[Jamesp]

Wow - a blast from the past! A couple of thoughts on the blanking plate:

The IMS shaft is a pressed assembly and a sealed blanking plate would turn it into a pressure vessel. one that gets temperature and pressure cycled every time the engine runs. That would likely disassemble the IMS tube over time with disastrous results.

The plate would be hard to seal, and would take up real estate on the IMS bearing bore the bearing needs, so the bearing would not fit without additional machining of the IMS shaft which would be complicated.

The IMS threads sure have legs!

I sprung for a Durametric (BUY ONE OF THESE!) and my valve timing is still rock solid after a couple thousand miles with my unique IMS bearing fix which is at least a start. Now I have cam sensor problem I'm chasing and it looks like something electronic crapped out. The engine harness buzzes out clean so I'm looking at the driver for the sensor. My thought is the sensor is not getting energized, just like my thought was the engine harness had a broken wire. Oh well, time will tell and it's a hobby. With luck I wont smoke my ECU searching for voltage. I'm thinking about documenting troubleshooting the camshaft sensor and posting it here as there is almost no information on it on this forum or the rest of the internet. Anybody interested?