L&N Engineering
 

I recently bought an engine from L&N ,my original is out and Im buying what needs to be replaced .In the course of purchasing I called EPS European Parts Solution for a clutch .I tell the guy I bought an L&N engine and he starts yelling at me telling me theat L&N IMS has a higher failure rate than OEM. And EPS cylindrical roller is the only fix and he has 50 motor's that had L&N bearings go bad. He goes on to tell me that there is an article coming out to prove this and it makes me wonder is this why they had a sale on their motor's with only a 90 day warranty and to buy a 2year will cost me 5k. So now I'm thinking WTF....Did I get hosed I'm well over 10k with motor and replacement parts . Should I bite the bullet and put in a cylindrical roller bearing.Or cross my fingers.

Sounds like he's a good salesman. IMS bearing replacement has been discussed over and over again here for years, from all sides and with facts and BeSt guesses. My personal opinion is probably irrelevant, but documented facts should matter. Were these "50 motor's that had L&N bearings go bad" that he has installed correctly in a engine that didn't already have a failure? Was it actually the IMS bearing that failed or was it one of many other factors that caused the engine to fail. Are there counterfeit, cheap bearings being sold as LN and EPS? Probably.

I'm not reading about a lot of LN bearing failures here on the forum. Are they all being reported on the other forums? Are people being paid hush money to keep it quiet? Lately most of the engines that are reported failing here are not IMS failures.

My advice? Do some research rather than opinion surfing, then make whichever choice will give you peace of mind and enjoyment of the car.

:cheers:

Their bearings do fail and have a very limited lifespan (4 years or 50k miles, according to LNE).

Most think that LNE are saviors of the M96 community that care about us all very much. I see them more as opportunistic profiteers, but that's just my personal opinion. ;)


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My guess is you could X/O an IMS bearing, with an OEM bearing, every four years, and not have any problems either. Even LNE's bearing less 'Solution' only buys you a 5 year warranty.

The cars have a few weak spots. If the gamble is too stressful, it will spoil the enjoyment of a very special car. Gather your facts, be confident in your decision, move forward.

I think PW's 'parasite' comment is a bit strong. They have several products available that are pricey, but very well made, i.e. spin on oil filter housing, magnetic drain plug. They appear to be genuine enthusiasts and attempt to service the marketplace accordingly. Do they deliberately pray on our collective fears, probably. Most companies are guilty of that business model.

I have spent zero $$$ with/for any of their products.

Particlewave What bearing do you think is best ? I really appreciate something other than this has been discussed for years . I did research and know I cant rebuild this motor for $8500.00 if I have to speed another 500 to have a bullet proof motor now is the time to do it.Motor only has 90 day warranty so I'm not losing anything by replacing the ceramic ball bearing with a cylindrical roller.I only wish more people would tell me what is best..! Having to replace in 5 years is not good.Any L&N motor owners out there?

If it were my engine, it would get an EPS or RND roller bearing with direct oil feed.
That's just my opinion...and you know what they say about opinions. :D

Gabe, what about installing the IMS Solution, with engine oil fed and no moving parts?


PS, the reason for editing: just noticed that this is my post # 1,000 :p

Is LN opportunistic? Sure, but that's a good business model..finding an opportunity and making money from it. That being said, the next part of the model is to make a product that is superior and merging opportunity with reputation. I find myself having faith (hope?) that's what LN has done...based solely on no research or facts of my own. Lol.

As a skeptical bastard, I find myself questioning things sometime far too much...which leads to diminished faith and eventual worry. As a word of advice, don't overthink too much. Trust your research, opinions of others and eventually just your gut. If it all goes south from there, consider it a learning experience.

FWIW, the quoted "50 engines" just doesn't pass my smell test; sounds more like a random number pulled from the air.... ;)

That sounds like salemanship, if they were that bad and failed that much they would be out of business. They have 50 motors with failed LN bearings? I don't even think there have been 50 failures worldwide, let alone just 50 at this vendor.

I would be interested to see the article.

If you really want to resolve it once and for all, LN IMS Solution. That said, I am on just the regular dual row LN ceramic retrofit for the last 40,000 miles/5 years and it has been working out.

I though RND engines came with their own version of the roller bearing anyway and not the LN ceramic retrofit? So if the EPS guy says cylindrical roller bearings are the best, you might have one already :)

Roller Bearing IMS Retrofit Kit – RND Engines

There is no way that 50 of these have failed in the last few years since RND came out.

I've been pretty impressed with LN products, but not so much that I've bought any. I simply put a high quality high temp single row back in to replace the failed one from my engine. Replaced the intermediate shaft with my modified version while I was in there. I do prefer the ball bearing over the roller as its design seems more tolerant of contamination, point versus line contact. That's purely speculation however.

I went with the EPS unit. After seeing Jack on the PCA website fearmongering about the 4 stages of failure and that the first 2 you can't diagnose or see.... I started looking for other options. I think it's great that Flat6 came up with a solution but that video made me think of him as a used car salesman.

The dealer I purchased the car from was fixing the RMS on them so I thought why not replace the IMS while the engine is out. The bearing they took out looked new (48K miles, 2004 S).

I put a dual row direct oil feed ims bearing in from Tunersmall.com in my 2000 S. Seemed to be a good product. No problems so far-installed last January. It is pretty much the same as the dof product from LN (not the "Solution"), just uses a different oil source.
I am currently putting in a LN Solution in my 2002 base. Paid about $500 more than the Tunersmall.com product although it comes with a spin on oil filter adapter which the Tunersmall.com product doesn't include. The "Solution" seems to be a stupidly simple idea. Makes me wonder why Porsche didn't choose that route. Interestingly, the LN warranty materials suggest that there is no coverage for a DIY installation.

I have been a faithful follower of Jake Raby since he 1st appeared on this forum about 10 years ago. I was astounded at how much ground breaking info he was giving away. When he posted in 2010 that he was going to teach a class on how to rebuild our engines & improve them in the process, I was the 4th person to sign up. I got to meet Charles Navarro there also as he taught a segment on lubrication. Both of these guys over engineer anything they are going to sell so they can under promise & over deliver. My $10K engine has a LN IMSB in it & I have no intention to ever touch it again, just maintain the engine as Jake has taught me using the oil he developed for it. :cheers:

BYprodriver which oil would that be sir?

Joe Gibbs/Driven DT40 for street driving and XP-9 for track (with a recent thread by Charles to go XP-6 if the oil temp is projected to go over a certain amount, 240F or something that seemed kind of low so I may be remembering it wrong, I think the thread was on rennlist)

Just buy and install....
 

....the “IMS Solution”

I did two years ago. 26,000 miles later. All good.

Plain bearing. No moving parts. Simple is good.

My .02.

Exactly, I think you are correct on the 240F too.

Let’s face it, it’s a BEARING and they fail. Now, we could continue to lament why Porsche did this, rather than stick with the mezger design in the first place, but that’s another discussion. I think looking at the IMS like any bearing is a good idea. Change it out on a clutch interval. It’s not particularly hard, the bearing is not terribly expensive. Too expensive for a simple bearing? Yes, but in the big scheme of things not so much. The LN products are overpriced IMO, kind of like a pharmaceutical. I appreciate the initial R&D to bring a product to the market, just fine, but at this stage of development, plus needing to buy a very expensive tool set the costs of the setup is a little nuts. Short of perhaps the “solution” the bearings used aren’t anything particularly special. And selling an oil for special use in their engines? Ok... yeah.

In your case you need LN's break in oil. BR something?, just follow LN's recommendations.

RND is selling off motors to make room in inventory for 9A1 inventory. The M96/M97 market is dropping in value. Sorry but we're getting thrown to the side for the newer toys

Hi since my 2003 S engine crapped out on me a little over a week ago I missed the RND engine sale and would have loved to been able to buy one of them! Unfortunately for us a lot of cost accounting went into the design and engineering of our cars and the M96 and M97 engines. When my engine is torn down and the failure is determined I’ll post the details. My engine had less than 78,000 miles and I had the IMSB upgraded to the LN Single Row Pro at around 42,000 miles. I doubt that was what failed but we’ll see soon enough, for what a sample of one is worth. As for the conversation with EPS, there are lots of salesman who will badmouth their competitors and who knows if the engines they see with failed LN IMSB’s were already damaged before they installed new IMSB’s. And warranties at the end of the day are a financial equation for anyone offering one-it makes perfect sense to me that the warranty was extra on the clearance sale engines, and LN* didn’t build those engines with the intent to move them out in a clearance sale. You should rest easy, get your car back together and enjoy it!

*LN, RND, Bilt Racing and a few other companies are all Charles Navarro.

I appreciate all the comments. The motor We pulled had 127,000 miles ,she ran great ,the problem was that when I stopped at a light oil pressure would drop below 5 psi. I did connect a mechanical test gauge were the pressure sender screws into the head to verify this.I have the updated bypass piston and screw. Oil sump was clean. In the filter I see plastic and what looks like cooper so I assume the bearings for the crank and rods are going.I have had the car 3 years now and this all started after the first oil change i did . I went to the recommended 0-w 40 Mobil 1.....So I assume the seller put heavy oil in to mask the problem.Anyway this car is my daily driver and I don't want problems I have replaced all the suspension parts new coil overs new xenon head lights new leather seats new glass window top new rotors and breaks all new stainless exhaust with 200 cell headers cat deletes I want some piece of mind that I go on a 2000 mile trip and she will make it back. And now I have a good core motor to make it into 3.4 or larger if possible.Once again thank you all you making me feel better about my decision I don't see any compelling info to pick one or the other It is all based on opinion. I can find no factual information as to any being better than the other.Thank you all.On a side note how lager can a 3.2 base motor be turned into is 3.4 max?Thank you all this forum is the most valuable tool we have .Thank you.

If you spend $5k you can buy a set of Nickies from L&N with pistons and rings and increase your 3.2 to either 3.6 or 3.8.

The LN replacement kits have probably hundreds of times more installations than any other replacement kit. They have been improved over time based on feedback and examination of returned parts. Their warranties have been increased. Any sane business limits the length of a warranty, don't misinterpret the length of the warranty for the expected life of the bearing. Life of any bearing depends on manufacturing tolerances, block trueness, oil change intervals, oil quality used, driving style, failures of other parts, etc. I've followed the IMS issue since before the introduction of replacement kits, talked to many of the kit developers. Know of their failures, and successes. If it were me (and I owned M96 engines twice) I'd gamble if the engine was running well. (I did for both my engines and there wasn't any owner at the time who knew more about the IMS potential for problems than I did. At the same time, I should say I could have afforded to replace the engine with an improved one if it had failed. Not everyone is in that position.) If rebuilding, I'd go full out and replace everything and have it done by someone with an excellent reputation. And still know that stuff happens.

The EPS salesperson sounds hysterical. Just their naming it "Eternal" put me off the first time I heard the name. Stuff ages and wears. Everything.

I'd challenge the sales guy to identify the 50 failures by name or VIN. I certainly haven't, in 8 years or so of reading multiple forums daily on three continents, seen any significant number of LN failures. Yes, bad installs can happen. Yes, installs into already contaminated engines do happen. But you'd think, if there was a problem, the forums would reflect that. They don't.

Your car, your money, your choice. Enjoy our wonderful car.

I think it is the simple reality that the market is saturated with IMS "fixes" and the majority of engines out there either have no issues or have been fixed already with one product or another. Ride the wave while it's hot...

This is simple...

If you want a bullet proof fix, put an IMS Solution in before you bolt the pressure plate back on.

If you don't want to go that route, call Charles at LN and talk to him. If nothing else, he can tell you about the development and testing of the roller bearings that come with RND engines. Roller bearings may carry more load than ball bearing, but the issue with rollers is thrust control

Here are my personal opinions.

Original IMS bearings can come out of cars and look pristine, mine did, but if the grease has washed out the countdown to failure clock had starting to tick already

Probably any unsealed bearing would work...the Porsche bearing problem was degraded seals let the grease wash out but prevented splash oil from lubricating the bearing adequately afterwards.

Ceramic bearings last far longer than steel bearings. The limits LN puts on it's ceramic solutions are guidance about when to consider replacements, probably conservative recommendations at that. These limits are not statements about end of life.

I don't know if LN bearings - other than the IMS Solution - are far more durable than the alternatives, but the engine will likely fail for other reasons before the new bearings fail. In my car the main timing chain rail is on its last legs.

I agree with others...if LN bearings were so poor, the forums would have made that clear long ago.

Roller bearings may carry more load than ball bearings, but the issue with rollers is thrust control

On a somewhat related issue, I recently had a bearing fail on a pressure washer; disassembled and found it was a needle bearing with a plastic cage. The cage failed, the needles lost alignment and seized the shaft. Looking at the mess, I wondered why the decision was made to use a needle bearing rather than a ball bearing and eventually concluded that the needle type might provide better shaft alignment than a ball bearing (as the depth of the needle was greater). I thought about re-engineering to accept 2 stacked ball bearings (doesn't this sound familiar?), but I couldn't find 2 such bearings that would fit. Continuing looking, I resorted going back to a needle bearing (to my suprise, was sold as a "shaft location" bearing, but the at least this one used a metal cage rather than plastic.

I shared this because I can see the logic in a roller bearing (or a double row ball bearing) as a good choice if alignment is most critical. In saying all of that, I should admit I have the LN replacement bearing.... ;)

I should also add that I'm not an auto mechanic, just a tinkerer who gets irked when I find a failed component that wouldn't have failed if it was just engineered better.