[Jake Raby]

My primary issue with "The IMS solution" is that replacing the ball bearing with a plain bearing may have unintended side-effects.

No, This is why it has taken years to develop. The technology is not new, My 300,000 mile Carrera shares the technology along with every Mezger powered 911 on the road.

I suspect that we will find out what the new failure modes of "The IMS Solution" are in a few years when the first ones start to fail.

Speculation thats totally off base.

There is nothing to fail. If the unit ever begins to wear the engine just picks up a noise that may exist for a very long period of time. The unit does not incorporate components that create collateral damages. Any wear materials that would be generated are non-ferromagnetic and not hardened tool steel like races and balls found in the ball bearings that do so much damage.

In testing we have forced units to fail and we know what occurs. I have documentation of these and on one occasion I cost myself 4,400.00 in less than one minute when we forced an engine to fail at 7,200 RPM. We utilized our special puller to extract the failed Solution and replaced it without engine disassembly and testing continued with no ill-effects.

We have even purposely contaminated the oil supply to the IMSS to know what occurs.

Been there, done that and have the experience, documentation and pictures to prove it. We have put the IMS Solution up against every challenge possible during development because developing components and manufacturing solutions are exactly what we do.

Idling a car for a long time is an interesting but it is not a true test of the known-failure conditions. For example, it is known that unlubricated startup is one of the most stressful times for a bearing (and double that concern for a plain bearing).

Did you fail to read that we cold started an engine 5,200 cycles and found wear to be immeasurable? Cold start has been our#1 concern since day one, but cold start doesn't inhibit the opposite end of the IMS that is ALSO A PLAIN BEARING from being one of the only portions of the M96 engine that we've never seen wear or break. Thats right, the opposite end of the IMS is supported by a plain bearing on every M96/ M97 engine ever built and it was NEVER the focus of a revision. If a plain bearing supported IMS was a problem the opposite end of the IMS would see failures, but thats simply not the case, because it simply isn't an issue.

This wasn't something that was dreamed up over night, the IMS Solution was "invented" the very first time that I disassembled an M96 engine. Why? Because a ball bearing in that position has never made any sense to me. Remove the ball bearing and remove the failure- Period.

Like I said, I invented this for my engines and thats the only reason. If another unit is never sold outside my engines I really could care less, because that means that we are the only company in the world that produces these engines that don't have to worry about a ball bearing killing the engine that has our name on it. I had to be "convinced" to allow these units to be sold outside my engine program, which is why we have worked so hard to patent the technology and have taken all the necessary steps to do so, including working in total secrecy for years.