$3000 fear suck!
 

So I got sucked in to all the BS about the IMS bearing and had mine replaced at 130,000 miles. It looked just as good as the new one we replaced it with. What a complete waste of money. Could have put in a PSS9 system for the same money. LIVE AND LEARN that people hype s**t to make money.

I cry BS on your post! :troll:

Who did you have do the work? You were just lucky yours was in good shape, or maybe you've changed the oil every 3-5k miles and it paid off. If you have the LN bearing upgrade, you won't have to worry about the motor imploding and can put those PSS9s on there without worrying about parting them out for half price down the road. I'd like to do that next too, along with a brake upgrade, maybe even a single turbo addition. Pretty soon it could get to be real money!

The upgrade makes sense on a low-mileage, nearly new car, which is both still highly valuable and most at risk of IMS failure from what I've read. Even LN and Raby will tell you that probably 95% (or more) of IMS's are good and tend to stay good. Your car obviously had a good IMS or it wouldn't have lasted 130,000 miles. And why would you invest $3K in a car with 130,000 miles anyway? It's not like the new IMS would give you new rings and valves ...

Did you disassemble the 130,000 mile bearing to inspect it?
Have you had enough experience with roller bearings to know a bad one if you saw it? Did you measure the diameters of the balls or check them for spalling?

The reason we have developed the IMS Guardian is for people who want to procrastinate the IMSR as long as possible, or have a vehicle with value diminished to the point that the IMSR makes no monetary sense. Some will never have to retrofit their bearing while the IMSG provides audible and visual warnings from a dash interface.

You did this as an elective procedure and it was a wise decision. People who have faced the decisions related to an IMS failure do not share your same thoughts. We talk to them on a near daily basis.

Contrary to popular belief, just because your IMS bearing isn't extracted in pieces doesn't mean that it was "perfectly fine and as good as the bearing that replaced it".

I disagree with you on IMSR BS comment. Mine almost broke at 47K.
I think this IMS game is like playing a Russian roulette. The chance you you might get hit by one is small but when you get it, you are toast.

I'm not here try to tell anybody to get IMS replaced or help Jake to sell his product.

I had a clutch judder because there was a leak (RMS) and oil got to my clutch friction area. Sent it for clucth, IMS and RMS work and found that RMS was leaking but still went ahead with IMS replacement procedure since the car was already apart.

And guess what we found out....

My IMS bearing had some play on it(while new LN bearing has no play at all). IMS did not leak oil but play on the bearing really told me that my bearing was on the way OUT. There was no visible metal shavings on my oil filter, engine ran fine.

I was one who did not believe in IMS failure but after saw what happened to my bearing, I'm glad that my clutch problem saved my engine. OTOH, most IMS bearing failure happens on cars with low mileage :mad:

I had mine done at 57k and I sleep well knowing that I can hammer the daylights out of the car without (that particular) fear of seizing the engine.

When I'm done with Boxster fun, anyone buying the car will see value in buying a car with the LNE bearing.

You seem to be saying that given the opportunity to buy one with the LNE done or the same car without it, you'd judge them to be equal in value.
Aren't opinions great?

And please note that I only mentioned value, not price.

Yeah, when I took my car in to have my clutch replaced, I asked about replacing the IMS. The owner showed me a stack of perfectly good IMS bearings that he had replaced at the insistance of other customers. I took one look and agreed to skip it.

Why do I temp fate so?

IMS failure is less than 3%. That means that I have a 97% chance of never having an IMS failure. Those are about the overall odds that Vegas casinos run on. Good enough for me.

Of course, someone will end up in the 3%, that is real. And if you can't afford $5-$6K to replace your engine, then you have a problem because the only way to mitigate the potential IMS failure is a $2,000 replacement. (And if you can't afford a $2,000 repair you probably shouldn't own a Porsche. Or a BMW. Or many other similar cars.)

As for the $400 warning system, who knows. But when the warning goes off your only option wlll be a $2,000 repair (on top of a $400 warning system).

For me, I'm going with the odds (97%). And if I end up in the 3%, I easily have the $6K to replace the engine.

There is no recognized market value in a IMS bearing replacement.

Most likely it is somewhere around $300 at best if you find someone who cares. They'll give you 50% of the hardware cost. Labor is never valued.

And most buyers could care less whether the IMS has been replaced or not (just like we didn't care when we bought our used cars).

I can't agree with that statement entirely, thstone. The reason I "didn't care" is simply because I didn't know. Had I known about the issue prior to the purchase I would have sought out a vehicle that did have it done, and I know there are some people out there who know about that issue when they go shopping.

I think people are assuming that the "value" being referred to is financial in nature. I understand it as personally important value, and that is not to say that I'm going to pay more for a car that has it vs. a car that does not. But knowing what I've learned as a part of being on this forum and doing some homework (post-purchase), given two similar lower mileage cars where a difference between them is that one had the IMS retrofit or replacement done by a certified shop, I'd choose that one over the one that did not have it done, because that car, to me, would be the more reliable of the two, at least when it comes to the issues having to do with the IMS bearing.

I would not bet on that; when doing a PPI for a customer, cars are rated on the basis of "+’s" vs. "-‘s" (we do not attempt to set price). Two cars in otherwise equivalent condition, one with an IMS refit, the other without, care to guess which one scores higher (and typically sells for more)?

When selling my car, I would absolutely make the arguement that the car has had the upgrade that would cost the owner $2k to otherwise install, looking for an extra thousand for the car. Just like I'd do with a new clutch or new set of tires.

Completely off topic, I just noticed that JFP in PA as of his post above has 987 posts. :dance:

We can fix that.................

The difference being that anyone buying a car realizes that fact regarding tires, clutch, alternator or most basic parts. Whether or not you can successfully justify an IMS upgrade to them just like those is the issue.

Keep in mind its a small fraction of buyers and sellers that come on here and actually try to get an insight. And of the people here on this site not everyone is sold on the bearing in the first place.

realistically, it is a great benefit that comes at a cost. Just like most mods you may not get that money back at resale.

just get back the $3,000 by only changing your oil once every 6 six years.
Looking out for Porsches is over rated...

If they're buying my car, they will understand the IMS when I'm done.

You don't have to do the retrofit, just don't get unlucky like I did.

What I see as a reality is a difference in the actual "sell-ability" of the cars. This is more because the buyers that have cash in hand are generally the type that do their homework, when that homework is done the person finds out about the IMS challenges.

I get a TON of emails from people looking to buy these cars that already have the IMSR, or asking questions about what should be done or looked at before purchase, beyond a typical PPI.

I also get a ton of people who buy a car, never take delivery of it and have it shipped to us for the work before they ever see it in person. These people would certainly buy a car that already has the retrofit procedure carried out, to save the hassles.. They'd also pay more for it, because they already had the budget anyway.

I am just getting ready to put my Wife's 996 Millennium Edition up for sale, it has the IMSR and other work done to it that we consider necessary. I will purposely ask 2,000.00 more for this car than what the others like it are selling for and advertise it with the IMSR. We'll see how long it takes the car to sale and see if it matters.

That car even has the IMS Guardian employed currently and I have not decided whether or not I will pull it out of the car yet since we have not released the product for sale yet.

The door jamb decal makes a difference along with serialized components. We had to do this because people were advertising cars as being retrofitted, when they actually were not.. I guess they were wasting their time since it doesn't make a difference in sell ability or net price.

The IMS retrofit SHOULD BE a $1-1500k investment (the other costs should include a new clutch and flywheel, which is a worthwhile repair or replacement on a well used Porsche). It's not a $3k throw-away.

I don't personally believe in doing it on cars like mine (worth $11-14k, 12 years old, etc.)- I might if I needed to get my clutch & flywheel replaced. Some portion of the cars, lets say 3-10%, have this failure. The failure is catastrophic and, besides the water pump, about the only way the car is going to fail after it gets to 50k mles.

If I were shopping for a 97-2004 Boxster (S or not), I would attach a $750-1000 premium to a car that had had it's IMS bearing replaced. Maybe $1500 if the clutch and flywheel were done at the same time and it was relatively recent (i.e. within 3 years/20,000 miles).

That's my own opinion. I don't believe in getting it done for my own car, but a car that had had it done would be a nice thing to have.

I don't really think it matters what your Boxster is worth. Unless the wheels are literraly falling off then most likely you are planning to keep it long term. If keeping an older Boxster is your plan then you are going to end up spending a fair amount to keep it running as a Porsche was intended to be. This is true of all Porsches from rare to common. Point is there's no point in owning one of these cars if its all busted up from outstanding repairs. If you are going to make that committment then there's no logical reason to put off the IMS upgrade. Sure you can wait until the clutch needs replacing but I think this is a dumb move. At most you'll save a few hundred bucks getting a few extra years on that clutch while gambling that if it goes against you it will cost you thousands. Good luck selling a Boxster with no engine.

btw, my dual row IMS was in PERFECT condition when it was extracted.
Until they come up with CAT scans for car engines you can either stress out about possibly being one of the unlucky ones or you can get the upgrade.
No brainer.

I’m am looking for a 2000-04 Boxster in Southern California. Since I am in no hurry, I’m holding out for one with the LN IMS replacement. I’ve seen some in NorCal, but none down here yet. I’m willing to pay $1-2K more with the IMS upgrade, figuring that if they did the upgrade, they also understand the car, and took good care of it. I’ll give it a year before I look at buying a non-upgraded car and having it done after I get it. . Like I said, I’m in no hurry, and can wait for the right car.

Why did I spend the money to replace the bearing in a car barely worth that much. Because I can. And when this Porsche Corolla finally blows up, I will go pay cash for something worth the money, a Corvette ZR-1. And I will let this Porsche piece of crap rust in the backyard. Why, because I can.

You tell 'em! :rolleyes:

your comparing a 100k + zr1 vette to a 10k or so boxster, give me a break. there are some local ads for boxsters in my area . one has 175,000 miles and one has 155,000 . i highly doubt they have any upgrades.

I agree with Dragonwind, this is just TROLLing. If you had 100K cash to drop on a ZR1, why would you be crying about a few grand?

This is close to the dumbest statement I have ever heard.

In relative numbers, there are probably few 986s out there that are upgraded.

In the coming years, there will certainly be many more cars with the IMSR on the market.

As this upgrade proves itself, I firmly believe that retrofitted cars will easily fetch $1k more than cars that don't have the upgrade.


Time will tell but I'm taking the route of action rather than apathy.

The problem is these engines have a couple of other failure modes, upgrading the IMS only fixes one of them.

The failure rate is approx 2%-3%. No one is going to pay $1,000 premium when they can buy hundreds of other cars for less and have a 97% sucess rate.

Unlikely. If you're willing to pay a $2,000 premium then buy one tomorrow and have the upgrade done. No reason to wait.

That is my concern. IIRC, one expert mentions 10 or more modes of failure.
That is why I have ordered the IMSG, even though I may yet get the IMS upgrade.

I'm not sure where you get your 2-3% numbers. Certainly the only company that has a sample large enough to be valid is Porsche, and they will never let us see the numbers.

As the owner of a Porsche service facility, I can tell you that my experience is a failure rate MUCH higher than 3%. Double-digits for sure. But, my sample is relatively small, so I won't waste your time by quoting numbers.

You said "no one will pay more.....". As you can see in a post that almost immediately follows that statement, we have a person in CA who is looking to do exactly that.

There's no point in arguing about it. Let's wait and see.

What data did you use to come up with that 2-3% number?

Would your car
 

now sell faster, easier, better priced? Guess we won't know till you try and sell it. I can tell you the maintenance history and attitude of the seller influenced the buyer of the last Boxster I sold. I had to fight off buyers and I didn't live convenient to a major market.

Everyone has to make their individual choices on how much risk they are willing to take in life and how much they are willing to pay to mitigate the risk.

I turned down an extended warranty when I bought my last Boxster, and didn't do the IMS. Not because I wasn't convinced the LN part is better or the inner-seal-less design isn't better but because I was willing to bet on the odds. You didn't and maybe you spent money you didn't need to or the existing part could have failed next week. We'll never know.

Buying insurance is like that. Sometimes you win (or your survivor does) and sometimes you just sleep better at night.

This is about 6 months after the fact but my dealership, which sells and services most of the Porsches in the region has never seen an IMS failure. With your double-digit experience, are you sharing serial number, build sequence or model year/mileage data with Raby or other people making repairs or keeping data? Additionally since you are a Porsche repair facility, you comprehensive data might be what is needed to "urge" Porsche to cover these issues.

so the question that has not been asked yet is why did you overpay by about 1k to do the retrofit? All the local shops I called here in the Seattle area were about 2k for the IMS retrofit including parts........Im doing it with my tax return so I dont have to dip into savings lol

I performed the retrofit on mine myself since I was pulling the transmission out anyway. I sold the car this past fall, an informed buyer (luckily I had one) will likely understand and pay more for the car as a result. An uniformed buyer (one who bases their decision solely on price) will likely deserve and learn quickly the consequences of getting a "Cheap Porsche".

When I pulled the original IMS bearing out and it to appeared to be in good shape, I simply shook my head and smiled thinking "Well, at least that's something that won't be dwelling in my thoughts anymore". If you're already going in for a clutch change or otherwise, change it out. Until then, keep changing the oil and filter every 3k to 5k miles, JMHO.

And yes, I know a couple of guys who've unfortunately experienced IMS Bearing failures on M96 motors. Read of several more here and on other sites, spoke to techs at independent Porsche shops, it is a known problem.

I also was curious about the IMS bearing issue, so, I went to my local Porsche dealer and had a little quick talk with a couple of P-techs. Letting them know I was in the market for a nice pre-owned Boxster and have heard about the IMS issue. I was told that in their combined years of servicing and repairing Posche's that they have had only one car with an engine failure. I was told that Porsche's love being driven, not sitting...Don't Worry, Be Happy!