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There are a dozen kits being sold out there. A dozen would be engineers with SKU's of possible cheap bearings. And many posters have a financial interest or emotional interest in the selling of a particular kit. Emotional because, by convincing you to buy their choice, they confirm in their mind the wisdom of their choice.
In the end it is your money, car and choice.
There are many reasons why a part like the IMS might fail.
1. Manufacturing variations.
2. Installation variations in the experience, technique
3. Pre-install condition of the engine
4. Contamination from previous failure
5. Failure of the block holes through which shafts emerge to be true to each other
6. Failure of other parts that were marginal or reused.
You get what you pay for often times.
And none of these have statistical assurance of any great superiority. Remember how many times Porsche engineers made a bad choice. Or they were overruled by finance majors.
One supplier has more experience than any other, more cars with more miles and more years and thus more test cases than any other. So we know more about their bearings than any other supplier. Because we watch the forums. (I have for 8 years and something like 8 forums. Daily!)
Unfortunately, they also supply 4 bearings of differing designs and this has now muddied the waters so make sure you know which bearing is being discussed, quoted, or installed.
My '01S with the single row has its original IMS at ~90k miles through 5 owners and 14 years. Were I to own it still and wanted to keep it 5 years, I'd use the IMS Retrofit from LN. Keep it forever, The Solution. But The Solution only makes sense in the context of a total rebuild and upgrade with no cost limits. Since the labor for any kit is so similar, and since the forum reports on any other kit is so sparse, and since the Retrofit is priced in the middle....
Good luck in whatever you chose to do.
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