If you’re a late model non Turbo Porsche owner, you have no doubt heard the acronym IMS at one point or another in your car ownership experience. Typically everywhere you search on the internet, you have extraordinary amounts of conflicting and often incorrect information purported by a person or a business trying to sell you a “Solution” or a “Remedy”. We have spent considerable time in our busy 11 bay shop discussing the issue with our technicians while researching diligently on the internet for the facts. We are here to present information about IMS bearings, preventative maintenance and the importance of proper care of your Porsche.
What you have to remember about the IMS bearing discussion is that the internet is littered with people posting their negative experience related to IMS bearing failure. This bearing was designed with less than Porsche like precision and engineering. Nobody is posting that they have a 2002 Porsche 996 with 45k miles and no problems. There are plenty of people that have reported problems – often times reporting them more than once.
The facts are that THE BEARING DOES FAIL. Our experience after working on water cooled Porsches with the M96/M97 engine for 20 YEARS support a failure rate of less than 5%. Unfortunately 100% of the people with the affected M96 and M97 engine are 1000% upset with the failure and report the failure where ever possible.
Of particular mention now is that the people that are selling an update, replacement, repair, solution, fix for this problem, are now telling us that the bearing they sell must ALSO be replaced every xxxxx miles or years of service!
The Professionals at Auto Assets do not need to be a “Certified” installer of Brand “X” IMS solutions or repair kits. We have purchased the correct installation tools from purveyors of the IMS repair kits. We have had countless successful installations of IMS bearing updates from all vendors offering a “fix” to the IMS problem.
Below you will find some photographs of our most recent IMS bearing replacement. The car in question is a 2002 Porsche 996 C2 Cabriolet with 29,000 miles. This car had consistent use over its 15 years of use with annual oil services and annual use. The IMS bearing we removed showed NO signs of wear or degradation. We inspected the dual mass flywheel and tested the deflection to measure less than 15%. The flywheel will be good for the foreseeable future. We inspected the clutch disc and the friction surface was in as new condition. This was a text book IMS installation that cost the customer very little in terms of down time and inconvenience. They have the peace of mind knowing that they have a new bearing in place. We would recommend replacing that bearing in 5 years as preventative maintenance.
We understand, recommend and support our customer’s quest for preventative maintenance to head off problems before they occur. There are plenty of shops that are not busy enough out there that are willing to suggest repairs that are unnecessary. The facts are unless you remove the gearbox on one of these cars and remove the bearing to inspect it you will never know if yours is one of the afflicted bearings.
In our professional opinion, IMS bearing replacement on this particular specimen of Porsche 996 was unnecessary. Call the professionals at Auto Assets for straight talk about IMS bearing replacement today – 614-793-1050