Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

Hi all, I'm selling my 968 and will hopefully be getting a C2 996 in July. One question that I've had different answers to;

Does the 996 turbo suffer from the same potential RMS failure as the C2 and C4, or is it a different type of engine???

yes there have been failures on the turbo , but not so many, it is a slightly different motor, don't forget the other main problem was the intermediate shaft failures ,and the failure of the cylinder walls . There were many thousands of these cars built and only a few percent caused a problem. If you bought a 3.6 litre motor the problem does not exist

The one I am looking to buy isn't the 3.6.

Do the cylinder walls and intermediate shafts still cause problems on the 3.6 engine?

think the 3.6 was pretty bomb proof. don't forget the vast majority of the earlier cars were fine, the early cars which were going to fail have all been fixed by now, so I am confident that you will be fine. The other thing to remember is that 996's are cheap cars now(compared to most other 911's) that is because, there were thousands of them built, and their lousy reliability reputation (mostly unfounded) but that's all good news for those who want to buy one

We look after a lot of 996 Turbo's 997 Turbo's, GT3's and GT2's so can say with a lot of authority that the 996 RMS and IMS issues are not an issue on the 996 Turbo, we do recommend RMS replacement on every clutch change though. These engines owe more to the 993 and earlier design and build and therefore benefit from decades of development for reliability (although we have found new genuine intermediate shafts for these motors not falling within Porsche own specification for run out which always makes us chuckle)

With the 996 and Boxster, we have found that the updated IMS that we retrofit is a worthwhile upgrade if you have a clutch replaced, as the standard item has clear design issues which make it a bit of a hand grenade with a loose or missing pin.