2003 s engine failure?

[Jake Raby]

Don't trust the Dealer diagnosis at all.. These days every failure they see is written off as an IMS failure, because thats easy.

How did they diagnose the failure? By pulling the cam covers you can tell a lot about how the crank responds to camshaft drive and then verify cam timing. If the IMS bearing has seen any sort of primary failure the cam timing will be off enough to note or the cams will not move when the crank is rotated.

It could be an IMS chain tensioner paddle failure, which appears like an IMS bearing failure when it really isn't..
Good score on that car!