What’s wrong with this picture?

[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.