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10-15-2009, 07:05 AM

IMS failures are the most confusing and exasperating issue for new Boxster owners. I recently purchased a 1999 with 74K mi. The Carfax history indicated it had been a lease car for several years and all maintenance had been done in accordance with the lease and records I could track down from dealers indicated nothing major had been done to the car, yet there was a year period where there was no record of maintenance. I had purchased the car (my first Porsche) on impulse breaking all the rules with no PPI. Since there is no dealer close by I found a highly recommended local independent repair shop and took my car to them. After the mechanic went over my car and told me all the things that could go wrong with it including the dreaded IMS failure and the RMS I started to think I had made a huge error in judgement. While paying for the 60K tuneup (no record of it being done) and new rotors I had a chance to talk with the owner, who is a long time Porsche driver, and he told me that if the IMS is going to fail typically it would have happened by now. I know that is not an absolute but it was comforting compared to what I had heard. I decided to drive the car and enjoy it, have started AXing it and tracked it last weekend at Infineon. I've met a lot of Boxster owners at these events who are running 100K+ miles Boxsters with no IMS failures, one is even approaching 200K mi. Maybe I'm naive about it but it seems the harder I drive this car the better it responds and I'm going to continue to race it as well as drive to the market for milk and bread in it and not worry about IMS or RMS. As a final to my story I showed my mechanic the Raby cure for IMS failure and he told me if you install it you have a bullet proof motor and can completley forget about IMS.

10-15-2009, 07:05 AM	#9
onshore Guest Posts: n/a	IMS failures are the most confusing and exasperating issue for new Boxster owners. I recently purchased a 1999 with 74K mi. The Carfax history indicated it had been a lease car for several years and all maintenance had been done in accordance with the lease and records I could track down from dealers indicated nothing major had been done to the car, yet there was a year period where there was no record of maintenance. I had purchased the car (my first Porsche) on impulse breaking all the rules with no PPI. Since there is no dealer close by I found a highly recommended local independent repair shop and took my car to them. After the mechanic went over my car and told me all the things that could go wrong with it including the dreaded IMS failure and the RMS I started to think I had made a huge error in judgement. While paying for the 60K tuneup (no record of it being done) and new rotors I had a chance to talk with the owner, who is a long time Porsche driver, and he told me that if the IMS is going to fail typically it would have happened by now. I know that is not an absolute but it was comforting compared to what I had heard. I decided to drive the car and enjoy it, have started AXing it and tracked it last weekend at Infineon. I've met a lot of Boxster owners at these events who are running 100K+ miles Boxsters with no IMS failures, one is even approaching 200K mi. Maybe I'm naive about it but it seems the harder I drive this car the better it responds and I'm going to continue to race it as well as drive to the market for milk and bread in it and not worry about IMS or RMS. As a final to my story I showed my mechanic the Raby cure for IMS failure and he told me if you install it you have a bullet proof motor and can completley forget about IMS.