Yes, Jake that is how / what I have in my car....it is the LN bearing and the LN tooling used. I appreciate the development.

......correct or not I do recall gingerly waiting it out until the dual row kit was available as my model year could have had either. It was early on and one could drop the trans. and be out of luck if a shallow dish flange was staring at you.

No LN kits were sold until my retrofit procedure was adopted for the dual row.
Prior to this the only IMS component sold was the triple row fitted shaft assembly, requiring engine disassembly for fitment.

The very first LN IMS component was a quadruple bearing fitted shaft assembly, I built the first engine to ever be fitted with an LN bearing, using that shaft. It's still alive.

Jake,
I did my own install of the dual-row LN bearing last summer. Since it was an owner-install, there's no warranty. If I sent you the used factory bearing, would you still examine it and render an opinion to me?

Applause for your miles.

Did you send the old LN back to Charles for them to look at?

What was the condition of the engine before the first LN install? Clean of debris?

How does the original bearing failing impact a new bearing? And what's an expected life for a replacement bearing if the original is failing...at least long enough to make the replacement worth it?

Hi Mike,
No I did not send the original bearing for LNE to look at, although I still have it and could send it to them if they really wanted it or needed it for failure testing. I decided to keep the original bearing as a trophy and show-n-tell conversation piece. Sometimes I pull it out of the drawer and just admire it, to spin it between my fingers and think of how many times that bearing has spun inside my motor, at outrageous velocities, and to think how that small part has created so much heart ache and pain for some yet opportunity and happiness for others… oops I digress… back to the point.

At the time I replaced the bearing I had no signs of failure, I just felt that I was pushing my luck with the high miles on the Jägermobile, it had over 200K miles on the odometer at the time. Attached is a photo of the original bearing. It spun freely with no resistance, not as smooth as a new LNE bearing by any means but it seemed to be OK. I am not a bearing expert; I’m sure spinning a bearing with your fingers is not complete and proper analysis, but my original bearing spun smooth and freely. There was a little play with the center bolt that a new bearing does not have, maybe a sign of some wear??


http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01...1414895340.jpg


I change the oil every 4,000 to 5,000 miles, with each oil change I cut the filter open and inspect it. I have never found any debris of any kind, inside or outside the filter. I also have a LNE magnetic drain plug and have never seen anything on it to be concerned about when I inspect it.

The bearings don't come to me, they go to LN.. My part of the classic retrofit bearings has been over for a long, long time now.

Debris from the original failure will remain within the engine, being very difficult to remove. These will chew the internals of the engine, and the retrofit bearing to bits.

If a bearing failed, the IMS assembly can also be compromised as it can see collateral damage in the form of housing runout. This can easily create a wobble and harmonic that will shred the retrofit bearing in short order.

This is why preventative retrofits are the only way to go- people won't listen to this until they have wasted 20K by thinking that it can't happen to them.

I have two "criers" this week... Those are failure calls where the owner starts crying.