Blown Engine

[gschotland]

Originally Posted by stephen wilson

If you want to see exactly what's involed, and judge for yourself, check out the Pelicanparts.com forum . In the "Tech info center" they have a very detailed pictoral of a complete engine tear-down, which shows the bearing replacement steps, as does LN's website.

OK, I stand corrected, at least partially. I checked out the removal/installation procedure on pelicanparts.com. Looks like a piece of cake. :-) Seriously, it doesn't look too bad. It's also detailed just as well on flat6innovations.com. I saw some of it first hand when my car was being done.

I've never had any contact w/LN Engineering, although I've seen Charles Navarro's posts and seen their site before, but not recently. As you said, they're selling the single and double row bearings & renting the puller. They're in business to make $. If they're OK with selling the bearing to anyone, who can fault them?

Maybe I misunderstood Jake; he may have said HE wasn't selling the bearing, only installing it and training/certifying other people to do it. AFAIK, LNE only develops, manufactures and sells parts and doesn't get involved with installations in customer cars or training. The latter is Jake's bailiwick. If your bearing hasn't yet failed, it does seem an experienced mechanic or DIYer could handle the retrofit. If the engine has failed and there's a question as to whether the IMS bearing was the sole cause or a contributing factor, that's where things can get a lot more complicated and intimate knowledge of this engine and all of its "modes of failure" - to use Jake's term - becomes much more valuable.

From what he told me, there's a real lack of M96 rebuilding knowledge out there among experienced mechanics, particularly dealer mechanics, because Porsche only wanted to sell and swap complete engines. As the value of cars with this engine has dropped, mileage is racked up, warranties end, and Porsche jacks the prices of its remanufactured engines way up, the demand for rebuilding and repair has increased. Jake told me he loves to share his knowledge and teach, so much so that his new shop building has a dedicated classroom that includes pro level equipment for producing instructional videos. (Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more. ;-) ) There are thousands of candidates for the retrofit out there and even if he did them full time he'd only be able to do a very small percentage of them (all his words). Why not do what he loves and share his knowledge through training? And so he does.

I didn't see any evidence that he has any shortage of business or is trying to keep all the IMSR business for himself. People ship cars to him from all over the country, and engines from all over the world, so I think this means something about what he offers. When I was there a 986 from CA with a failed engine was shipped in, an engine was being sent out to Russia that had been shipped in for an IMS retrofit (maybe other stuff as well), and he was rebuilding a $30k race engine for a GT3. I had to make my appointment 2 months in advance.

So what's my point? Forget a minute about the guys who are skilled enough to do this job themselves (more power to them). As someone who had to pay for this retrofit to be done, I felt much more comfortable taking my car to a guy who knows the procedure (he'd done around 20 of them at that time), the product and the engine inside and out. I wasn't anxious to have even a very talented local mechanic learn/train on my car, labor cost issues aside. Having the benefit of Jake's expertise didn't cost me any more than if I'd attempted to have the job done locally. My clutch was done at the same time, as was the RMS. Subtracting what these would have cost me locally (parts & labor) and the cost of the bearing & puller rental - if I were to attempt this job myself (ha!) - and the net labor cost to have him do the IMSR was ~$1,000. For the level of expertise and the quality of the result I got, that's a great value in my book. All things to think about if DIY isn't an option.

The person who can do the bearing can also undoubtedly do his clutch and the RMS. For such a highly skilled person, now the cost for Jake to do the job is more like $2000-$2500, probably not worth it.

[stephen wilson]

No problem, I just didn't want to see someone discouraged from doing an upgrade that COULD prevent an expensive failure. Not everyone can afford to pay Jake to do it, though I admit that is the most fool-proof option. Others just enjoy the challange of working on their cars. I certainly wouldn't attemp a complete rebuild, though a few owners have.
Happy New Year!
Steve

[clickman]

Interesting that the guy demoing the bearing replacement on Pelican admitted he installed the bearing incorrectly!

[tony0214]

I calle flat6 innovations to order the retrofit kit for my 2002 boxter 2.7 and the guy told me that even if I changed the IMS bearing in my car since my engine has 80,000 miles on in I still have the problem of a pisible cilinder wall crack and he said he has not seen many M96 engines pass the 100000 miles and he said it happens more on the 99 models!! how true it??????

[Boxtaboy]

Originally Posted by tony0214

I calle flat6 innovations to order the retrofit kit for my 2002 boxter 2.7 and the guy told me that even if I changed the IMS bearing in my car since my engine has 80,000 miles on in I still have the problem of a pisible cilinder wall crack and he said he has not seen many M96 engines pass the 100000 miles and he said it happens more on the 99 models!! how true it??????

Tony, I think you need to take a deep breath and relax a bit. Many people with Boxsters never have any issues at all with their engines. I have had my car for 8yrs now, and the only thing that has broken on me was a coolant tank that cracked which needed replacing (dealer replaced on warranty for free), a peeling radio knob (also replaced on warranty), a worn motor mount (easy replacement), and a water pump that needed replacing at 60k miles. I have had no engine problems whatsover, and I have only changed my oil at 12-15k intervals, and have used only Mobil 0W-40 motor oil.

If you are that worried about your engine imploding (and you shouldn't be), then you can have the LN Engineering IMS bolt retrofit done, but do realize that many people never have these updates done to their cars, and yet, their cars still make it over 100K miles. Don't let people scare you into thinking you have to do so many upgrades on your car. Even if your engine does implode one day, you can always source a used engine, and then have an LN engineering IMS bolt retrofit added onto it before dropping it in your car. In the meantime, I suggest you just continue driving and enjoying your car, and don't let the horror stories you read about come in the way of you enjoying your car.

[blinkwatt]

Originally Posted by tony0214

I calle flat6 innovations to order the retrofit kit for my 2002 boxter 2.7 and the guy told me that even if I changed the IMS bearing in my car since my engine has 80,000 miles on in I still have the problem of a pisible cilinder wall crack and he said he has not seen many M96 engines pass the 100000 miles and he said it happens more on the 99 models!! how true it??????

Scare tactics.

Enjoy your car.

[Oaktown 986]

Originally Posted by blinkwatt

Scare tactics.

Enjoy your car.

I'm at the 100k mark, and the basic maintenance and wear items are still the only things wrong with it. Just keep replacing the wear items as they fail, change your oil every 5k with the proper synthetic, and keep on driving her. I drive mine as though I stole it every time I take her out. IF the engine blows, then the fun truly begins anyway....

time to upgrade

[JTP]

Jake really knows his business and will honestly tell people all that could go wrong with the car and since he's seen alot more destroyed engines than most of us combined I would trust his judgement. Having said that, his honest assessment of the M96 has the unintentional result of scaring people into wanting to sell their beloved Boxster. He wants to stay in business too and he will not succeed if everyone sold their 986/996s.
There's a chance my engine will implode but I will keep enjoying my car. I might get struck by a semi while driving my Boxster too but I will keep driving it rather than a Volvo. There was a chance I would have gotten blown up while I was in Iraq but I didn't and I kept doing my job and enjoying my time with my buddies. After becoming aware of the faults of the Boxster, one needs to balance their desire to enjoy the car and the chances of an engine failure, risk vs. gain.
If the failure rate was so high, Consumer Reports would not give it a 'better than average' reliability rating and I don't think most of us would continue owning these cars.