IMS Excellence Article

[JFP in PA]

No. it is metal bits from the IMS bearing as it begins to fail...............

[Boxster33]

Thanks JFP. That makes sense. It's good to know there is something we can do to warn us the IMS may be failing.

[Perfectlap]

I hate to sound like a broken record but I wouldn't wait to do this upgrade. Most experienced Porsche specialists could do it in a day. Two hours to drop the trans, two hours to installe the new bearing, check some things etc and put it all back together. Waiting for the clutch to wear out seems a little crazy to me in retrospect.
In order to save yourself $600 in labor your going to roll the dice on an engine replacement that will cost over $10K? I'd rather pay the labor to take down the tranny twice and consider it a insurance policy of sorts.

[clickman]

I'm sure JFP will correct me if I'm wrong, but metal bits in the oil filter don't necessarily mean the IMS bearing is failing. The metal could be coming from other places instead. None of which is good.

[JFP in PA]

The "trick" is what kind of metal you find. There are lots of light alloy sources in the M96 (block, heads, pistons, bearing shells, etc.), but only a limited number of ferrous sources; these include the crank, piston rings, valves & springs, the cams and followers, cam chains, the oil pump, and of course the IMS bearing. If you were to find any significant amount of ferrous debris in the oil filter (stuff you can pick up with a magnet), I would seriously consider taking the car out of service until you can determine the source; to do otherwise is to invite disaster…………..

[mikefocke]

is sealed from the crankcase and the engine oil by an inner seal. So I would assume it is relatively hard for large bits of the bearing itself to get out until the inner seal is really gone. The idea of the seal is to prevent a hot film of oil from getting to the bearing. So the fitment is designed to be pretty tight. Now it doesn't always work out that way and we all have seen pictures of where oil has intruded.

I only bring this up to support the postings that bits in the oil filter can be from many sources.

[JFP in PA]

Mike, by the time the bearing starts to shed metal bits, it usually has already tore up the seal because of the shards and because it has begun to "wobble" off axis a bit due to internal wear/degradation. .