#EngineFailure

A group of owners of 7-liter V-8 powered, 2006-2014 Chevrolet Corvettes have filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against General Motors claiming those models have excessive valve guide wear that leads to engine failures.

The filing, which was made Wednesday, said General Motors is aware of the problem, but has yet to come up with a solution.

The 19 owners have filed more than 70 claims, “including violations of the RICO Act, unjust enrichment, negligence and fraud,” reported Law360.

While track testing the latest Z06 Corvette, Gary Gastelu of Fox News experienced an issue that’s becoming a trend for Chevrolet’s supercharged sports car: engine failure.

“After a few lapping sessions, the engine in mine unceremoniously called it quits,” reports Gastelu in his review.

Motorsports enthusiasts sometimes don’t realize that behind the glamour of car and motorcycle racing we see on television there is an extensive support industry that makes everything from specialized dipsticks to complete racecars. Much of that industry is located in three locations around the globe. England’s so called Motorsports Valley is where 8 of the 11 F1 teams have their race shops within about an hour’s drive from the Silverstone track, in Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire and the South Midlands. About 45,000 people in the UK make their living from motorsports. In the U.S., the racing industry is primarily centered, not surprisingly, around Indianapolis, Indiana and Charlotte, North Carolina, home of the Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR, respectively. It should also come as no surprise that Indiana’s Purdue University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte have both examined the economic impact of motorsports in their states. Purdue reports that more than 23,000 people are employed directly by the motorsports industry in Indiana which in turn are responsible for another 423,000 indirect jobs. A decade ago UNC Charlotte found that motorsports then contributed $5 billion to the North Carolina economy.

Sam writes:

Hello, can you tell me what ever happened with the Porsche IMS concern? At 18K miles, an IMS bearing failure has caused a catastrophic engine failure in my Porsche 911. My Porsche dealer (who has done all of the Porsche recommended service on the car since new) just told me that there is nothing that they or Porsche can or will do, and that it is an isolated incident. I have since been doing research online, and I find out that an IMS bearing failure is not at all a rare occurrence.

I am not a litigious person and I am not out to tarnish the Porsche name. But with a repair cost of $19k, I cannot afford to get my car fixed. I am looking to get Porsche to step up and address what would appear to be a bearing design defect.

TTAC commentator sastexan writes:

Sajeev,

You proved yourself smart by changing over to the older rod shift transmission linkage on your Cougar SVT. My shift cables are broken again – although this time probably due to the 1st mechanic’s ineptitude and unwillingness to finish the job he started and align it correctly. The end that attaches to the shifter is worn out so the shifter keeps popping off the cable end – which was interesting to reconnect while I was driving in stop and go traffic on the (in)famous Washington Beltway. Unfortunately, the plastic insert on the Contour cables is not replaceable – the only way to fix it is to replace the entire cable set – which is a giant PITA. Oh well.

I also talked to Terry Haines, the transmission guy – if you haven’t heard of him before, he’s a former Ford engineer who has his own shop now, mostly working on MTX75 transmissions. He rebuilt my transmission at 100k, upgraded the shift forks, put in a quaife, replaced two syncros that were going bad. He walked me through the procedure to replace the shift cables (more than I can handle) and we also discussed why the Duratec V6s are puking rods – he unequivocally believes that it is due to the powdered metal connecting rods Ford started using around ’97 – he said that some spec must have changed because earlier Duratec have no con rod issues. In his teardown of motors, he said all the ones that have thrown rods had nothing to do with oil starvation – it all had to do with the con rods stretching out of spec and causing spun bearings then snapping the con rods. He also said SVT engines are more susceptible, due to higher compression and typically harder lives. And he said that the 3L upgrades everyone is doing has the same con rods and is just as at risk – Ford just ignored the problem in the Duratec.
Since you have plans for your Cougar, thought you would be interested in this line of thinking.

Sajeev answers:

Great artists steal, and I’m obviously inspired by Paul Niedermeyer’s GM’s Deadly Sin series here. I am currently the owner of three Porsches, as pathetic as that may be, and I’ve experienced firsthand the many ways in which Porsche disappoints its fans and buyers. Few companies have been as comprehensively whitewashed by the media and the corporate biographers, but the truth is available to those of us who wish to look a bit harder.

We will start with the big betrayals, of course, and the unassuming fastback you see above represents perhaps the worst of Porsche’s many middle fingers to the customer base. It is a 1999 Porsche 911, known to everyone in the world as the “996”.

From 1964 to 1998, the 911 evolved on an incremental basis. As with the first and last Volkswagen Beetles, there are very, very few parts which survived the thirty-four-year journey unchanged, but there’s an amazing amount of interchangeability. It is possible to “update” a 1971 911T to look just like a 1998 Carrera 2S, and it’s also possible to “backdate” a 1994 911 Carrera to look like a classic 1973 Carrera RS. Both of these offenses against human decency have occurred many times, incidentally. Take a look here to see a rather lovely example of a “964” turned into a “long-hood” 911S, in a color that will be familiar to many TTAC readers.