who is still on their original IMS?

[986_c6]

Some great high mileage Boxsters here!

Original owner, 02 Base, ~80k miles, Mobil 1 every 7500 miles, tracked ~40x, no specks in oil filter, no retrofit.

[Frodo]

2001 Boxster S, manual transmission, 71,465 miles, Castrol 10w-40 Syntec; originally used Mobil One for the first few changes. Bought the car with 19K miles---I'm assuming I'm still on the original IMS.

[VWAudiChris]

Is this still an issue or have most of these cars now been updated?

[BIGJake111]

Originally Posted by VWAudiChris

Is this still an issue or have most of these cars now been updated?

most cars are on original... do not let the IMS worry you away from these cars. If it happens it usually happened early on in the cars life. Just make sure to check your oil filter for metal shavings when you do oil changes. Best way to prevent an IMSB going out is to drive the car like a Porsche needs to be driven. The 90s cars are less likely to fail though.

[Idaho Red Rocket 3]

2000 S Second owner since 48k miles. Currently 85K miles on original IMS and RMS. Clutch was replaced at 44K along with AOS. I recently did water pump and front motor mount.

[Perfectlap]

Originally Posted by BIGJake111

do not let the IMS worry you away from these cars. If it happens it usually happened early on in the cars life. Just make sure to check your oil filter for metal shavings when you do oil changes. Best way to prevent an IMSB going out is to drive the car like a Porsche needs to be driven. The 90s cars are less likely to fail though.

I've heard conflicting conclustions about when the IMS bearing is most likely to fail. It seems to me that there are various conditions under which an IMS can fail. Some are low mileage with infrequent oil changes. Some are high mileage with infrequent oil changes.

If there is in fact contamination from not changing the oil enough, we may be entering a period where a large number of the Boxster/996 fleet that did not have their IMS bearings swapped when the clutches were replaced, and were looked after in a suboptimal way up to this point, could be finding out the hard way that a bearing can only last a long time if you looked after it correctly. We have no way of knowing if current owners have been diligent. In the past it didn't matter as much because in most cases, a fresh bearing can withstand abuse up to a certain amount of mileage. But what happens when you go beyond that? As a group, Boxsters and 996's are only now going past moderate mileage.

If the typical old German and British car ownership experience bears out, most owners are not as diligent as they should be, and in this case we're talking about a very large number of Porsches rolling around. It seems to me that a person of modest means is going to dump one of these cars before investing in a comprehensive IMS swap. Whereas neglect in the past could result in a poor running vehicle, in this instance prolonged neglect can be much worse than that.
Point is, the past is not indicative of what the long-term will bring to these engines. That depends on the owner, and that's not a static input.