Quote:
Originally Posted by tonythetiger
All true, except to call the IMS failure "common" feeds into the fearmongering of the IMS issue. I do agree its a concern. FWIW, I am on my 4th 986 and never had an issue, even replacing IMS on 3 of them. Every bearing I removed looked perfect. (2 dual row and a single) I also don't know anyone that has personally suffered a loss.
History and sanity check:
Through the years, Porsche used one of two bearings; a double-row and a single row. Earlier 986 boxsters used the double-row, switching over mid-year to a single row in 2001. The advertised rate of failure for single-row bearings is 8% for cars over 90K miles, but that number seems to come from guess who? The folks who have made tens of millions on a solution.
Dual Row has a statistically lower failure rate, estimated at around 1%. That said, statistics don't mean much to you if your bearing fails, right?
If your research leads you to worry about this, then for your peace of mind replace the bearing or buying a car that the previous owner addressed the issue in. IMHO, the best-advertised solutions out there are over-hyped and ridiculously overpriced. It's a bearing and it is easy to remove and replace the transmission, a little time and common sense or experience, but if you dont work on the car yourself, this is gonna cost you some cash. I chose peace of mind.
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Porsche’s last published data showed 12.6% failures for single rows, 3%+ for dual rows, and that data is now several years old, so there have probably been more in the intervening time. Porsche also produced a third design (2005-2008), the non serviceable unit because of its size, and the last rate of failures on that design was 1-2%. So, in essence, all versions failed, just a differing rates. To my knowledge, there is no viable correlation between mileage and rates of failure; we saw them die in cars with less than 10K miles, and well over 130K miles.
If you are not going to replace the facotory IMS, it is all an amount of your risk tolerance.