Almost made it to 100k
 

My 2000 triptronic boxster almost made it to 100k right now I'm at 99,500 I started hearing a rattling sound the other day thought for sure dreaded IMS bearing because of all the hype about it ( I think we all live in fear) every time I hear a noise......oh no here we go. First thing i did was jackup the car.....I had a loose heat sheild rattling. fixed that.......still a rattling sounding like bearings failing. So I pulled the engine lid and pulled the belt off. started car and the noise stopped. a Sigh of relief because at that point I knew It was not the IMS bearing. Started spining pulleys........upper and lower idler pulley bearings were shot they would shake back and forth in my hand. So I ordered them from suncaost ($60 cheaper than the local stealer ship). put them on, put my belt back on, and started her up....... hoping to hear sweet silence. But no luck still had a bearing sound. So I pulled the belt back off and listened again and it was silent. I must be missing something.....I thought. So I spun all the pulleys and found that my powersteering pump is the culpret. So I just ordered one off ebay and looks like I will be diving into that when it gets here. So all you guys with higher milage boxsters you might want to check all your pulleys. Other repairs I've had to make were AOS (50k), 4 sway bar links and rear track arms because of rattles(75k). Alarm brain went bad at 46k Porsche made a good will warranty. Top was replaced under warranty (42k) cracked window and cracked again at 82k and was replaced with robbins glass top.

good luck with the fix. i'm just curious if you changed out the transmission fluid and filter at 90k as recommended. if so, did you do it yourself and did you take it to a shop?

A few people....
 

How many would it take to impress you that it is real? 4 in the same car? 10+ a week? Those are real figures. Does it mean every car will fail...not by a long shot. But absolute denial is no more the reality than the sky is falling.

You didn't hear about it for a while because Porsche was taking care of things via an engine swap to keep the lid on what was really happening. Then all you heard about were failures because no one was pulling the engines apart and analyzing them and then talking. And because the price or repair or replacement was now so amazingly high relative to the value of the car in the used car market that people spoke up about it. (My Chrysler long block replacement cost $1800 parts and labor)

Then some folks did and they got accused of being promoters and profiteers...by the same few people. I prefer to think that, without them, we'd be less knowledgeable and have less options. Thanks Charles, Ed, Jake.

Endless reports and threads online, sure. People have a problem or hear of it and don't use the search capability so it shows up as a new and repetitive thread.

(no financial connection to any repair procedure or business or car manufacturer)

"You signed it"????

Who the hell are you? Illustrate a little bit of intestinal fortitude and reveal yourself.

So how long can we expect to see smart assed comments from you?

When you will believe that the issue exists is when you find yourself on the side of the road.. Just like Cancer, its something that happens to other people until YOU get the diagnosis.

If you have an issue with me then take that issue up with me.

FWIW- The vast majority of our business doesn't come from preventives, it comes from engines that have already failed.. Those people understand the reality of this failure. One of them recently experienced a full blown engine failure while he was on our wait list to have a preventive procedure carried out. He is a member here, ask him about it.

There have been three IMS failures on this message board since I joined a few years back. That's troubling because we have a small membership here.

I waited for my clutch to kick the bucket before upgrading the IMS but if I had to do it again I wouldn't have waited that long. Better to replace the clutch and IMS in one shot and take a loss on the prematurely replaced old clutch. In the end you still get a new clutch to put down the power and have removed a great deal of the uncertainty. If your car has more than 60K miles I think holding onto a clutch in its last 30% of life and thus postponing the IMS upgrade is not worth the gamble. For an experienced Porsche mechanic, this is not a complicated job.

I have a 2000 base... it is close to turning 80k and I KNOW it's the OEM clutch... the motor was swapped out by Porsche at about 15-20k miles b/c the orifginal one had repeated RMS leaks... I'm guessing they resed the clutch when they did the engine swap..so my clutch is stock. it doesn't slip, but's it's close to being replaced.

to do the clutch job - parts/labor AND the IMS upgrade (parts/labor) what am I looking at $$ wise? I will take it to a porsche independent..not the stealer..

Well very generally speaking, I think it's safe to say that a clutch job will cost you $1200 and doing the logical IMS ugprade will add another $600. Obviously different geographies have different labor rates but my indy charges $85 per hour.
If you're OEM flywheel is in bad shape you'll have to add another ~$500 for the part. Waiting too long to change the clutch once its starting to slip can wear out the flywheel prematurely so in that respect it doesn't pay to wait.

I doubt there are more than 40 regular posters on this board. Most only come on to ask a question or lurk. When I said 3 failures I was only including members who posted here regularly. For such a small group that seems WAY TOO HIGH.
I've found similar situation occuring on the Pelican and Rennlist 911 forums. Small comunities with a few too many of these catastrophic engine fails.
Obviously not scientific but I think the probabibility of the failure is one of those type of pitfalls that can happen at any time to any car and the mere fact that it rarely happens is more a matter of chance. I don't like leaving my car up to chance.

I got a 3k estimate from local Indy shop, that includes clutch, flywheel, IMS, and new RMS
Prices here in seattle are higher.. they charge 140$ an hour.

I'm waiting for my clutch to die first, 2000 base with 72K, 3000$ is 40% of what I paid for the car.. I'm not ready to pay that yet


Thanks
Sasha

I can not believe that they'er people out there that think IMS failure is "Hype" if it is hype I guess Excellenc Magazine must be in on this profit scam too because thay have an entire article written on it in this months issue, Please get real. I do not care about what other people think all I know is when my Box. needs a clutch replaced I will also replace the IMS/W Flat6 and RMS, all at the same time.

I have a 99 Box.W/58k miles on it.I will prob. have this work done this winter.
I love my Box. it is my DD from mar.to dec. and I think replacing the IMS is a small price to pay for pease of mind.

are you still on the original clutch? Also, do you have service records to figure out how regularly the previous owner was changing the oil? If the clutch has already been changed once you could probably do just the RMS upgrade for $1100-1200. I figure two hours to drop the trans, two hours to extract the old and install the new IMS, and another two hours to put it all back together...maybe less if its an experienced Porsche specialist willing to negotiate the job for a 'flat fee' so to speak. $140 is nearly a dealer rate! I'm sure there are other shops if you check your local PCA chapter forum.

$3K is not that bad a price if you start backing out one clutch kit with flywheel, and the IMS unit from the price. Parts alone would account for nearly half of it.........plus not all shops are equipped for or up to speed on pulling the IMS bearing; those that are can charge a bit more for that reason alone.

Dealership charges 200$ an hour, they wanted 3500$ for clutch only.

Cris German Auto (the indy shop) specializes in Porsches.. he has a lot of them parked there:)
and 140$ an hour is not that bad..

I have ZERO history on the car, I bought in on a whim (better half agreed to get it instead of Chevy Aveo)

It's most probably original clutch.. but it runs good.. now that I finally changed my engine mount + 60K service.. my little Boxster runs perfect!

Thanks
Sasha

drive to canada. can't speak for vancouver, but victoria dealer is 125 and you could find porsche specialists in van (blitzkrieg and scan) for less.

Congratulations to the OP on almost making it to 100K. I hope your fixes go well and you make 6 digits. It's good to hear that is possible.


I'm pushing 44K miles now, and I will be quite happy if my car makes it anywhere near 100K.

Can you recommend a good and not so pricey shop in Victoria?
I actually was thinking of going up north for better price. We have Microsoft and Boeing close.. so prices are high.

I would do it myself in the garage if I wasn't afraid to screw something up...
and considering I know absolutely nothing about cars.. there is a high chance that I'll break something.

I did plugs, mount, fuel filter and belt though.. and I feel very proud!

Sasha

100K miles is very impressive!

IMS:
Is the problem real? Sure it is.
The problem with everyone here is no one knows for sure how many Boxsters had such failure to come up with a real number, percentage wise.
Most of the time you do not see people posting on the Internet how great things are, how their engines are doing great at 40k, 60k, 80k and so on. Most will go and post when things go wrong. That is why you see more posts about bad things that happened than good ones. I do not mean IMS only. Look on the Internet for information about your LCD or Plasma sets. Your bluray players. And so on.
Just to give you some numbers, Porsche delivered its 200,000 Boxster on November, 20, 2006. If we simply play with numbers, the total number of Boxsters sold by now is probably somewhere between 250,000 and 280,000. Out of these how many do you guys think that failed with the IMS? Over 5,000? Under 5,000?
The mechanic that takes care of mine, that worked for Porsche for several years only saw 2 at his shop.
Sure Jake will see more. If he is the specialist on dealing with this issue (before or after it fails) people will come to him. So it is obvious he will see way more than anything else.
For the exact same reason companies come to my company when they need to deploy Remote Access solutions for 50,000 users or more. Not many companies do that. :D
I am 100% sure that Jake and all the other guys that see IMS failures on a daily basis have NOT seen more than 5,000. Guaranteed. If that is indeed the case, given the production numbers we are probably talking about 1% to 1.5% failures.
Probably several other cars from different brands do have very similar failure rates. The problem is when IMS goes bad, it DOES go REALLY bad. Like get a new engine. :D
When time comes I will do the RMS/Clutch/IMS in one shot just for the peace of mind. But again, I do know chances are on my side (98% or more) that this will NOT happen to me.

Price for the job:
Where I am, my guy asked me for 6 hours of labor to do it all. $432 as he charges $72 per hour.
Parts you can get all (Clutch Kit, RMS, IMS retrofit) for probably $1400-$1500.
So in my case I can get all done for under $1900. As I know I will be doing all this what I am doing is buying the parts upfront, every month so I do not need to spend all that in one shot. Easier on my wallet and makes the wife think running a Boxster is not that much.

Please Jake and others, do not see my reply as an insult or anything like that. I do appreciate all you guys have done and still do for the Porsche Community out there and I do thank you for that. My take on this, as you could see is very simple. The numbers do show a small percentage of the cars are affected for sure what proves the issue is not widespread (to be widespread we would be talking about at least 25,000 with the problem what everyone probably agrees is not the case). Does this mean it will never happen to you? You have over 98%+ chances on your side.
The bottom line is determining how comfortable you feel about that 1% to 1.5%.

Cheers.

CR

just got mine and have yet to experience a (dis)service with it. The PCA for Western Canada includes you northwestern US types, so look for good info here:

linky

Speedway Porsche in Victoria is $125/hour. There's the dealers MCL and Weissach in Vanocouver. Scan Automotive and Blitzkrieg Auto in Vancouver are often spoken of in good terms as well. If you come to Vancouver Island make sure you drive Hwy 4 and give you and your car a good scare!

good job on almost making it to 100k.
Im at 95k right now (2002 2.7, manual) and I have a 400 mile trip ahead of me tomorrow (furthest I have taken it so far in one day was 60 miles :).
Will see how it holds up