While You're In There...
I had the joy of picking up my 2004 S in Germany in May this year and had a fantastic road trip through five countries in five days to my house in Spain. Something about being an expat, buying your first Porsche, and immediately getting on the autobahn with it is a feeling that is hard to describe. Separate road trip write up later. Anyway, I can tell you that "buying the best Boxster you can afford" seems to be great advice, worked for me, but either way its a very different bottom line in Europe then the USA. As in double the price you guys pay stateside. Still, could be worse, the car was less then half what it would have cost here in Norway. I wish I were joking!
I knew going into this that I would have to do the IMSB retrofit, so I scheduled the car to go in to my indi shop in August. Flawless work, they even detailed the car for free. And while I was in there... I went kinda bananas on the maintenance items. All told, here is the list:
Insaro double IMS bearing retrofit
OEM Clutch
OEM Flywheel
RMS
AOS
Front motor mount
Water pump
Serpentine belt
71C thermostat
Spin-on oil filter adapter
Magnetic drain plug
Spark plugs
Coolant tank and cap
Gbox 2nd gear detent
Cleaning of radiators
They were going to drop the sump for me as well, but the first bolt snapped off and had to be extracted and replaced. So we skipped the sump inspection. Oh well.
On to some pics:
The shop (TallerBox in Cartagena.) Fantastic service level, they made me feel like the most important customer ever. The place is so clean you could eat off the floor! Daily updates and pictures on the progress. Though mine was only one of two P-cars in that week, they have a steady stream of high-end rides. Being Spain, however, they also fix "regular" cars too.
Gearbox, clutch and flywheel out. No RMS leak, and apparently a small oil leak at the IMS bearing cover as evidenced by the clutch dust. Or so it looks.
The old clutch. Not bad actually, but no point in putting it back with 73.000kms on it. Flywheel was bad so it needed to be replaced.
IMS bearing out... no damage, no free play, both seals intact, full of relatively clean oil. As pristine as it could be. This is where most of you write "I'm glad I did it anyway" which annoys the hell out of me. I'm ecstatic that I replaced a perfect bearing and not one that had already started to barf metal bits into my engine!
Insaro double bearing before and installed. Now, I know many will ask "WTF retrofit is that?" and "Why not LNE or the Solution?" Good questions... I debated what to do but in the end I chose this setup. Why? the Insaro bearing is made in Spain where my car lives, so my indi shop is certified to install it and has done a pile of installs. Its a ceramic 2-stage bearing design with a 20mm center shaft and a secondary bearing inside the IMS that comes into temporary (last resort) use if the first one fails (I'm just as skeptcal as you, but I'm a risk taker.) It includes a 3-year warranty (Insaro will fix your engine if the bearing fails and causes a craptastrophe.) So all these things considered I went with what my shop was most experienced with.
EDIT: By the way, I forgot to post the camshaft deviation numbers before and after, both were completely stable with no variation :
Before, with stock IMSB: 1.31 and 2.6
After with retrofit IMSB: exactly the same :-)
I arrived after the work to a shiny clean car!
The car was great before, but I have peace of mind now, getting stranded in the middle of nowhere with limited Spanish skills and a grenaded engine is not something I wanted to experience.
All is well!
