[Jake Raby]

I'll try to respond to everyone in the past few posts with just this one post. Steve first.

Originally Posted by smshirk

I don't believe Jake is making any claims as to an increase in power with this upgrade, but my car saw a significant increase in HP with this solution. Granted I have one of Jake's balanced HP 3.6 motors, but I had to have the final solution. The pictures of the parts above simply can't do the real thing any justice. Sliding the parts together in your hands and realizing there is no bearing to disintegrate and dribble particles into the motor is something I just couldn't resist. My first question to Jake was why didn't Porsche do this? The answer of course is $$$$$ like everything else, and in 96/97 Boxsters weren't cheap cars and the 2000 996 I had carried a sticker of over $80k. I didn't buy it new, but the guy still had the sticker. Porsche was broke though at the time, and the M96 project catapulted them back into profitability and left us with motors that were not engineered to previous Porsche standards. In spite of that I still want to drive a Porsche. The Boxster I drive to work everyday looks like any other 986S, but I can run with just about anything on any kind of surface and I know I can drive it every day for as long as I want to. This is my 3rd M96 car. MY only regret is that I didn't find out about about Jake when I still had my 97. It was silver with the red full leather and I could have made it look like the one in the Porsche museum for not a of of extra money. Not that I'm not happy with the rainforest green, it's not an everyday color, which is why I bought it, but the classic silver lightweight 97 would have been my first choice or maybe the 2004 GT silver special edition. I would recommend to anybody who likes his Boxster and wants to keep it, to seriously consider one of Jake's upgraded engines. It is worth every cent and then some. AS info, I have no affiliation other than I am a satisfied customer of flat6 that happens to be lucky enough to live about an hour from Jake's shop. I heard about the IMS development work on one of the forums, either here, or more likely Rennlist and jumped right in.

Steve, We don't claim more HP with the IMS Solution even though your car made a ton more power after the IMSS was installed and thats the first time we've ever seen that much of a power gain using the arrangement. In fact in one of our test cars we have had a stock IMSB installed and dynoed the car, then the same day ripped that bearing out and installed a standard LN IMSR bearing into the engine for a back to back test all for zero gain or loss of power on the dyno. We didn't stop there because we then pulled an all nighter and swapped the IMS solution into the engine for another back to back test and the gain was around 2HP. I consider this nil because its within the percentage for margin of error for the dyno. Basically that day we proved in a direct test that the IMSS didn't lead to any gain or loss of performance in either torque or HP. I would have loved it if we would have seen as much power increase with all the IMSS installs as we did with Steve's car, but that one did have a little twist added to it that has proven to be worth its weight in gold :-)

By design the IMS Solution should make more power because it is hydrodynamic and no materials contact each other as everything rides of a thin film of oil, unlike the factory ball bearing. Even though Steve's car did make A LOT more HP that could be felt in the driver's seat and certainly on the dyno we still won't claim any HP gain for the development. I'll post his dyno before and after on Monday.

Jake, I'm sure some of us on this forum could install this solution with your directions. Not that I'm in any hurry to replace my single row LNE bearing at this time, but some of us like doing this kind of work. Your thoughts?

No doubt. Its not rocket science and we have already produced a very detailed installation video that takes the installer through every step. This install process is the same as any standard IMSR procedure, except you add two steps for the external oil line.

But Charles and I are done with that sort of thing with these critical components.

I suppose a DIY'r could buy the IMSS from their local shop who can source it from their wholesale supplier who will be distributing these. This way the shop would have to offer the support and the DIY'rcan still do their own work, keeping us out of the loop. With this technology we are requiring the installers be instructed on how it works and things like webinars will be utilized to ensure the shops know the differences in the technology and what needs to be done to optimize the install. I have also added the install of the IMSS to my M96 Complete Engine Mechanical Class that I instruct for the Worldpac Training Institute. This will train 350-400 installers across North America about the install in 2013 alone. That will help a lot.
I have included a chapter in my M96 Engine Bible that goes over the install as well and includes a ton of info about how it works, this wil also share the info right from the source and will do so VERY SOON :-)

Charles and I want things to work and we don't want issues, we also don't want the phone to blow up with people making dumb mistakes, because those people get pissy when things don't go perfectly. I have moved completely away from selling retail for anything other than my engines, heck we don't even sell the IMS Guardian direct anymore, I gave all the sales to LN.

As above....

Raby, I take my hat off to you - that thing looks like it comes strait out of NASA.

Two pieces of it were drived directly from aerospace, to include the plain bearing material. That material is the ONLY thing that we found that would work for this and dozens of materials were tried over and over again.

I'll bet you spent a lot of time and effort to get it this far, & going on your past efforts over the last few years, I'm sure it will work exceptionally well.

YEARS!!!!!!!!!!! If I didn't think that it would work exceptionally well I wouldn't have left on a 7,000 mile trip with no tools and no spare parts back in September when Charles and I drove 6,788 miles to Edmonton AB Canada and back in 8 days on our IMS Solution success tour. All we had was a leatherman multi-tool. Flawless performance!

I hope you make a million $$.

What??? Could it be??? Someone who wishes well for someone else in today's world? Leave it to the Aussies, I love them! Won't find that here in the good ole USA.

FYI- The VERY FIRST time that Charles and I disassembled an M96 engine I saw the IMS bearing (that at that time did not have such a widespread bad reputation) and I said "Why the hell did the idiots use that sealed bearing? That needs to be a plain bearing." so then we designed a plain bearing and made it work. It was that simple.

It has taken YEARS to get it to market, heck I even wanted to perfect it and bring it to market BEFORE the ceramic ball bearing (current) IMS Bearing. Charles didn't want to do this since the ceramic bearing was already developed and tested, so we brought the ceramic bearing to market first. We had bad luck with the first three generations of the IMS Solution during testing, so we decided to go ahead and create the ceramic bearing kit and take more time to perfect "The Solution".

Thanks for your dedication.....

No need to thank me. I get paid to play all day long and do what I love to do in my own world. I've never worked a day in my life. Thank you for believing in us :-)

Jake, don't know if you will see this but will I be able to go to my Porsche dealer this summer and have this installed in my 2002 S? I was thinking of doing the LN bearing this summer as my 2002 has only 14,000 miles on it so I feel like I am driving a ticking time bomb as most failures seem to happen in early miles.

Probably not because it took 3 years for hard headed dealerships to install the current ceramic bearings. Then they only did it because the owners were bothering the hell out of them and begging for it. The very last person that I'd recommend to do this work would be a dealership technician.
A funny story occurred recently when the owner of an IMS Solution powered car took his 996 to a dealership to have a race alignment and the technicians saw the oil line going into the bell housing and they had no idea what it did. Pictures of that went viral throughout Porsche dealerships across the country and they even ended up coming back to us from Europe. The owner acted dumb and said he had no idea, that he just bought the car and didn't know that anything special was done to it. None of those people have ever figured out what the oil line was there for, to my knowledge. (LOVE IT!)

Thanks for all you do.

Thanks :-)

These are such fun cars to drive and your solution would only add ten fold to the enjoyment.

What this is all about is just driving without worry. The biggest advantage of the IMSS is an arrangement that simply has nothing to wear, replace or fail.

"One test is worth a thousand expert opinions."