one, even if they had the Jake/Charles IMS installed, be able to tell you anything other than it was done and they feel good about it? I say this because none of us have the statistics or multi-car experience over time to be able to tell how reliable it might be.
I can tell you from cruising lots of Boxster forums that there are dozens installed and I haven't heard of a single failure. But what does that really mean? We don't have any 100k-with-the-retrofit cars out there. We don't have hundreds of cars driven multiple years with it. We just don't have enough data to see how the retrofit will work with cars run in the winter or stored over the winter. Only after many years and many hundreds of cars will we have what starts to be a meaningful sample.
We also don't know how experienced your installer would be or how the experience of the installer matters in the retrofit reliability.
If you have the transmission and motor apart for some other reason, that may change the economics of the retrofit. But it is still an expense that may or may not be needed. Recall that maybe 80-90% of our cars will not have this problem in their lifetimes even without the retrofit. Remember there are cars with 360k/225k on them out there with their original IMS bearings. And other cars that are on their 3rd motor. When you play in the casino (pay for the preventative retrofit), some will win big (those that would have had the failure), many lose (those that wouldn't have had the failure).
I do suppose that the retrofit might enhance the resale value of the car someday...if it proves out to be reliable over time. But frequent documented oil changes with the right oil can help prevent IMS problems too and could be also value enhancing.
I suggest you read the
lnengineering web page on the IMS and decide for yourself if spending the money to retrofit is right for you.
IMHO