I've never heard of the spring breaking. Chances are no harm was done. The engine gets overoiled...

All, I have a 2002 Boxster S and noticed that the engine oil light would flicker. This happened when engine revs got low (close to stall in traffic). It turns out that oil pressure relief spring was broken! I have the spring and it cracked if half.

The dealer (Hennessy, Atlanta) could not see a sign of engine damage but due to this my oil pressure was north of 2 bar and probably never got to 5 bar as it would under full throttle. I will keep my fingers crossed.

Anyone else ever have this?

Joe in Atlanta

that is the oil pressure is quite a bit higher than it needs to be. (The new engines have a variable oil pump that cuts down on this excessive oiling to save a bit of gas... the techs tell me that if the variable oil pump control fails the failure results in the pump delivering oil pressure like the older style oil pumps.)

If there was any problem from the lack of oil pressure you'd know. If you want remove the oil filter housing and carefully dump the contents - oil and filter -- into a clean drain pan and see what you see. If you see a lot of fine metal flake... But my WAG is you won't, that engine suffered no harm.

Sincerely,

MarcW.