IMS adventure
 

I put off my IMS upgrade until my buddy had his blow. It blew 100 yards from his house and he had it towed to a local indie here in Houston. The bearing cage was destroyed and the stud was broken, fortunately the pistons and valves never met.
I went with him to the shop and saw the damage myself. He got the whole song and dance how it needed to have the race ground out with a dye grinder and how they would need to drop the pan to clear out the remaining parts of the IMS (standard procedure). Nearly 7 weeks later and $4500.00 later he was told he could pick up the car the next day. The shop manager drove the car home that night and found that the car was lacking power and when he got it back to the shop they discovered that the timing ha skipped a tooth an it would need to be re-timed.
(WTF) they did not check the timing before assembling the car and starting it!!
Two weeks later and another $1,500.00 the job was done. That was enough to encourage me to do my own, did it in a weekend I used the pelican parts IMS and it cost me less than $1,000 in parts.

This weekend I helped my buddy chase down an oil leak coming from the front of his motor. It turned out to be the oil pump housing. While apart I found that the oil pump gears looked like they digested rocks and the oil pan did not look like it had been removed. When I drained the oil that was allegedly changed with the IMS job, twice, it was in no way 1500 mile oil. When the pan was dropped I found the remaining bits of his IMS. My buddy had been robbed!! :troll:

This is why I do my own work, this shop is one of the highest rated Indies in Houston, after seeing there work I would not let them work on my lawn mower. http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01...1349123463.jpg
http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01/FOD1349123494.jpg

my god man...is he going to be able to sue them or are they saying we fixed it and you must have done something to it after we fixed it? What a crock of SHI&. I hope he splashes that company all over the news, paper and every other way he can to feel vindicated. What a shame.

IMS is next on my list as well...but I can not do it myself so I need to be real careful. I dont have the time or resources or money to send it to Raby at this point, but the more and more I read about it...that might be the way to go?

Frank, what miles/year was your buddies car?

How did your IMS look when you pulled it? Still OK? Miles and Model Year?

That is a nightmare. :barf: Where do they find these folks to work on peoples cars.....geeesh.

Do that kind of work on a race car and you'll get your head torn off and ridiculed/black listed right out of the business.

Unbelievable!

I'll be doing my own work too, can't stand to have the thing further damaged by idiots.

Care to mention the shops zip code so we can avoid that one.

Maybe we need a Porsche Mechanic thumbs down list on the Forum.

We can keep it simple to avoid liabilities.

Very Good Mechanic: :D
Good Mechanic: :)
So So mechanic: :confused:
Poor Mechanic: :eek:
Very Poor Mechanic: :barf:

The shop that tried to save that engine needs to attend my WTI class or engine rebuild school. Thats too much collateral damage to even consider resurrection. Experience has taught us when to just say no and its well before things get to that level; that engine is bound to have suffered collateral damages that will show up in time to come.

Thats why we see cars inbound on trucks from all over North America, most of which have been scarified by someone who hasn't a clue about the internal workings of an M96. Lots of shops are doing the work now because they HAVE to do it to keep any cash coming in the door. They are a decade late to this party.

Pm me with the name of the shop so I can avoid it. Thanks.

Sorry to hear this! Unreal!

Posting from the Houston airport waiting for my next flight.

I would also like to know the name of the shop so we can avoid selling them any components.

Something else:
The remaining foreign object debris from the previously failed bearing will destroy the new "open" bearing in no time flat. When that much FOD is in an engine its a goner and should not be retrofitted as the retrofit bearing has ZERO tolerance for this type of debris.

Bet they didn't think about that. Most don't. If the retrofit bearing fails they'll be SOL.

Same here. Pls. pm me the name of the shop.

My buddies car is a 2005 boxster 2.7 tip with less than 45,000 miles.
The first thing I would have done would be to pull the pan!!

My car is a 2000 boxster S 6 speed with 118,000 miles. One of the first things I did when I bought it with 110,000 miles was pull the oil pan and all I found was a freeze plug from, what I am assuming, passenger side. but no metal chunks, or, if you take a close look at the oil pan on the right side just below where oil is returned to the sump from the head, no aluminum slurry.

I am a full time student at UH, I'm not a kid, so on my summer vacation I put my car on jack stands and went after the IMS. I did all the research on the subject I could find and went after it slow and methodically. I had the double row variant with no external evidence of imminent failure. Once removed and dissected there was slight galling and the outer part of the race had a weird s like pattern on it. I had no issues at all removing and the only thing that baffled me for a bit was with the Pelican Parts retrofit there are two spacers one for single row and one for double row. In the package for the double row was the spacer for the single and vice verse and the cover was not even close to seating, after looking at all my photos and staring at my 101 projects book for hours I notice in the photo of the P,P kit the spacers were switched. after that easy sailing. I checked cam timing 4 times just to be sure. On the Durametric I'm rock solid at -6, -3 on cam deviation. I corrected others work as well, all to do with the passenger side head, I had the spark plugs from a 2005 3.4, two different sets of injectors, and the passenger oil return pump was clocked wrong. While I was at it I threw two new radiators on, a water pump, 160 degree thermostat, and six flea bay injectors I had sonically cleaned and flow checked, spark plugs, and spark plug tubes and seals, removed and cleaned intake and replaced all o rings including oil separator line o rings. I know I'm forgetting some items. The only issue I have now is my once good clutch can't handle the re discovered power and is beginning to slip and my rear tires are beginning to melt.

Frank:
Did your friend have the upgraded IMS with the thicker bolt or the older style?
Early 05's might have had the old style but by mid-year IIRC, all the cars were getting the new style.
original owner? any track days?
Seems way early especially in a 987 for that to happen.

His is an early 05, No track days, 2nd owner, Bought at dealer with 30,000 miles.
He always had it serviced by the same dealer, they saw the car earlier for scheduled maintenance. He did talk to the service manager after incident about IMS but he got the Schultz response "I Know nothing , nothing" there is no IMS problem.

I guess Porsche has no concept of customer retention

They've figured out that fresh meat tastes best.

Absolutely pathetic; this is the kind of stuff that can scare the crap out of potential buyers, but there always seem to be a steady supply of those that are undeterred by stories like this.

Jake--having the car fail with a tiptronic made me wonder if the typical driving style with the auto tranny--low revs, shifting early--lends itself to these kind of failures. Any logic to that?

Absolutely. With low engine speeds the IMS Bearing sees the highest loads due to low surface speeds.

After reading about this IMS debacle for the past six months I'm wondering where is Porsche's liability in this? It's obviously a multi-year design defect. Shouldn't they owe up to the mistake like we require other carmanufacturers to do and recall the motor? Or did I just make a funny?

You made a funny.................but not a particularly humorous one.

And why is that? Nissan replaced the front tires on my 350Z because they set the alignment incorrectly at the factory. Why should Porsche get a bye for a very obvious design flaw that has spawned a whole cottage industry? Don't get me wrong, I love my car but I hate driving with the thought that my motor could go at anytime.

They didn't admit or fix a very big issue with the air cooled motors years ago either.

Boutique car companies are all the same.

simple.

"cost of the recalls or repair" > "cost of negative press or hit to reputation"

This is Porsche, not Nissan; in the nearly four decades I've been working on them, their answer to any problem is, "What problem?"

Honda did the same thing with the new NSX after having Yokohama redesign the tires.

Lexus on the other hand refuses to acknowledge the exact same issue with the 2006up IS. Factory alignment spec has too much front toe out. I had exposed steel belts on the inner edge & 6/32's across the rest of the tread. I have to have it aligned to my own specs. :mad:

It's not just car companies fellas. I recall a time when some film was allowed to go to market with a known flaw that mimicked a medical problem of a serious nature. The company simply did not want to risk losing market share by pulling a ton of product they had no replacement for, so in essence they risked public heath to protect their profits.

As Ghostrider so clearly points out, it is easy for companies to put peoples lives on the line for profit. The only time Porsche will stand up and actually deal with the IMS issue is if someone was killed due to the failure of the bearing. Given that that is a remote possibility it will remain one of those nagging issues that comes with the territory of owning one of these cars.

I would fathom a guess that there are those in Porsche that now wish they had dealt with this issues and corrected it long ago...but its like telling a lie...once it gains hold and becomes mainstay there is no turning back.

Delete post.

[QUOTE=Eric G;308446. The only time Porsche will stand up and actually deal with the IMS issue is if someone was killed due to the failure of the bearing. Given that that is a remote possibility it will remain one of those nagging issues that comes with the territory of owning one of these cars.[/QUOTE]

An absolutely HORRIBLE thought here, but what if lightning DID strike at some
point and someone WAS unfortunate enough to be killed or seriously injured as
a result of this flaw....what a can of worms THAT would open up for Porsche.

The saga continues, remainder of fod not removed by POS mechanic killed the motor. Somehow ball bearings made there way into the drivers side valve trane and dealt the final blow. I'm going to pull that boat anchor durring spring break and doccument damage. I am especialy looking forward to inspecting the IMS bearing installed by said POS mechanic. If it is not an LN product my buddy is going to lawyer up and crush the balls of this establishment. I would have done this long ago, I was present when the service manager explained the work that they needed to do and so far they are full of guano.

Classic. One of the things that I preach so hard in my classes is FOD after bearing failure and how it destroys the chances of resurrection after a bearing failure occurs.

The LN bearings have zero tolerance for foreign object debris remaining in the oil after a bearing failure. They will fail in very, very short order just like any bearing subjected to chunks of debris in the oil.

Now that the bearing retrofits are so wide spread we are starting to see improperly installed bearings have issues. Here is a photo album and description of how we checked behind another shop's work to find that the center stud had been over torqued and then how we proceeded to extract the retrofit bearing to find that the preload increase had accelerated wear.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.589408611086938.146669.184464434914693&type =1

This one only had 3500 miles on it and was installed by a former poster here on these forums who was an "instant expert" after his first retrofit. After seeing this I now assume that EVERY retrofit he carried out was incorrect.

Here is a sample... Had we "assumed" that the bearing had been retrofitted correctly this bearing would have failed and the bearing would have gotten the finger pointed at it. I videoed the break away torque process to quantify that the torque was too great.
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot...11873314_n.jpg

Jake, I'm not sure if this has been addressed before, but the introduction of "The Guardian" has had me wondering what is done after the point of detection. Isn't there too much particulate through the motor already to just do a flush somehow and retrofit?