it is probably close to the same number............... New cats are selling for north of $1600 each, a couple of used but serviceable cats for a 996 recently sold for about $750 from a salvage yard. You do the math.....................

Just because something can be done, does not necessarily mean it should be done, or even makes economic sense. With scrap yards paying money for even dead cats, why would you want to destroy a perfectly good one?

With even used cats selling for hundreds, the aftermarket pipes are the more economic way to go............

Before you start beating Hell out of your cats, I'd suggest finding out what a replacement would cost; might just change your thought train a bit................

OEM filter housing holds about 1/2 qt. of oil.

The yaw control function, its most common activity, does not typically involve any loss of grip or a slide to trigger an intervention and get the vehicle back on track, it is the difference between the car's actual changing yaw angle and the one that should be produced by the current steering inputs, hence its "stability management" title rather than traction control.

Be very careful about where you get an engine, the 2.5L engine's were prone to cylinder wall problems, as you have already discovered. You really don't want to ship one of these long distances, only to find out you bought a boat anchor when it arrives.......

Obviously depends upon the ability of the mechanic, couple hours at most.

I was referring to the bolts that hold the flex plate to the crankshaft. The easiest way to accomplish this swap is to put the two engines side by side and move all the stuff from the original engine that is not on the replacement. When the replacement is reconfigured to the original's layout, the wiring harness should plug right in. Word of advice: Do not throw out anything until the new engine is in the car and running, some of the little stuff can be the hardest to find or replace.

You will need to use the flex plate from the old engine and new bolts (they are single use items). You will also need any other Tip associated items (wiring harness, brackets, etc.) be moved to the new engine. The 2.7 engines were all egas and used a different DME and sensor layout, fuel system has changes as well, so there would be considerably more stuff to develop "work around's" to make it work.