Quote:
Originally Posted by Homeoboxter
Yes, if you are the anxious type and want to sleep well at night after pouring a lot of money into your engine. On the other hand, the main take on from JFP`s post for me is that if a Boxster ran 150k miles without IMS failure then the engine case has no alignment issues and the IMS does not have excessive run out, so putting the IMS solution in it is overkill. Increasing the performance will not affect the load on the IMS bearing.
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Only flaw in that assessment is that the bearing design itself is also questionable; while misalignment may explain some failures, particularly low mileage ones, the concept of using a sealed bearing is not a very good one all by itself. Viton seals harden with age and oil exposure, allowing hot oil seepage to wash out the grease while not allowing enough oil in to properly cool and lubricate the bearing. While doing retrofits, we found many bearings that showed they were “on the way out”, with hardened and gapped seals, but had not failed yet (no metal in the filter or sump found during pre qualification). The residual oil the came out of the shaft after the bearing was pulled was very thin and stunk to high heaven (An indication it had lost most if not all of its lubrication and heat transfer properties), and the bearing itself was very loose. After being retrofitted with a ceramic hybrid that was open to oil mist lubrication, the engine ran without issues for another 100K miles before the owner traded it in on another car. It would be reasonable to assume that the original bearing’s poor condition was not attributable to misalignment, but rather simple lack of proper lubrication and cooling.
The moral of all this tale is that the IMS failure issue is way more complicated than most think it is, with multiple possible factors contributing to it.