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[rfuerst911sc]

But....but.....but the IMS is rarely an issue per a lot of forum members on here You have quite the mess there good luck with the repair .

[maytag]

Originally Posted by rfuerst911sc

But....but.....but the IMS is rarely an issue per a lot of forum members on here You have quite the mess there good luck with the repair .

Well..... fwiw..... I've been a member here since March last year. In that time, lots of scares and paranoia..... but this is the first real live IMS bearing failure reported.

I'd call that relatively rare. ;-)


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[rfuerst911sc]

Originally Posted by maytag

Well..... fwiw..... I've been a member here since March last year. In that time, lots of scares and paranoia..... but this is the first real live IMS bearing failure reported.

I'd call that relatively rare. ;-)


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Swing by a reputable shop like Jake Raby's or JFP on this forum and look at all the cars and engines waiting for IMS related rebuilds . Every time I swing by Jake's I just shake my head at the amount of dead Porsche's he has there waiting for repair and almost all are IMS related failures .

[jmitro]

it's not an LS1?
haha somebody had to say it

Originally Posted by rfuerst911sc

Swing by a reputable shop like Jake Raby's or JFP on this forum and look at all the cars and engines waiting for IMS related rebuilds . Every time I swing by Jake's I just shake my head at the amount of dead Porsche's he has there waiting for repair and almost all are IMS related failures .

so that's what...10-15 cars out of hundreds of thousands. um yeah that is relatively rare

[maytag]

Originally Posted by rfuerst911sc

Swing by a reputable shop like Jake Raby's or JFP on this forum and look at all the cars and engines waiting for IMS related rebuilds . Every time I swing by Jake's I just shake my head at the amount of dead Porsche's he has there waiting for repair and almost all are IMS related failures .

Ummmm..... where do you think one would find the highest concentration of broken porsches? 'Cuz I would expect it to be at a porsche repair shop. So seeing 8 to 10 cars waiting for repair, while thousands of others tool-around without the problem sorta makes my point, doesn't it?

However: your proximity to raby's shop, (and your subsequent adherence to his religion), makes me unsurprised at your "testament" that IMSB related failures are imminent for all of us.

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[NewArt]

This is a 3.6 Carrera engine that I picked up cheap. My Porsche mechanic friend tells me that these engines are more susceptible to imsb failures than the 3.2s. I can’t verify the veracity of this but I’m looking forward to seeing what sort of collateral damage ensued!

[elgyqc]

Which IMSB update is on your broken 3.2? Can you transfer it to the 3.6?

[NewArt]

I have the pro version. An expensive bearing. I can use it if it’s not damaged but I’d be surprised if it survived the mayhem when that rod let go.

[PaulE]

Well I could be all upset and rant and rave but what good would it do? I'm not happy but it was either fix it or sell it as a roller. What happened immediately before my IMSB failed probably had nothing to do with it. The other parts that failed were probably collateral damage too, but some kind of foreign debris must have gotten into the oil that was splashed into the IMSB and caused it to fail. Porsche should have used an oil-fed plain journal bearing here in its design of the IMSB IMHO. Since NeWArt now has an engine to rebuild with a similar issue, I wanted to share my painful experience.

[Homeoboxter]

Originally Posted by PaulE

Well I could be all upset and rant and rave but what good would it do? I'm not happy but it was either fix it or sell it as a roller. What happened immediately before my IMSB failed probably had nothing to do with it. The other parts that failed were probably collateral damage too, but some kind of foreign debris must have gotten into the oil that was splashed into the IMSB and caused it to fail. Porsche should have used an oil-fed plain journal bearing here in its design of the IMSB IMHO. Since NeWArt now has an engine to rebuild with a similar issue, I wanted to share my painful experience.

That totally sucks and i`m really sorry for this happened to your car. And thanks for sharing your story. May I ask what happened to the original bearing and why you replaced it at the first place? Also, was the seal for the bearing (the LN) removed? Thanks!

[PaulE]

Originally Posted by Homeoboxter

That totally sucks and i`m really sorry for this happened to your car. And thanks for sharing your story. May I ask what happened to the original bearing and why you replaced it at the first place? Also, was the seal for the bearing (the LN) removed? Thanks!

The LN bearings don't have any seals on the bearing itself to remove as far as I know. But my shop bought the bearing and did the work so I don't have first-hand experience of seeing the bearing. But I have no doubt they put it in! I had it done at about 42,000 miles. I bought my car new in 2003 and didn't know about the IMSB potential issue when I bought it, I learned about it later and decided to have it done after I got the class action notice, which was literally a month before my car would become too old for Porsche to be required to pay anything in compensation to me if the original IMSB failed. When I found out that the 2003-4 M96 engines had the highest IMSB failure rate I decided to get the single row pro which puts a dual row bearing in place of the factory single row. I still have the original IMSB which is fully intact although it has oil dripping out of the seals so who knows if it was destined to fail?

And kk2002s, yes my true permanent solution is my daily driver, but not really as I just sold my Acura and got a BMW (with a BMW extended warranty though)!

[Homeoboxter]

Originally Posted by PaulE

The LN bearings don't have any seals on the bearing itself to remove as far as I know. But my shop bought the bearing and did the work so I don't have first-hand experience of seeing the bearing. But I have no doubt they put it in! I had it done at about 42,000 miles. I bought my car new in 2003 and didn't know about the IMSB potential issue when I bought it, I learned about it later and decided to have it done after I got the class action notice, which was literally a month before my car would become too old for Porsche to be required to pay anything in compensation to me if the original IMSB failed. When I found out that the 2003-4 M96 engines had the highest IMSB failure rate I decided to get the single row pro which puts a dual row bearing in place of the factory single row. I still have the original IMSB which is fully intact although it has oil dripping out of the seals so who knows if it was destined to fail?

And kk2002s, yes my true permanent solution is my daily driver, but not really as I just sold my Acura and got a BMW (with a BMW extended warranty though)!

Thanks. Do you happen to have the bearing that failed? I`d be very curious to see how it looks inside and what caused the failure. LN claims they have not received a single complaint about these bearings I`m kind of tending to think ceramic hybrids are not really good for this application and it`s better to stick to stell ball bearings similar to the original dual row design. Would be nice to see how many of these bearings failed and how many of them could make 100k miles without a problem like my original dual-row.

[PaulE]

Sorry I don’t have it any more and have to leave it at that for now. I did see it though and it looked a lot like the picture of the broken one NewArt posted above except it was dual row. After being without my car for over 6 months now perhaps I’m more philosophical but I don’t think you can read anything into what happened in my situation and write off all the LN ceramic IMSBs. Maybe I should have had my oil changed more often or switched to the Joe Gibbs oil or installed spin on oil filter. My car was 15 years old with 68,000 miles and the oil was always changed at least once a year and always with way less than 15,000 miles between changes. At least LN gave us something better than the original Porsche design. And when I had the IMSB replaced the Permanet Solution was also on the market but I thought it was overkill at the time.

[Gilles]

NewArt,

Just saw a message posted 'today..' on Planet9 by Charles Navarro:

SSF Auto Parts has 2.7 RND replacement engines on clearance as well with Nickies and IMSicon retrofit- that might be an option for less than a refresh on your existing one.

[NewArt]

Originally Posted by Gilles

NewArt,

Just saw a message posted 'today..' on Planet9 by Charles Navarro:

SSF Auto Parts has 2.7 RND replacement engines on clearance as well with Nickies and IMSicon retrofit- that might be an option for less than a refresh on your existing one.

Thanks Gilles,
If you see my thread in the tech and performance section of this forum, you will see that I just missed out on the one and only 3.2 that RND had on clearance. Sad, it would have been a perfect solution.

[maytag]

Originally Posted by PaulE

At least LN gave us something better than the original Porsche design.

How do you figure?

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[PaulE]

Originally Posted by maytag

How do you figure?

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I think a sealed ball bearIng packed with grease that is doomed to be washed away by the oil all around it was a half-assed idea at best. It’s like whoever designed the engine thought they were finished designing it, realized they forgot to deal with lubricating a bearing on the back end of the IMS and stuck the sealed bearing in there because it was too late to put an oil galley in the block to lubricate a tried and true plain journal bearing. At least LN and Flat Six studied the problem and came up with the open bearing with ceramic balls that should continue to function with splash lubrication. Nothing is always 100% perfect but they tried to improve on the design a lot of owners were already stuck with. Porsche’s ultimate answer was to eliminate the IMS entirely in their next generation of flat six engines.

Well that’s what I think, I’m not an engineer, but it’s my opinion.

[Homeoboxter]

Originally Posted by PaulE

I think a sealed ball bearIng packed with grease that is doomed to be washed away by the oil all around it was a half-assed idea at best. It’s like whoever designed the engine thought they were finished designing it, realized they forgot to deal with lubricating a bearing on the back end of the IMS and stuck the sealed bearing in there because it was too late to put an oil galley in the block to lubricate a tried and true plain journal bearing. At least LN and Flat Six studied the problem and came up with the open bearing with ceramic balls that should continue to function with splash lubrication. Nothing is always 100% perfect but they tried to improve on the design a lot of owners were already stuck with. Porsche’s ultimate answer was to eliminate the IMS entirely in their next generation of flat six engines.

Well that’s what I think, I’m not an engineer, but it’s my opinion.

I agree with you on that it was a stupid idea in the first place to put a sealed grease-filled bearing onto one end of an air-sealed tube that allows for vacuum building up which forces the oil into the tube through the bearing. The other smart step by Porsche was to replace the dual-row bearing to a much weaker single-row that`s clearly undersized for this application. It`s just plain stupid. IMHO if they had stuck to the original dual row design with no seals (bc the IMS is literally swimming in oil and not lubricated by vapor or splash) the IMS failure would not exist. Like in the newer engines with the irreplacable bearing, which is larger (well-sized for the job) and works just fine with removed seals.

However, your example got me thinking and I `m tending to think the hybrid-ceramic is not the way to go either. (I know, your example is just n=1, but LN states none of their bearings ever failed, which is strange, because then why did the come up with another solution?). I`m saying this after I already put a hybrid-ceramic into my IMS... These bearings are best for high temperature, high rpms and minimal radial impact, like turbines. None of these conditions really stands in the crankcase. But, the IMS is exposed to a repetitive radial impact at high frequency due to opening the valves. Eventually due to this impact the ceramic balls that are much harder may wear the steel race prematurely. Interesting paper on the topic, just FYI:

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20050175860.pdf

[PaulE]

Originally Posted by Homeoboxter

I agree with you on that it was a stupid idea in the first place to put a sealed grease-filled bearing onto one end of an air-sealed tube that allows for vacuum building up which forces the oil into the tube through the bearing. The other smart step by Porsche was to replace the dual-row bearing to a much weaker single-row that`s clearly undersized for this application. It`s just plain stupid. IMHO if they had stuck to the original dual row design with no seals (bc the IMS is literally swimming in oil and not lubricated by vapor or splash) the IMS failure would not exist. Like in the newer engines with the irreplacable bearing, which is larger (well-sized for the job) and works just fine with removed seals.

However, your example got me thinking and I `m tending to think the hybrid-ceramic is not the way to go either. (I know, your example is just n=1, but LN states none of their bearings ever failed, which is strange, because then why did the come up with another solution?). I`m saying this after I already put a hybrid-ceramic into my IMS... These bearings are best for high temperature, high rpms and minimal radial impact, like turbines. None of these conditions really stands in the crankcase. But, the IMS is exposed to a repetitive radial impact at high frequency due to opening the valves. Eventually due to this impact the ceramic balls that are much harder may wear the steel race prematurely. Interesting paper on the topic, just FYI:

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20050175860.pdf

Thanks, I will take a look. I guess with the IMSB, Excellence Was Excepted, Cost Accounting was Accepted.

PS those RND engines use the RND roller bearing- “It’s A Matter Of Thrust” they say in their ads, and RND is another Charles Novarro company. My point being they came up with even another solution and decided to use that in the rebuilt engines they offered for sale. And while my IMSB failed it’s impossible to know why at this point. I don’t think anyone else who has one installed in their engine needs to feel that the world is now ending.

[clickman]

So what was the “clearance” price, vs regular?