windhund116

Were both of these cars damaged from floated valves?

Thanks!

200*mph

Sorry for your loss... My son and I raced CMS a couple of weeks ago with BMW Club in SpecE46s, which are geared similarly to your Cayman. The track is amazing with the new pavement... thanks to track owner Mike Cummings for the huge investment.

Your tires didn't help cause this... they may have added a couple of tenths of cornering G's, but that's not really a factor. You have a good baffled pan, so you should be fine. We run Toyo RRs in Club Racing, sticky Hoosiers in SCCA, with no oil starvation worries.

This just may simply have been your engine's time. One big factor in bearing life is "hanging RPM"... sustained high RPM before sharp deceleration. There are three straightaways where you carried third or fourth at or near redline, in places where we would have "short-shifted" to fourth or fifth, then downshift for the corner ahead. Looking at the video, that's the only thing I see that MIGHT have prevented this... or prolonged the engine's life some.

So now what? You've already determined the car is worth more parted out, BUT the labor factor is large. Also, you can sell off engine parts on rennlist, pca.org or other sites. You could put an engine in it. But before you do, think about all the other places that bearing material could have landed... oil cooler, oil lines, etc. All of that has to be cleaned out or replaced (we never reuse oil coolers after an engine failure... sure recipe for disaster). So...

I would offer the car for sale as a roller, with lots of great track day parts. It should sell fast and for good money, as salvage Boxster engines are plentiful and not that expensive. Cut your losses, look ahead to your next adventure, and get back on track soon !

jasonjm

I second selling it as roller. This is why I wouldn’t track hard a Porsche unless I could afford a new engine and/or trans. Daily driving sure whatever. But if I was tracking it ....

My opinion of late is track slower cheaper cars. Better to track something slower and cheaper than not at all.

As always check out an LS/T based car. Cheap to work on. If it’s just a track car buy an old model. It’ll be fine. So cheap you want the motor to blow up.

slimm

Please post or PM me the results of the oil analysis even though you know your engine is bad already. I have wondered whether a relatively instantaneous failure would show up in their oil analysis. They are looking more at wear metals. If this happened suddenly, perhaps you don't get the material that they detect. I have had a failure that was much less dramatic. Their analysis showed no abnormal amounts of metals in my oil, and hasn't shown any in subsequent analysis, so I feel good about that. However, if your analysis results are "good", then that tells me the test is not good for discovering this kind of failure at least in a test of the oil used during the short failure incident. Thanks.

JimmyGee

That is bad news and I feel for you. I have to ask; had you given any thought to rebuilding the engine prior to the fateful day? If I read your post correctly, you had 115K on the engine. I know all about the reliability factor etc. but the track has a way of not caring what you are driving.

That said, get the advice of a good rebuilder. Good luck.

WolfpackS2k

That thought definitely occurred to me. I was driving the car like my (former) S2000. Probably not smart

zeroptzero

^ The S2000 used to have engine failures under sustained high rpm driving and just after deceleration, then Honda changed the oil jet bolts to address that issue.

Croc

Very sorry to see this situation.
On the pre DFI engines they say oil starvation occurs at high G turns. May this what happened to you.
Deep oil pan and some other mods exist to help with it.
As to solution - no shortcuts are cheaper. It's either put another engine or sell as rolling chassis.

WolfpackS2k

In general yes, you are correct. However, almost all I've read (previously) on the topic says that banked turns and R-comp tires are the big trouble areas. I've never used R comps and if you see my vehicle description in the OP you'll see that I was running a deep oil pan with better baffles.

vader1

You probably have done this already, but have you checked with any Porsche specialty shops in your area? I am lucky to have one a mile and a half from my house. Two former Porsche dealer mechanics and gear heads who run their own racing weekends for Porsche owners up at the nearest track. I don't know what they would charge for a engine rebuild, but you never know. You might find a shop willing to help a brotha out.

I have had a couple shops that really cut my cost when I had no money and did it because they were super cool people. But that was not when driving a Porsche.

Good luck with whatever you decide. This kind of a thing is heartbreaking when it happens. My friend bought a used C4 Vette many years back and the engine lasted a week after he bought it. He lost $8k in 8 days.