Possible Indicator of Impending IMS Failure

[spine911]

Originally Posted by Jake Raby

The symptom mentioned is isolated from the IMS.. When an IMS bearing gets bad enough to cause a hesitation, your pistons have already collided with your valves at maximum velocity and the engine looks like 3 mile island internally.

+1...Fuel delivery issues will have no effect on the integrity of the IMS- just a bad coincidence.

[986Shaft]

Originally Posted by spine911

+1...Fuel delivery issues will have no effect on the integrity of the IMS- just a bad coincidence.

I didn't think a fuel delivery problem was affecting the IMS.

I don't know the specifics, but recall reading that the Intermediate shaft is under the most stress at lower RPMs, in lower gear. Supposedly why failures seem to happen at low speed, e.g. accelerating away from a stop light (as in our case). If this is true, I wondered if there was enough resistance at this point to cause the engine to hesitate.

From subsequent posts, it sounds like experts think this would not occur. If so, the hesitation probably was a fuel delivery problem, and not related the IMS problem. I just found it odd that it only happened in a certain RPM range in 2nd gear.