IMS bearing inspection

[JFP in PA]

You also need to consider your "sunk cost"of the labor to do the clutch; if at a later date you decided to go back in and do the IMS, or had to, you would spend all that money all over again (less the price of the clutch parts) just to get at the IMS bearing to change it. The extra cost now will pale in comparison............

[Bruce Wayne]

pothole.. you're 90% of the way there, might as well spring for the xtra and get it done.. we're not in the position of our murrican cousins with lots of parts sources and expertise to call on the same country at reasonable prices, and that american thing of 'customer service'!

besides if anything it puts more value into the car shoudl you decide to sell it. not only that, you'll alway be thinking to yourself 'should i have done it?' afterwards..

i'll be doing mine with the next clutch change along with the RMS.

[shadrach74]

Why not split the difference and install the pelican bearing or a standard factory bearing. That would cut the cost to around £250.00.

[Bruce Wayne]

its probably the labour costs, rather than parts, we see prices closes to 100 bucks an hours from a back street garage that could probably just work out where in a boxster the engine is..

the there's the joy of having a spanner monkey work on your car that would probably have difficulty in spelling IMS, then he would probably revert to reading this forum for a 'how to' anyway.

oh how i yearn for the home garage workshops some of you guys have

[Topless]

It looks like these guys probably "get it" when it comes to IMS issues.

AUTOFARM | Porsche Specialists For Over 35 Years - Oxfordshire Buckinghamshire Cotswolds

I'm not quite sure how a shop can pull the trans and replace the clutch, pressure plate, and flywheel. Then re-install the trans for 480 quid, but charge another 1K for a 2 hr procedure . I smell fish.

[thom4782]

Something seems off in the numbers.

In the US, the cost of replacing both the IMSB and the clutch is about $2,200 or $1,360 pounds. Parts alone are roughly $1,100 or 680 pounds. If one adds 20% VAT to the parts, then the total cost goes up by $220 or $136 pounds. This would bring the total out the door price to $2,420 or 1,496 pounds.

I have no idea why you're seeing the numbers you do unless the shops are double counting the labor hours. The incremental labor to do both jobs is two hours or less.

[pothole]

The 90% of the way there argument doesn't hold.

Doing the clutch is going to be £400 + VAT @ 20% (£480). That's at one of the most competitively priced of the well known Porsche independents in the UK.

The same place with do the clutch and LN Eng bearing upgrade for £1,249 + VAT (£1,499). So it's an extra £1,000 to do the bearing. Don't think I'll get the same work done much cheaper elsewhere.

Whether some of the labour is shared is neither here nor there. It adds £1,000 on top of £480. It's a lot more money.

Incidentally, this place charges £999+VAT for just the bearing, so it's really only £150 you save having both done at the same time.

I'm not crazy about the Pelican / standard factory bearing. Given that bearings are known to fail at very low miles, the question is how confident are you the new bearing will last longer than mine, which can't be one of the really bad ones as it's already done 112k miles...

Is it more likely a new standard bearing will hit 50k miles than my existing bearing does another 50k? Not sure - certainly not sure enough to justify throwing a lot of money at it.

The LN bearing appears to be an "upgrade", but it's very expensive. For an extra £500 or less, I'd probably do it. For £1,000, it's getting very uncomfortable.