What is this little box i found...
 

I purchased a 2001 Boxster S with a blown engine. I sourced a used engine and swapped it out. Car runs great. I went to instal a new radio last week and when i took the old radio out i found a little box with a transmitter that say Flat Six Innovations, Red Line, Raby Engine Development. I found there website but cant find anything about this box or what it does. Ive left two messages for the company and no one has returned my call. Does anyone know what this box does? http://986forum.com/forums/uploads02...1625695994.jpg
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What is it wired to? Follow that big gray cable?

Doubt it is anything with the radio cause they focus on engine performance.

Suspect it is part of an engine mgt system, which means the engine that was in the car is most likely also an engine they built. Be interesting to know what happened to the engine.

I am only speculating but probably some kind of over rev limiter or defeat/override.

I can’t remember how flat6 called it, but I think this is a device that supposed to detect and alert of metal particles in the oil.

IMS Guardian system.

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yes!!! thats exactly it.

Makes sense. The round part must be a speaker/buzzer

Uhm... does it really work?

Yup, it sounds an alarm, telling you that your engine is now full of metal and in need of a complete rebuild; but your IMS has not yet crapped out, but is also on its deathbed........................

I had an IMS Guardian on mine for one year. The plug portion leaked from the middle where the wires came out. Flat 6 provided a new plug and it also only lasted a year before also leaking. I replaced it with a standard plug and disconnected the electrical portion about 2 years ago. Just yesterday I removed all the electric parts from in the dash and put back the switch blank.

Flat 6 discontinued the Guardian without any fanfare since I think the thing never worked the way it should. Good idea, bad product.

Sound like PHS would be a more apropos name... Porsche Hospice Service

Now you're out a motor plus ~ 5 shackles for the PHS device.

What a bargain LOL :D

The concept for this product always eluded me; in an aircraft, where the idea originally came from, I can understand why you would want it: Get the plane safely on the ground before the engine suffers a catastrophic failure. In a car, it was little more than an audio version of an idiot light telling you that you now need a new engine; "Please pull to the side of the road, your engine is now dead"..............

Well, at least the previous owner actually got some use out of the box. :cheers:

It`s hard to believe that by the time this thing starts signaling the presence of the metal debris in the sump there is no audible sign of the IMS grinding the bore in the crankcase...

Actually, IMS failures remain "the silent death" right up to the moment that the engine jumps time and pistons start hitting valves. We have seen an absolute ton of metal in the oil of cars that were in for regular oil change service and still running just fine. When you pull the sump cover, there is metal everywhere, so the engine is done at that point, and then I usually had to make a difficult phone call to the owner, who was totally unsuspecting.

And the IMS bearing does not tear up the engine case, it is totally inside the IMS shaft.

Sounds awful. :ah:

I had originally envisioned a cam shaft deviation, fluctuation monitor and threshold to specifically target the IMS bearing. Dancing deviations beyond a certain threshold giving an appropriate alarm. I am not sure whether this (ims bearing instability) could be sensed at a reasonably advanced time (before chips get on a detector).

Mr. Raby shot down this idea at the time......my memory fails me at to why

Take a ride in your car once fully warmed up with the Durametric system monitoring cam deviation values any you will have the answer to your question. With the valve timing system active, the deviation values jump all over the place, depending upon what the car is doing at the time; so a system that alarms when a certain deviation value is hit would be doing one of two things: Alarming every 15 seconds if it is set too low, never going off if it is set too high. It would also be comparatively expensive, as it would require something with computational capabilities to even work.

True, I don't doubt this at all. I think I have done this. I think I posted something here regarding engine temp and deviation readings here many years ago. I was specifically referring to fluctuation rate not deviation itself. So in other words we could see deviation changes all over the place for various engine states and temperatures but if there is an undue fluctuation or let say vibration at a certain deviation then its time to shut her down.

So we have moved from +2 to +5 degrees according to what has been observed M96 behaviour> no alarm

A fine lets say "high frequency" fluctuation at +5 constant engine state> alarm.

Whether this feasible is another question.

Feasible or not, it still puts you in the same place as the Guardian: When it triggers, your engine is already full of metal and is toast; you just paid more money to find out than the guy who waited until it stopped running..............

How big metal piece it needs to be to be detected and trigger the alarm?

My thinking of the bearing failure - it starts, initially, slowly. Small pieces of metals will be present.
Then, when the rings start coming of, or balls disintegrate - larger chunks will float.

At what point the cam deviation will be seen? So far I do not see it happening as long as all balls are in place (last leg of failure process).

I just wish there was a way to easily inspect the bearing... scope it somehow or so.

The Guardian saw ferrous metal only, and the size was rather small, as is usually the case with ferrous debris in these engines.

Cam deviation values can be seen at any time the engine is running if you have the right scan tool. Normal values are +/- 6 degrees. In the early stages of IMS failure, the deviation values swing wildly back and forth, and at higher values, indicating that the VarioCam system is losing control of the cam timing because the IMS shaft if moving, causing the long chains to go slack.

Well my engine sounded like a running washing machine full of rocks with no water in it when it was shut down. It was rebuilt and the damaged parts that had to be replaced were a timing chain paddle, the actual IMS, the oil pump and a few bent valves. I suppose it was caught at the exact right time, there wasn't a lot of metal in the engine. The lifters and oil cooler were replaced too, to be certain there were no stray metal bits to wreck the rebuilt engine.