LNE products "solution vs time honered IMS bearing retrofit
 

Either crowd mentality has gotten to me or just being prudent. I am planning on replacing the clutch on my 2000 S over July 4th.

I have owned her since 2004, she has 113K miles of which I put 80K on.

I have always tried to stay ahead of her. I am 65 so I will keep her until my knees give out and I cant get into anymore.

So thoughts;

Clutch, I have heard that the 987 clutch is a straight replacement and an upgrade, true/false? Your thoughts.

RMS seal, no brainer.

IMS; likely to do this at the same time, LNE seems to have 2 products;
Time honored bearing replacement (ceramic bearings) and a new "solution" with a oiler.

Any thoughts on these?
David

David

I've had the Solution in mine since mid-2013, so I wouldn't exactly call it "new". It's a permanent solution, and includes a slightly different version of the LNE spin on filter adapter. For peace of mind, there's nothing better.

It's also nearly twice the price of the time honored LNE bearing replacement, although it may have come down in price since I had it done 5 years ago.

Having said that, if I had to do it over again, I would still get the Solution.

Regardless of which way you go, make sure that whoever is doing the installation does an engine pre-certification check. This includes examination of the oil filter and removal of the lower sump cover (oil pan) to check for metallic debris. I'm pretty sure that LNE requires it, but if an indie shop is doing it (or you are DIYing it) you may be inclined to skip this step. DON'T. Why would you want to spend money on an IMS upgrade if your engine is on its way out?

Just my 2 cents...

LNE products
 

Thanks for your input, the "solution" was new to me, anyone else with thoughts?

It will be "DIY", I have a buddy with a rack.

For my 2003 S I went with the LN Single Row Pro which replaced the OEM single row bearing for my model year with a double row ceramic bearing that fits in the same space. I figured there are so many other things that can kill an engine and the M96 in particular that I didn't feel the need to get a permanent solution for this issue.

I followed the same thought process as PaulE. Although my bearing showed no signs of wear or imminent failure upon removal, I decided to go with the Pro dual row bearing. The cost versus benefit just wasn't there for me with the solution especially given the age of these cars, my age and the other numerous issues waiting to bite you. I did think the LN build quality was great so you will be happy with either.

in your situation i think of it this way, the LNE bearing replacement will last you another 80k miles (or more). It took you 14 years to put 80k miles on your car at which time you will be just about 80 and the car will be 32 years old with close to 200k miles on it. Translation - at that point and at your age 14 years from now the solution wont add any value to a car that old with that many miles on it.

Also, with yours being a 2000, you could pull the tranny and have a factory dual row bearing in which the LNE bearing replacement should never need to be done again. Your call, but for the extra $1,000 difference (at least) i'd say there's a lot better places to spend that money. with 113k miles, i'm sure there's more that needs/will need replacing soon (think suspension).

just my $.02

I have....
 

.....the "Solution".

Installed almost three years ago.

I've put 25,000 miles on it.

I like it. No moving parts. What is better than that?

I'd stick with the OEM 986 clutch and flywheel.

Also R&R the AOS while you are in there.

:cheers:

I pose a question like this when someone ask this.

How will you feel if you do The Solution and have an accident the next day or the engine fails from one of the other 28 modes of failure?

How much to put into preventative maintenance is so subjective. I'm convinced there is no right answer. I've over-maintained more cars than I've under-maintained. But I never saved on safety items like tires and brakes.

And you can't be sure it is even a candidate for an IMS replacement in certain Cayman years or if it has a replacement engine.

mikefocke.....
 

....well, what happens if a gigantic asteroid hits our planet and we all die in a flash tomorrow?

Come on, man!

By that reasoning, we'd never do anything.

Why fix the IMS when any number of other things could grenade the engine?

Simple---Because we KNOW that can grenade the engine and we have the ability to prevent that from happening for sure. At least we KNOW that problem is solved.

Don't suffer paralysis by analysis.

FWIW, when I bought my 986 about three years ago, I immediately flat bedded her to Flat 6 Innovations and had them install the "solution", R&R the RMS, Air/oil separator, water pump, all three cam chain tensioners, all the spark plugs, clutch, and flywheel.

Cheap?

No.

Priceless.

We've driven her all over the country with no fear and have been enjoying life.

EVERY car out there has some sort of flaw that affects a certain percentage of the build. After 20 years we all know what can grenade a 986. You just budget the preventative fixes into the purchase price of the car. Deal with it. It is what it is.

Just add $8,000 to the purchase price of any 986 for this work. Simple.

You can't expect to buy one of these for $5,000 on Auto Trader an expect a trouble free life.

That's what Civics are for.

I over paid for a solid car with full history and then invested even more money to make sure she would not leave us on the side of the road in Canyonlands.

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Mike, by far, customers that request the IMS Solution from the outset do so as an economic consideration. Yes, the Solution costs more, but if you are paying to get it done, and plan on keeping the car for a bit, the Solution makes more sense than getting one of the ceramic hybrids, simply because it is "once, and done". People seem to forget that the labor costs to simply get at the IMS is vastly more than any the costs of any retrofit kit, so doing in once now, and then again after so many miles does not always add up.

while i get the appeal of a "do it once, and do it right" mentality, which i absolutely share, the "work" to get at the IMS bearing is the same work to get at a clutch so the idea of "paying for it once" in this case has a bit of an Achilles heel. If the clutch was a lifetime part then yes the solution would make the most "economic" sense.

Not putting down either choice, abstract of money everyone would do the "solution" but high mileage cars and the real idea on not as much how long you will keep the car but how many miles you will actually put on it is how i view it.

With the exception of outright abuse cases, we are seeing pretty high mileage for clutch replacements, usually well over 100K and some approaching 200K. Stop and think about how many ceramic hybrids that would be before the clutch came up again. The Solution does make economic sense from that stand point...….

We are also seeing Solution cars commanding a premium at PPI/resale time for that reason alone.

Having started with a 97 when a new engine from Porsche was the only remedy, I was more than happy to spend the money on everything Jake and LNE came up with. I went overboard and did Nickies, pistons
And everything else including the high performance upgrade. Later when the solution came out I was one of the first in line. I have a second car with only the original ceramic bearing. I’ve had zero issues out of either one, but there is no doubt as to which one I will keep. There is a performance difference too, but knowing the car is virtually bullet proof is a really good feeling. I have never felt that way about any of the many Pcars I’ve owned over the last 3 or 4 decades. They have all had their flaws.


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I am a two month owner of a low mileage 2004 Boxster S. I am a retired Navy guy and in the navy we did sound cuts on lots of electrical motors and combustion engines to perform predictive analysis. Last thing we wanted was a bearing failure during deployment. I have read quite about about the IMS bearing failure etc. but no where have I read about using sound analysis to anticipate bearing wear/failure. Is this just not done?

It was tried but proved inconclusive.

if you install the “Solution” you don’t have to worry about checking it with ultrasound or some such to see if it is going to grenade—-because it WON’T grenade.

Back in 2012 a guy with a background in vibration analysis (Mark Jennings) was trying to apply the same technique to the M96. He wrote up something for the local PCA mag (Uber Alles) but then the effort dropped out of sight after about 3 months. I have a copy of the article.

Thanks for the Intel i would have thought it would have been as predictive as in the navy.

I've seen a select few people making this claim, and while I agree that it does show promise, there is simply no independent data to back that statement up.

Plain bearings wear and fail, too. ;)

Any friction will lead (eventually....) to failure. If the solution were to use supercooled Helium to chill a superconductor and apply an electric charge to create a magnetic field allowing the IMS to spin in a null void, then MAYBE we're on to something ;) .

I guess the point is to balance practicality and cost with extending life. To me any of the LN options seem better than the Porsche singe row at accomplishing this. Then again, we are just managing failure and attempting to mitigate risk...if you are pretty low on the risk/sphincter spectrum, then stay with the Porsche product. The higher you reside on the freak-out bandwidth, the closer you move to the superconducting magnet idea. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle...although I do have some spare wire around, just need to find some liquid Helium....

Since we don’t have superconducting, helium cooled, maglev bearings, we are left with the same old roller or ball bearings with moving bits that can fail, or diamond like coated, high pressure synthetic oil floated, plain bearings. Seems simple to me.


EVERYTHING can fail. No kidding.

It was an exaggeration to make a point.

What kind of bearing is in all of your crank journals and piston big and small ends?

What kind of IMS bearing is in a Metzger engine?

Physics is physics. How anybody can look at all of the designs available and not choose the Solution is beyond me.

Alright, I will shut up about it and quit posting and go back to actually driving the snot outta my Boxster and see if I can grenade the damn thing and give you a failure data point to share.

Freaking paralysis by analysis.

Just install the “Solution” and get busy driving. We all only get so many sunsets.

Holy crap :D

Not the full article but an interesting portion in reference to Mark Jennings Article
Good Vibrations

Here is the full article
http://inwr.pca.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=KksL3MCtE9s%3d&tabid=40
Starts on page 15.

Here is where it gets interesting...

Page 19 - The Boxsters;
We had 3 Boxsters, two with fairly
high mileage and one with low
mileage. All 3 of these cars are 5
chain engines. The low mileage
car had a suspected timing chain or
IMS bearing issue. The vibration
data from the 2 higher mileage cars
looked very similar, high amplitude
combustion peaks where predicted,
fairly high amplitude Cam Chain
noise, very low Primary Chain noise
with no discernible sidebands. The
higher Cam Chain noise from these
engines is most likely normal; chain
stretch and chain guide wear, etc…
The low mileage Boxster with the
suspect timing chain or IMS bearing
issue had both a high amplitude Cam
Chain gear-mesh frequency and an
EXTREMELY high Primary Chain
gear-mesh frequency. Definitely a
chain or bearing issue; no doubts,
shut her down, get her fixed.

Conclusion page 20
Since our January 7th Saturday tech
session, the IMS bearing has been
pulled from the Boxster with the
suspected issue and sent to me. Sure
enough, a deformed bearing cage
allowing the bearing balls to fall out
of position. Just enough additional
clearance was introduced to the
intermediate shaft that an increase
in backlash between the chain and
sprockets generated substantially
higher vibration amplitudes (makes
a lot of noise). We caught this guy
before any huge amount of metal
could be sucked into the oil and
damaged other components.

Now to contact Mark and find out where this is currently at... Stay Tuned - Rick

There have been so many false starts at problem detection and isolation. Mark was to come to a meeting of Boxster owners held in the NC mountains back in '12. He was going to use the meeting to gather data so he had many more samples. I had linked him up with the sponsors of the BRBS and stepped back from the arrangements. For some reason, it didn't happen. I didn't hear from him again.

For some reason this made me smile... :)

Ok....
 

...I stand by my statement.

The "IMS Solution" will NOT grenade.

There. I said it.

How many of the plain bearings on the OTHER end of the IMS shafts have failed?

I had to stop to refuel, so I figured I reply. :)

:cheers:

I think Jake spent a long time and a
Lot of research in Determining the exact metals to use in the solution. If you have held it in your hands It
Definitely gives you a very good feeling that it will not fail.


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The plain bearings on the other end of the shaft are not on the bulk of the load. ;)

Like I said, it looks promising. But, since I'll never change my original dual row bearing anyway, it really doesn't apply to me.
My point was that an opinion is just an opinion.
Looking at it from an engineering standpoint, they will fail. It's just a matter of when and whether or not they will outlast the engine/car.

The added friction could also cause wear on the shaft which isn't built (hardened) for that type of bearing/friction.

And so goes another fine technical discussion of the IMS.
Cats anyone?
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Particle wave....
 

...I'm just kidding about it NEVER failing. Of course, any part can fail. My point is that the a forced lubricated, plain bearing, with a diamond like coated surface, is the most reliable type of bearing for that application.

And over the last 100 years or so of internal combustion engines, that seems pretty well proven out in the real world.

There's no tone in text, so I probably came across a bit strident.

:cheers:

No worries...I definitely come across thick-headed. :cheers:

Like I said, I don't have a dog in this fight, anyway.
I honestly haven't researched the solution, other than brief descriptions and pictures. Is it just solid aluminum, or does it have some other surface material?

It has what is known as a “Diamond Like Coating”, often referred to as “DLC” in engineering circles. I’m on the road, so I’m not in a position to post a link, but if you go to the Flat 6 web site, there is a detailed description.

You are always a welcome source of humor..... :)

In response to your question, thanks, but no. I have a few of them already. One of which put a nice scratch on my plastic window...through a car cover no less. Perhaps it was from under the cover....who knows. If they can cause damage, they will. If my LN bearing fails, I'm sure that my cat was somehow behind it. :)

I was wondering for the people that go with the Retrofit how they handle the service intervals? I'm looking at a couple cars with the IMS Classic which has the 4yr/50k mile recommended service interval. Both cars are approaching the year time frame (doesn't bother me) and have about 30k miles on the bearing. Both cars have had their oil changed at least yearly and appear to be in good care.

I called LN Engineering today and they said the bearings should last longer than the interval but they like to see them changed. Many factors go into the life span of the bearing and that is the number they came up with.

The Classic has such a shorter service interval than the Classic Pro and Duel Row bearing, I guess I'm concerned and buy into the IMS fears. Just trying to wrap my head around the topic.

I must be alone, I am not changing my ims bearing,I am driving it like I stole it. If something happens then I will deal with it then. These cars are not worth anything regardless so why spend 3000 or more to fix something that hasn’t failed. Either way you won’t get your money back. There are a lot of other things that can grenade your engine. Keep the oil changed and just drive the heck out of it. There is a guy on this forum who had 300000 miles on his car and he never heard of ims bearing.go figure,just my opinion

+1 You are not alone. I have zero problems with being pro-active with maintenance issues. Where you stop, is an individual choice/gamble.

I am most bothered with the idea that you need to spend that +/- $3 grand every four years or 50k miles. But first you are required to pre qualify your motor and prove that it is sound, prior to spending the money?

Nope.... not alone.
I did mine because I had clutch failure. I wish I hadn't done it. The bearing in there had 147k miles on it, and looked perfect. I'd have been better off leaving it.
I just put the cheap pelican kit in it.

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Why spend 3-8 k on a car that is worth 10. The failer rate is estimated at 8%. Maybe more with age but who knows. I figured mine is dispensable. If she goes she goes. It's still worth what 3-4 to someone as a roller. If I felt I enjoyed it enough I can get another one. Just make sure you have towing on your insurance. I

Nope, haven’t done mine either... I will when it’s clutch time... I suppose if my motor explodes before then, well I guess it does, and if that is the case then it was on its way out anyway and would not have qualified. BTW, no metal in my oil as of yet. 02 S 60ish K.