Solution purchasers are entitled to rent installation tools from LN for the cost of shipping. Although I've borrowed an IMS Pro Tool Kit from a kind forum member to extract the old bearing, LN's $299 Supplemental Tool Kit is necessary to install the Solution's bearing. I can keep the kit for 30 days, but I'm holding off renting it until it's needed. I'm waiting now for a Ryobi cordless right-angle drill to get here. It's the perfect tool for working in tight spaces, such as creating a notch in the crankcase for the flange's oil fitting using a tungsten-carbide burr bit.

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If you are thinking about using this for the bell housing slot for the IMS Solution oil line, let me make a suggestion: WIth just the new flange set loosely in place, make the bell housing lip location with a marker, then drill a small pilot hole to start, increasing the bit size until you are at the opening size needed. Then trim away any excess material first with a fine hacksaw, and then clean up and bevel the edges with these bits.

My preferential method is to use a rotary broaching tool once the pilot hole is in place. The broach is basically a very accurate hole saw type tool that makes a very clean hole of the right size in one move, but is rather exensive for a one time DIY:

https://shop.blairequipment.com/cdn/...065&width=1900

When I installed a BBI small crank pulley on my '07 987CS, I used a Dremel to file down the TDC marker to make room for the smaller diameter pulley, and I was very surprised how soft the block material was, as the Dremel bit grinded way the material very quick and easy.

In other words, go slowly so you don't grind more than you intend it..

Found a better burr bit, one designed specifically for cutting aluminum without clogging. Also bought full-face protection, because grinding aluminum, unlike steel, creates flying shards that slice skin like little knives, according to a metal fabricator I know.

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I considered drilling and hacksawing, which I'm sure can provide a decent result. However, I have some experience grinding metal from working in a body and fender shop, and I want to try the right-angle drill and burr method. The same method was used in Jake Raby's video demonstrating how to install the Solution, and it resulted in a pretty nice notch after a minimum of thrashing.

I do like those broaching tools. My metal-fabricator friend has what he calls a broaching set, but it doesn't include anything that looks like that. They're expensive, you say?

A set of metric or SAE common sizes from Blair/Haugen is about $75 on Amazon; larger sizes can get a bit more expensive:


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I'm a sucker for new tools, but as you say, they wouldn't be cost effective for a one-off by a DIYer. Still, I might come across (or invent) other projects for which they would be the perfect solution, so I'm glad to know about them.

They have a lot of automotive uses; if you are faced with creating an opening in a metal panel, say a bulkhead, for a wire/cable or tube to pass thru something like a firewall or bulkhead, drills tend to "pull" on the metal, distorting it, which often requires going to a hammer and dolly to beat it flat so that a cable gland can seal it weather tight again. Rotary broach tools cut a flat, undistorted opening of whatever size is required in a single move, just run a deburring tool around the hole and install the cable gland and you are ready to make a weather tight pass thru with minimal time and efffort.

A little interlude while waiting for parts to arrive...

I'm a DIYer and proud of it. There was a time, however, when I was semi-pro. My brothers had a shop where they rebuilt customers' engines, and I used to hang around and help. After a while they started depending on me. "Hey, Michelle. Pull the heads off that 327 over there," or "Run this block over to J&S and get it hot tanked." At one point they started paying me for my work. A customer needed his 283 rebuilt, but my brothers were jammed up, so they asked me if I could do the honors. After I knocked out that job I did other rebuilds. Mitch & Jerry's Automotive then had three mechanics. I was 17.

Fast forward to the present day. It didn't take me long to realize that much of my experience with conventional engines was not transferable to Porsche's M96. It was a humbling realization. I'm doing my best these days to play catchup. And thank God for DIY, or I couldn't afford to drive my 986.

I saw another woman mechanic on TV. Pretty and petite, she said, "Hey... I'm a car guy. Deal with it." I can relate.

Dang. 2 days ago, I’d never heard of these, and now I gotta get me a set!

Conceptually not all that different from the holesaws I use in carpentry and much quicker than what we used back in the day, which were Greenlee knockout punches (drill a pilot hole, thread the two halves of the punch together thru the hole, and then pull the two halves together).

"Tool Time................"

Been reading and watching videos about bore scoring. The prospect of it — and low-miles engines are not exempt by any means, according to... Charles Navarro, I think it was — makes my hair stand on end. I'm almost afraid to pull the sump cover and have a look with a borescope. But I'll do it. And if I see any evidence of scoring or the beginning of it, I will switch to oil with high-temperature, high-sheer (HTHS) viscosity and with high levels of molybdenum disulfide, a.k.a. Moly. Which, according to Navarro and motor-oil expert Lake Speed Jr., will tend to protect a bore's surface and minimize the scoring's effects. That said, I'm hoping the cylinder walls of my 39K-mile M96 will be stunningly pristine. It could happen.

You need to also understand that bore scoring is almost nonexistent on properly maintained 2.7L engines, and that it tends to be more pronounced on the later GDI engines rather than the port injected versions.

And Jack Raby says M96 engines in general are less susceptible to bore scoring, largely due to the use of cast pistons rather than forged. So let me ask you this — in view of those facts and given the engine I'm working on, would YOU remove the sump cover and scope out the bores? Unless you talk me out of it, I'm inclined to do it, because (1) the engine's out of the car, and (2) I'm trying to make it as bulletproof as I can.

As you are in the position to be able to do it, I would go ahead and check it. If you didn't, you will always have it in the back of your mind when it is less easy to do it.

Very true. It would probably nag me. I'll save it until last, though. At this point I'm about to measure and mark the cutout, following the old adage, "Measure three or four times, measure again, say a prayer, cut once."

“I cut it three times, and it’s still too short!”

Managed to pry the old bearing flange loose with two flat-blade screwdrivers and a lot of swearing. It was stubborn, I kid you not. What did I use to protect the crankcase from being gouged by the screwdrivers during the process? Popsicle sticks, the mechanic's friend.

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The exposed bearing doesn't look too bad — so far.

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Extracting it will have to wait until tomorrow, due to other demands on my time. The bearing puller is ready for action.

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This looks like a suspense movie, where you always want more... LOL Thank you for sharing! :-)

Since the bearing I'll be removing is a factory dual-row job, it doesn't have an external snap ring. It has an inaccessible wire lock and I hear tell it requires considerable force by the puller to break it. When it happens it's like a gunshot, they say. And the bearing will likely leave behind wire-lock remnants that'll need to be cleaned out, a job for my telescoping magnet. Hey, I'm looking forward to this episode.

After I get the bearing out and the opening sealed, I need to elevate the engine and slip two 2x8s under the sump cover, which will provide the clearance necessary to get my right-angle grinder under the bell housing. Most of grinding will be done from underneath, like in Raby's PCA video. It affords the clearest view of the cutout's outline as I'm working. I plan to take photos of the entire process — at the risk of documenting "... and here's where everything turned to **bleep**." But risk comes with the territory and I'm not a scaredy cat.

Wait until I get to the cam chain wear pads* ... then you'll see suspense.


*a.k.a. Variocam timing-chain guide-rail pilot ramps

I finally found time to pull the bearing yesterday after dealing with other demands on my time, including taking a cat with cystitis to the vet. The bearing puller uses a 24mm nut, but my wrench set only went up to 18mm. Once again, a big metric crescent wrench saved the day. It required considerable force to remove the factory dual-row bearing, as Jake Raby warned. I was expecting to hear a gunshotlike **crack!** when the puller overcame the wire lock, but a soft metallic sigh was the only sound it made. What a gyp!

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A couple ounces of oil seeped out of the hole when the bearing came out. I was prepared and caught it with an improvised catch basin. I'm going to send an oil sample to SPEEDynamix to be analyzed. It doesn't cost all that much and should be informative. An analysis can reveal an engine's entire history, according to oil expert Lake Speed, Jr., the man behind SPEEDynamix.

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As expected, the bearing looked, sounded, and felt perfect. The bearing's wire lock did not break but remained intact.

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Now I need to order the IMS Supplemental Toolkit from LN Engineering, necessary to install the Solution's bushing. (I've stopped calling it a bearing. It's a bushing, folks.) Renting the kit from LN is free for Solution buyers with a hefty deposit, $509.95 worth of hefty. (Which is interesting, in view of the Supplemental kit's list price of $299.) While I'm waiting for it to arrive I'll be busy, carefully measuring and marking the cutout for the notch, and then grinding, filing, and otherwise machining the notch itself. Photos to come. The next installment will also feature my patent-pending method for sealing the IMS opening to ensure that absolutely zero aluminum particles get in there while grinding. Stay tuned.

Have been following along your journey with great interest.
Glad to hear that you went with The Solution instead of the other options.
(That is what I chose without hesitation for my car) Pay once-cry once or whatever that saying is.

But, it is a "plain bearing".
Not a bushing.

Best of luck with the rest of the journey.
The best part of Boxster ownership is driving the car. Hopefully the car rewards you for you perseverance and investment!

cheers

Hmmm... Jake Raby or Charles Navarro referred to it as a bushing in one of their videos. It sure looks like a bushing to me. JFP?

That aside, thanks for the kind words.

While we're on the subject...

A Kansas-based company named Huyett supplies a huge selection of bearings, bushings, and fasteners of every description for a multitude of applications. They consider bushings and bearings to be fasteners... which spins my head around. Anyway, they weighed in on our question on their site:

Bearings and Bushings: The “Difference”

Many explanations will simply state that there is no difference because a bushing is a type of bearing. While this isn’t untrue, it is a surface-level answer because it invites the notion of, “if A is B and B is C, then A is C.” In other words, if bushings were a type of bearing, then subtypes of bushings would also have to be a derivative of a bearing, which isn’t true. Bearings are not the “parent” part.

Bushing is more of a generic term that catches most of the single-component members of this fastener family. Many bushings bear loads or allow for rotational movement, and many bearings reduce friction; all of these parts will alter the size of a bore. So why even distinguish between the two?

There are a few specific fasteners that are definitively a bushing or a bearing based on the definitions above. Beyond these few, the difference between a bushing and a bearing at a practical level is how it is used, not how it is designed. Since fastener manufacturers, distributors, and hardware stores cannot predict how you will use a part, their names for the fasteners are somewhat arbitrary.

https://www.huyett.com/blog/bushing-and-bearing-difference

Interesting, huh? Just out of curiosity, when I get a chance I'm going to email Huyett and ask them what they would term the Solution's application in M96 engines.

EDIT: Emailing them was a good idea. Unfortunately, I didn't anticipate that Huyett would have no email address. That's what you'd call "old school." I guess a website was leading-edge enough for them.

I will opine that to be marketing hype and nothing more. Oil analysis will give you a snapshot in time, so unless you’ve been collecting them periodically, there is no history to be had.

A couple of additional thoughts - if you really want to understand the oil, knowing what was put in the engine at the last change is critical and the number of miles since the last change is equally critical.

Erm. It’s a bearing. Not a rolling element bearing like the one you removed, but a journal bearing. No clue of the essential details of the LN design (dimensional, pressure in the feed line, etc), so I can’t comment on the actual hydrodynamics of it all (and, in the last 35 years, I’ve forgotten pretty much all of the detail I once knew). Unlike rod and crank mains, it sees no impact loads, so a much less complex problem set in that regard.

Lots of flashbacks to closed form calculations, using tensor notation, in that Lubrication Theory elective I took as a grad student. I’m imagining any number of quality software solutions are out there today to make that a whole lot easier to iterate on - LN still had to do the engineering, but the math is less drudgery.

Thanks for weighing in, Tom. I take it you disagree with Huyett that the taxonomy of bearings and bushings is somewhat ambiguous? Huyett and other bearing outlets have convinced me that classification is not cut and dried, so I'm backing off from my position. The Solution's design could be described as a type of bearing. Or a type of bushing. From here on in I will call it a bearing for the sake of clear communication.

Good points about oil analysis. Analyzing the sample I'm sending in can detect wear metals, fuel dilution, and other contaminants that indicate potential issues and reveal whether the engine has any ongoing problems, which is my primary concern.

Mechanically, it is a bushing that is serving as an oil fed bearing.

The picture with the oil is interesting. As the oil level drops when the engine starts, this small amount leaking out is proof that the bearing really only lives from its grease filling during operation.

I do disagree with them. In this application, It’s a hydrodynamic bearing. There is a clearance between the OD of the shaft and the ID of the bearing. The oil which is pressure fed to it, given that clearance and the feed pressure, creates pressures internal to the bearing which are well in excess of what the feed pressure is, hence the term hydrodynamic. The same principle is at play in your mains, conrod big ends, camshafts (journals, not lobes), etc.

Please consider it a data point and nothing more. If the engine was run very briefly, that last time it ran, you will see fuel dilution numbers which are an artifact of a cold start (so over rich combustion) and quick shutoff, for instance. Note: I am a big fan of oil testing and have been doing it for years, across our small fleet of 2 & 4 wheeled vehicles.

I misquoted Lake Speed Jr. when I wrote:

What he actually said was that periodic oil analysis can reveal an engine's history. In my haste to click the Submit button I distorted his words. My apology to Lake and to the forum.

Generally, if there's high speed and/or high load its called a bearing. Think main and rod bearings. They are really bushings, but given their application they're called bearings. The same would apply to the solution.

Think of the small end of the connecting rod on an old style V8 engine: to allow the piston wrist pin to properly float, the small end of the connecting rod has a bronze sleeve bushing pressed into it with annular oil groves in it to permit lubrication; when in operation, that sleeve becomes an bearing.

What it is is all a matter of semantics: a mechanical engineer would call the Solution a bushing because of its design features; in function, it is an oil fed bearing.

I measured and marked the cutout for the notch to my satisfaction. It's 20mm wide, which provides room to put a 13mm deep socket on the oil fitting. Note my aforementioned patent-pending seal for the opening, fabricated from thick, extra-sticky Gorilla tape. How sticky? It took a lot of pulling to peel the prototype off. It seals the opening tighter than a bull's rear end at fly time (one of my dad's expressions, approximately). Not a chance of aluminum particles from grinding getting past the seal, but as belt and suspenders I stuffed a paper towel in the opening before sealing it. I'm ready to grind the notch. Unfortunately, that will have to wait until tomorrow due to a previous commitment.

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Exactly: All a matter of semantics. Like I said about main and rod bearings. They're bushings, but given their application they're called bearings. ;)

I'VE GOT IT! It's a bearinglike bushing. Or a bushinglike bearing, take your pick. Whichever it is, it's unlikely to fail, and that's all I care about.

By the way, my next-to-last post contained proof that I'm getting a handle on my OCD-Lite. There was a time when I would have spent hours carefully cutting out the seal with an X-Acto instead of scissors, and I would have made sure that the marking lines for the cutout were straightedge-perfect. These days I'm deliberately freehanding, and that's an example. I've found that in general it's more fun and doesn't take nearly as much time. (Time, as it dawns on everyone sooner or later, is the most precious commodity of all.) Nevertheless, the notch itself will be as machinelike perfect as I can make it. Because as long as I'm performing the sacrilege of defacing the crankcase, the least I can do is make it look like it belongs there.

Not all bushing are bearings, but all bearings are bushings ;)

Thanks, Captain Obvious. :D :D :cheers:

Not quite finished but getting there. Unfortunately, I have to go out to dinner, so finishing touches will have to wait until tomorrow.

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