Jake replaced my IMS bearing LAST week

[silver arrow]

Performance wise, where does a Raby car fall compared to a new Boxster in 2.9 and 3.4? Seems like a 2 year old new design would be a tough pass if they turn out to be more reliable, faster, and have much nicer interiors. I'm prepping my 02 2.7 for sale now. On a side note, after 2 piston failures on my 08 Subaru STI, I bought a set of Mahle forged pistons ($450) and had the engine rebuilt. Total was $2400 for parts and labor at the dealer. A complete new engine would have cost me $6400 installed at the dealer. I just don't know how you can justify $13,000 - $20,000 for an engine rebuild in any car. I've come to the conclusion that M96 cars are not worth saving at the current price point. The cost of the rebuilds will have to come down 40-50% to make it a sensible option. I have nothing but confidence in Jakes ability to build an engine, but I don't think he has control of the economics of the situation unless he becomes a nonprofit charity for damaged and neglected Porsches.

[cnavarro]

Since January, there are about 100 retrofit kits and 25 IMS upgrades done in house.

Our track car has about 10,000 miles and 30 track hours on it's early IMS upgrade, before we switched to ceramic bearings.

[Bladecutter]

Originally Posted by cnavarro

Since January, there are about 100 retrofit kits and 25 IMS upgrades done in house.

Our track car has about 10,000 miles and 30 track hours on it's early IMS upgrade, before we switched to ceramic bearings.

If I were to recommend anything, it would be to track down those couple of people on the couple different forums who have had 2 or 3 different IMS failures in the cars they have owned, give them the upgraded parts, and ask them to try to kill the car they way they did with their original engines.

Whatever those people did to their cars are exactly the people you want to want to test these parts that are designed to be better than OEM.

BC.

[Jake Raby]

This time last year the conversations on these forums didn't contain this type of content... Because at that time the retrofit was still being developed.

We have taken the skepticism as a compliment over time, because any fix is better than doing nothing at all... With every skeptic that makes a post comes a pat on the back for Charles and I, from the same person.

[macnjam]

I have a 2002 S, with 57k miles. New to me in last month. I have service history and it had RMS leak and replaced at 10,000k miles and otherwise was serviced normally. Few minor issues under warranty like passenger window unit but nothing major. Great car love it. Finally got a Porsche

I also live in Atlanta, and could easily get the fix from Jake. The problem I have, and I think we all have, is as had been said before:

1) there is no good data on the failure and whether it is inevitable or likely.

2) While Jake solution sounds good on paper and is promising, it is not a proven fix and one could argue Porsche did not design an engine to fail and their testing resources are much more complete than a small operation could provide. So they tested it and did not see this issue in their testing, which is more than just driving the car around.

Therefore, short of imperical data and analysis it is unclear to me how one could make a informed decision on this - cause there is not enough information. Also, in my experience the Internet tends to blow small issues into big ones.

One option is to switch to valvoline oil, sign up for their 300k warranty, hope all is well for the first 18 months (which you have to do before warranty is good) and then see if it grenades whether you can get it covered. I plan to do my change every 3k, and Valvoline's stuff is on the Porsche approved list.

Joe