I Do Cars did a tear down of the M96 engine from a 986 Boxster S. Seeing inside of them, it makes sense how these motors cost $20K to teardown, rebuild and remedy Porsche's cost cutting in their first water cooled engine. I would own another 986 or 996 in a heartbeat. Tear down video: https://youtu.be/qrkALiq5hTU?si=0OmBKYcim-cflJEy
Thanks! I’m not sure what people expect from these engines- they’re somehow basically the most reliable car engine from that era (they regularly came out at the top of reliability ratings), while still making ~1.5x the power per displacement that was standard at the time. Things like the D chunk failure and IMS failure can happen, but most people will get a reliable 200-300k miles before they do, and the IMS can easily be prevented with a new bearing kit that is fairly cheap and easy to do. The 2.7 Boxster engine had none of the cylinder issues- that’s the Porsche to get if you want low hassle fun transportation IMO.
It’s true they’re expensive to rebuild properly but you can get used engines with a lot of life left for just a few k.