Intermediate Shaft Bolt

[ancster]

Thanks for the information. I will take a look at the engine when I'm back at the dealer.

Hopefully the shaft replacement with solve the problem.

[Tool Pants]

Ask a lot of questions and take pictures, for what little good that may do you.

There is nothing you did to cause this. The M96 motor is a great design on paper. This is a weak point. Ask your dealer when Porsche switched from a double to a single bearing, and what bearing is in your motor.

Ask them why this part failed.

Good luck.

[Cloudsurfer]

Very interesting. I know the 996 series cars still had the RMS issue, but is the IMS still an issue on the 3.4 and 3.6 motors?

Patrick

[ancster]

Here's an update on the problems with the IMS. There was some oil leaking from the IMS seal and it looks like when the dealer was inspecting the engine, they tried to tighten the bolt and it sheared off.
I have a new intermediate shaft being installed in the engine as there was no damage to the engine. The new shaft has 2 seals and they have improved the design of the shaft by increasing the diameter to improve it's strength. There are 2 seals on the shaft - both internal and external now.

I will post some pictures to show the differences in the shafts. Maybe a start of Porsche working to improve the design.

Cheers

[RandallNeighbour]

Jeff, do you have any pics of the rear main seal you could point to so I can see what this rascal actually looks like?

In my nightmares, the rear main seal is about six feet tall and it spews oil out on everything around it and I drown in a pool of hot engine oil as my wife says, "I told you that car was going to be the death of you!"

Now I'm gonna have intermediate shaft failure nightmares too.

[MNBoxster]

Hi,

This is nothing new, just different, incorrect, verbage. The IMS failure is mainly reserved to the '01 and later cars when Porsche redesigned the Intermediate Shaft to lessen engine vibration. When this was done, they switched to a single bearing (not the seals) over the previous two. The issue persists to this day.

What the lister is describing here is not an IMS failure, but incompetence on the part of the Dealer Mechanics who sheared off the IMS nut by overtightening it - that's something completely different. It's not an inherent failure but poor wrentching on the part of the mechanic.

The non-egas cars are essentially immune to this failure because the IMS in these cars is supported by 2 bearings which hold it on it's spin axis whereas the single bearing has been shown to allow meandering of this shaft which drives the Camshaft Chains. At high revs, this shaft become misshapened and eventually fails, breaks and shreds the Oil Seals. Ironically, usually at low revs.

In other words, Randall, nothing to lose sleep over...

Happy Motoring!... Jim'99

[RandallNeighbour]

Whew! Glad I checked in here before I shut the laptop cover for the night (it's 11 pm now).

Who'da thunk having an OLD Boxster engine would be a good thing?