LN Engineering IMS Retrofit. First one, Many to go.
 

Hi guys,

This is my first thread here. I'm a serious 914 guy who owns a Porsche shop near Daytona Beach.

We just purchased a 2002 986 for my wife. Along with the "new" 986 comes the need to complete an IMS bearing replacement.

Here's an overview of my experience today.


This is the victim, I mean patient:

Assume the position........the service position. :cool:

Under the car. Diagonals out, engine tray out:

Muffler and other cross-members out:

Tranny out:

Here's how I supported the engine.

3x3, .125" steel square tube on top of a couple of folded towels.

There is a chain around the tube with two 1100#-rated caribeners hooked to the rear lift-hoop. The nylon strap is a secondary safety.

This worked fine. I'll use it again:

Here's the cam lock in place. Sorry, it's not a great picture. I forgot the crankshaft lock picture.

IMS puller on the factory bearing.

It came out pretty easily, once it started moving...

I thought I took more pictures, but I guess not.

Here's the new bearing in place.


The new clutch arrives tomorrow. The plan is to drive it away in the afternoon.

Stand by.

how's the old bearing look?

Very informative...thanks for the posts (and welcome aboard!). Good idea with that 3x3 steel piece for supporting the engine, BTW.

Great write up! Looking forward to see more of the project!

Yea, good write-up. The swap out seems pretty straight forward, looks like you're going to save yourself a couple thousand dollars by doing it yourself. Any plans this weekend? :)

The old bearing appeared to be in very good condition, but the IMS was filled with oil, so......

Thanks for posting!!! And that is a nice 914 in the first pic, more info?

Here is more about me and what I do:

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=98446

http://www.clubnarp.com and find "start of a beautiful build" in the Tavern section.

http://914rs.com is my website.

It's my wife's car and I own a Porsche shop. The IMS bearing, tools and clutch kit just look like a $1000 charge to the business account to me.

:ah:

Wow, you make it look so easy!

Someone let me know if advertising like this is inappropriate here.


I've decided to offer this service for manual-transmission 986s for $1999, flat rate. That rate includes the LNE bearing.

The Tiptronic will probably me more, but I'll need to do one first. The first one will be $1999 and I'll adjust from there.

996s will also be on the list for $1999 to start.

Clutch and RMS will be extra.

Let me know what you think. :cheers:

Well, I got the clutch in UPS, but they fumbled the box with the flywheel bolts.

All stop.


Here are pictures of the cam timing verification.

Pull the crankshaft lock out, rotate the engine 720 degrees and reinsert the lock.

Then verify the cam is in the correct position. I checked it with the cam lock, but couldn't hold it there and take the picture at the same time. You can sort of see the slot in the cam is aligned with the seam in the cam housing.

Anyway, it checked.

How many miles on the car ?
 

Series9 how many miles were on the car when you did the work, curious....

John

79,xxx


That's weird. I wanted to post just "79,xxx", but it wouldn't let me.

Must be at least 10 characters.

OK. Flywheel bolts came today.

Interesting. The old ones were Torx T50 and the new ones are Torx T55.

No matter.

Here's my non-factory flywheel lock:

pictures/comments of the old IMS bearing condition/state?

Were already posted, but I'll say again: Generally good, but the IMS was filled with oil.

The new clutch didn't come with a centering tool. Since this is my first 986 clutch, I didn't have one.

Fortunately the pilot bearing is the same size as a 901 tranny.

Just the right amount of 3M blue tape and we're in business:

And here it is inserted....... :cool:

Do you think the centered muffler tips were for this?

And look, I didn't cover the license plate for the picture. I think that's a silly practice. Your license plate spends its entire life in public. Why hide it for internet pictures?


Anyway:

The rest of the assembly was basically the reverse of the disassembly.

Some observations:

The removal of the early muffler is a pain with that contraption of a factory bracket.

Hands-down, the hardest part of the reassembly was the single bolt that held the clutch slave cylinder. I had the car on an overhead lift and cussed for 45 minutes trying to overcome the preload on that thing in order to put a single bolt in place.

The five 16mm (16mm head) bell housing bolts were FRIGGEN' TIGHT. I had to use a 3' breaker bar on two of them to get them out. How did I get a breaker bar on those bolts? 2.5' of combined 1/2" and 3/8" entensions and a 3/8" universal joint set up so I could stand where the muffler resides and use the breaker bar from there.


Special tools:

I didn't have to buy anything, but I did modify tools I had.

1/4" drive 13mm socket got cut down to become a shallow socket to get at the bolts on the muffler bracket.

The triple-square bolt on the bell housing required that I cut down the appropriate TS bit and use an 11mm box-in wrench on it to remove the bolt.

The chain tensioner on the top of the engine required me to cut a 32mm box-in wrench so I could swing it in the confines of the engine bay.

You saw my 901:986 clutch centering tool mod. I just need to source the correct tool.

I made a flywheel retainer that was pictured earlier.



There you go. It's done. The customer (my wife) is happy to have the car back and doesn't understand all the fuss. It was running fine......... :cool:

dan (03 base) and i (97 base) just finished doing the ims upgrade ,started on friday evening and finished sunday 2pm, dan's car has 64xxx miles and my car has 73xxx miles,bearing where fine on both cars,muffler was easy to get out on my 97 car and a pain in the a$$ on the 03 ,i also had to remove the intake tub form the airfilter to throttle body on the 97 and not on the 03