Another survey--IMS failure

[rick3000]

The problem with an online survey is that your going to get bias results. People who have never had a problem with there car have no reason to google boxster forum and come here, while someone with a problem (say an engine failure) is much more likely to google their problem and come here. Which means that your going to get a lot more people with engine failures posting than people who don't have problems.

There have been something like 200k Boxster's sold worldwide, if you look at all the forum failures reported your still no where near a significant number of failures, even though they shouldn't be happening in the first place.

Also, IMS is very, very rare on pre-'01 Boxsters due to the updated IMS in those and latter cars. But the pre-'01's tend to have more RMS.

[MikenOH]

First off, just like the RMS survey of 3 years ago, there's no way an online survey can provide irrefutable data one way or another. My goal here is to just get an indication, that's all of whether this might be a concern or not. With 100 respondents, I think you might be able to see the beginning of a trend but not much else.

With regard to survey with small samples , the 3 RMS surveys I've seen--one here, one on Pete's board (350 respondents) and one I did with our local club--all had small samplings but the number were in a fairly close range of occurrence--20-25% of cars sampled had RMS problems. I'd say that's more than a coincidence. I guess what I'm saying that if there is a problem, there's a good chance an indication of it show up even in a relatively small sample.


Anyway, the thought here is to provide some info--albeit non-scientific--to the current and prospective owners of the cars prone to this problem. Right now, the only data is the anecdotal reports on all the boards, which can be quite distressing. But the reality is we don't know if it's a minor issue affecting some unfortunate few or one on a larger scale. I'm hoping this effort will provide a little more light on the subject