1999 with double row ims vs single row

[Gelbster]

Page 70 in that link looks familiar to students of the IMSB story.
Amazing resource - the technology involved is awesome. Makes you cringe when you compare the tools shown in the FAG link to a guy on You Tube using a pilot bearing extractor to remove an IMSB !Many of us are stuck in the" adjustable wrench will do" era of mechanics and this link shows how woefully behind we are.

[Smallblock454]

Originally Posted by Gelbster

Page 70 in that link looks familiar to students of the IMSB story.
Amazing resource - the technology involved is awesome. Makes you cringe when you compare the tools shown in the FAG link to a guy on You Tube using a pilot bearing extractor to remove an IMSB !Many of us are stuck in the" adjustable wrench will do" era of mechanics and this link shows how woefully behind we are.

Hello Gelbster,

the tools and technology shown in this document are old school. Think the brochure itself is from the 70/80ties. Today you use digital measurement tools. Shurely the bearings description is updated in 2013.

For example for a pro extractor:
In todays world you would use induction to heat the IMS tube with induction within milliseconds to a temperature where you don't harm the integritiy of the metal and than pull the bearing by a clamp mechanism on the outer race so you don't run into problems to jam up the bearing in the tube. The process itself cculd be completely automated by a micro controller. Also you could make shure that the tool works extreme precisely concerning geometrical precision.

Regards, Markus

[JFP in PA]

Originally Posted by Smallblock454

Hello Gelbster,

the tools and technology shown in this document are old school. Think the brochure itself is from the 70/80ties. Today you use digital measurement tools. Shurely the bearings description is updated in 2013.

For example for a pro extractor:
In todays world you would use induction to heat the IMS tube with induction within milliseconds to a temperature where you don't harm the integritiy of the metal and than pull the bearing by a clamp mechanism on the outer race so you don't run into problems to jam up the bearing in the tube. The process itself cculd be completely automated by a micro controller. Also you could make shure that the tool works extreme precisely concerning geometrical precision.

Regards, Markus

Markus, while dreaming about a nuclear powered, laser guided, and computer controlled IMS bearing extractor, you forgot to take into account the practical reality of street level economics: When something becomes overly complicated or expensive, there will be fewer of them in use, and the price for the service will escalate accordingly.

Shops that do IMS retrofits have to watch their bottom line every moment. When the Faultless Tool became available, a lot of shops took a "wait and see" attitude towards spending even more for tooling to do a job that is actually decreasing in volume (no more vehicles are being built with the IMS shaft, many [25K+] have already been retrofitted, many of the total number are no longer on the road; and of the remaining population, many will never be retrofitted.). So if spending another $1K for better tooling is already under review, you can assume anything costing more than that would simply be a solution without raison d'etre.

[mikefocke]

And in a densely populated market where the service locations are limited, investment in tooling may make sense. But come into the US with its widely dispersed population, low frequency of M96 engined cars and many mechanics competing on price for the same job and you have a reluctance to invest beyond a certain amount.

I read all the time of people trying to do the IMS with home built tools. Or buying a kit on the basis of price.

Maybe for an engine rebuilder but how many engines does even the top tier engine rebuilder have to do a year to amortize the cost of complex tools such as you envision? Most are employing mechanics who bring their own tools!

[Gelbster]

Well done Markus , you have driven JFP to start talking about cooking in an IMS thread.That is a first !