Metal Shavings Behind LN IMS Bearing - Need Advice!

[Benjamin]

Originally Posted by woodsman

It looks like the whole bearing has been spinning in the bore- no? Those chips may have come from the face of the bore- where it's shiny. Got telescopic gauges and a 3-4 micrometer?

No, the best I have right now is a dial caliper.

Originally Posted by Perfectlap

Apologies to this un-named shop.

Although their pre-IMS swap inspection procedure looks like a question mark.

Was this car a low-miles garage queen before the PO took ownership? (as in it sat for long periods between oil changes).

I'll have to look back at the stack of paperwork that came with the car. I think I'm the 5th owner. 72k as of 2010 and just over 80k now.

[cnavarro]

I will say that the single row bearings are not tolerant of debris at all where we know the dual row bearing will take much more abuse and just keep chugging along even laden with FOD (but not indefinitely). It's quite possible a PO had the IMS Retrofit procedure carried out as a reactionary repair because the original bearing had failed.

I would be curious to see what's in the sump.

There usually isn't tell-tale signs of damage to the intermediate shaft like there is with a single row bearing so it's hard to get a complete picture. As part of our qualification procedure when rebuilding an IMS, we spin test the shaft and check for runout in the gear and housing bore to detect damage to the intermediate shaft because often shops send us IMSs with the original bearing already removed so we don't know what condition the original bearing was in.