Cold Feet

[jb92563]

Originally Posted by PorscheBound

So I have been in the market for a 986 S for well over a month now. I have read a lot on the car and have become fairly knowledgable. I am looking for one with 60-70K miles and my budget is 17K. There seems to be a fair amount of them out there for that price. With that said, the IMS is starting to get to me. I can afford the car, I can afford the maintaince, I can afford to replace the bearing with the LN engineering one. What I cant afford is the replacement engine if it were to come down to that.
I honestly would buy the car and immediatly put in the LM bearing. I have read articles on the LM bearing, it seems to be bullet proof but with that said there are some people who say that even with the LM bearing, it could still fail. I know the percentage of actual IMS bearing failures is very little but it still concerns me. Am I over thinking it too much? How confident are you guys with the 986 being a reliable solid car with the bearing replacement? I just dont want to buy a 15K car and have to put a 20K engine in it. Thoughts?

You can replace the engine for a lot less than that, around $6K is common.

Also you can look at the IMS court case settlement and buy a car that has double row bearings or is outside the list of Settlement serial numbers to reduce risk even further.

Every engine can have catastrophic failure for a variety of reasons, every out of waranty car is always a risk.

At 10% or much less with a double row bearing I'd say you are rolling the dice the same with a 986 than with any other 10+ year old car.

Just do the LN bearing upgrade and don't give it another thought.

These engines are made to run hard and like the spirited use.

[thom4782]

IMHO the IMS bearing discussion gets far more discussion and worry than it deserves because the cost of a failure is so high. The risks are actually quite low and almost zero after installing an IMS Retrofit. It should last at least 50,000 miles.

[steved0x]

I bought a 2000 S with 103k miles on it this past December. After the shop did the PPI, and I finalized the deal with the seller, I had the shop put in the LN IMS Bearing for $1350 before I took delivery. (The clutch was recently replaced but the previous owner didn't do the LN retrofit). Since then I have never worried about it. But if I hadn't, I know I would have been worrying with every little noise. And he gave me a quote of close to $1,000 to install the IMS Guardian (which I know can be done as a DIY). For me it was worth the $1,350.

Steve

[recycledsixtie]

You never can be 100% sure with anything mechanical. I have had installed the IMS Guardian but the ims can still fail. If I had the ln ims installed it could still fail but less likely. I would still keep the Guardian installed even with the ln ims installed.

If my engine failed then I would likely go the second hand route first if I could find one. At my stage of life I do not want to spend $$$ unnecessarily on my Box which I may not keep for more than 2-4 years. Most likely it will not fail. Odds are with me.
Only you can make this decision to replace it or not.....if you want to keep it a long time the ln ims bearing may be the answer for you. Even if you don't keep it a long time you may need the peace of mind of a new ln ims install.