2006 Cayman S Opinions?

I know they are fabulous cars. Mostly looking for insight on the model year.  Anything to be scared of on 2006’s?  They don’t deal with IMS stuff do they?  Thanks for any tips. 

Looks like IMS issue was cured in 2005

Lof8 said:

 Anything to be scared of on 2006’s?  They don’t deal with IMS stuff do they?  Thanks for any tips. 

I don't think there are any issues unique to 2006s.  The IMS is bigger on the engines in the Cayman, so the failure rate is low, like ~1%.  You're just as likely to have the cylinder bore scoring issue as an IMS failure.

Aside from those things, the 6 speed shifter cables like to break, the headliners often sag, ignition coils are temperamental, and you sometimes get puffs of oil smoke from a bad oil separator. 

The one in your photo has the LED spars, so it was probably enthusiast owned, and some of those things might already be sorted out.  

I owned a 2006 Cayman S for five years. Great car. No real issues on mine. 

Only issue on my 06 cayman was the soft touch finish on the switches gummed up and peeled off. Dealership replaced them with a hard black plastic replacement. Didn't feel as nice but it looked a hell of alot better. 

In reply to Lof8 :

Sweet cars. I have a couple of friends who had engine failures on the track when their cars were nearly new. They would recommend installing the deep sump oil pan for any track use. The bigger IMS bearing on these cars seems to have longer life, but I understand you have to open up the engine if you ever want to change it.  As part of a PPI it would be pretty easy to change the oil filter and open up the old one to inspect for debris. 

Higher mileage cars are actually better for the (very rare) IMS issues. The bearings need lubrication and when they sit for long periods of time the bearings dry out. Don't be afraid of higher mileage cars that have been well maintained.  The other not so common issue is a corroded power distribution pin located in the cowell area to the pass side of the battery. There was a TSB for this though with an updated part. If it has not been updated it may have starting issues.  Other than that and the minor issues mentioned above they are phenomenal cars.  

Danny Shields said:

In reply to Lof8 :

Sweet cars. I have a couple of friends who had engine failures on the track when their cars were nearly new. They would recommend installing the deep sump oil pan for any track use. The bigger IMS bearing on these cars seems to have longer life, but I understand you have to open up the engine if you ever want to change it.  As part of a PPI it would be pretty easy to change the oil filter and open up the old one to inspect for debris. 

 

I was coming to say the same thing.  The larger IMS bearing in these cars means splitting the case which is magnitudes more work than dropping the trans and doing it with the enging still in the car on the earlier cars.  I've come to the conclusion that the whole IMS issue, like so many 'issues' with modern cars, are blown way out of proportion.  Even more so in this case as the 'best' aftermarket fix is also the most expensive and a lot of scare tactics about IMS funnily enough come from people involved with developing and marketing the fix.  With the early M96's I'd just plan on swapping it at clutch time.  My original plan was to spend up to $30K on the absolute best 04 Boxster S or even 550 edition I could find rather then the later cars.  In the end I used to money to buy another house and spent just $5K on a tatty 99 automatic with a new 20K mile Porsche engine fitted by Porsche as an out of warranty engine.  From what I can tell the old engine died not from IMS but the early cyclinder chucking.  If I were in the market now I'd still stick to the 986 cars or skip forward to the 987.2 cars with the MA1 series engines and no IMS at all.

Adrian_Thompson said:

skip forward to the 987.2 cars with the MA1 series engines and no IMS at all.

The difficulty with that is that the 987.2 came out during the recession and didn't sell very well.  So they're uncommon and people know them to lack the IMS issue.  You end up paying accordingly.  

Just some more details

”89,000 easy miles”

$15.5 obo

maintenance records are not great, 5 owners, has one small accident on Carfax. Owner says front bumper cover and hood were replaced with oem parts, no airbag deployment.