Mike Mullins

Others contributors, not so much. I guess they missed the casting call for their own "reality" show.

Kris Murphy

My favorite part was that it took 15 seconds to install the AOS and 7 seconds for the RMS. I really miss how detailed Edd was.

I did like the fact that I have completed almost everything the completed on their car on my car.

MikeinBloomfield

Could it have been the K&N CAI? The guys that have this installed says it changes the engine tone.

wyo

Wish they would have inspected the original bearing - I have the same 2000 C2 Cab and had the IMS, RMS and AOS replaced at 27K 6 years and 30K miles ago
The car has been really great - love it and would recommend 996MK1 -not sure about the value going up like they claimed -nothing against Ant but Edd is a genius and really fun to watch

SoCal911t

I enjoyed it as entertainment which is it's purpose. I understand that the show is trying to appeal to car nerds of all stripes and getting into too much 996 minutia could have had non Porsche people reaching for the remote.


Too funny!

exthree

This is the right question, because what to do if we inspect the IMSB during a clutch change, for instance? /X3

Flat6 Innovations

I’d like to expand a bit on the pre- qualification reasoning:

I created the pre- qualification pre-requisite for for the IMS Solution installations performed here at Flat 6. Since the product was invented, and developed here, it was available here for years before it was ever advertised. When people would inquire with us, I would offer this to them verbally, with no written materials shared. I did this because I was unsure where I wanted to be when the product was released, and also because I wanted to offer it to people that I knew I could trust. The Patent process was underway, so I could have shared anything without issue, I just chose to keep it under my hat. I do that a lot.

That said, what was most important to me was ensuring that someone did not purchase an IMS Solution, and have us install it, only to have an engine failure later. After people spend money on an elective repair like the IMS, they have zero tolerance for issues that may pop up later. The very first thing they do is blame the last person that touched the car, or the product that was installed. That is just how it is. Once I did an IMS job for a local guy, and two weeks later, his turn signals stopped working... Guess who got the blame? the bigger, and better the reputation, the more and more the expectation is. It sucks, you should give it a try sometime.

So... I developed a semi- invasive pre- qualification procedure to quantify the health of the engine before the person spends serious money on the procedure. If the engine has a symptomless issue, it is my goal to sniff out that issue before moving forward. This tells the person where they really need to spend the money, and it also saves them from “wasting” money on an IMS Solution only to have a cylinder, or something else fail very soon thereafter.

When done comprehensively, the pre- qualification works. We have installed 680+ IMS retrofit products over the years. Of those, we have not received a single report of anyone experiencing a failure of any portion of the engine later. Further, we have “downed” 30% of the engines that could have been retrofitted during that period of time.

This occurred due to issues found during pre- qualification, that I flagged, and “disqualified” the engine for retrofit. When this happened it cut into my bottom line, but it saved the owner thousands of dollars, while maintaining the reputation of the IMS Retrofit products. At the end of the week a typical shop that disqualifies an engine for IMS Retrofit has an employee go home with a skinnier paycheck, because that technician lost a job that week, and more than likely he has this occur because he DID do his job. He followed the regimen, found the issue, identified it, documented it, and for that he gets to lose money because the job. was not done. This is the problem that regular shops run into, and its one issue that at times, the technician pretends to not see certain things. Its not his shop, not his car, and not his product at risk. He ends up doing what is best for him. This is just an example, and its why you don’t want a shop doing work that pays their techs “flat rate”, on commission.

Today we only perform IMS Solution installs two months out of the year, in April, and November. I call these IMS SOlution Clinics, and we put a focus on carrying out the jobs only at these times. We don’t do nearly as many installs as we used to because of this. Our focus shifted more to only building, and developing engines. Today, when we have someone from far away wanting t ship their car to us, I don’t want to have the person spend money to ship a car that has imminent issues that are easy to find. That really pisses people off, after they spend 1K to ship a car, only for me to “shoot it down” in 5 minutes. Due to this I have a “pre” pre- inspection carried out by a local shop near them. I give the a specially prepared checklist, and have them inspect the car. If they don’t find anything, then we schedule the car for the Flat 6 Innovations IMS Solution Clinic, ship the car, do our inspection, and hopefully carry on. We still “down” some engines after all of this is done, but it its always something deeply internal that we find, and pretty much we’d only be able to find.

In this month’s IMS Solution Clinic we had 15 tentative jobs scheduled. 12 of these are what I’d consider far enough away to require the local inspection to be done first. Of those, 4 of them failed, and the others were scheduled in.

When carrying out a pre- qualification, I treat it like a pre- flight inspection. I go into the scenario looking for a problem, not believing that “everything is ok”.

!911 Syncro, and others. The term “Patented” is our way of saying “This is the genuine article, and not a knock off”. This is what happens when you are an originator, and not an imitator. That’s all.

“Assume nothing, and quantify everything” is the rule.

Hope that clears the air on the pre- qualification procedure.

AnthonyGS

It’s not a question. If you have an M96 down to the flywheel, the smart man services the IMS bearing. The IMS bearing on these cars is a wear item. It is very much a kin to the idler and tensioner bearings on a belt driven timing setup. I wouldn’t do a timing belt without changing these bearings.

Honestly now that I have seen the guts of an M96 the IMS bearing, chain tensioner pads, vario cam soleniods and 3 chain tensioners are all wear parts. All timing setups contain parts that will need replacement eventually.

TexSquirrel

I had never seen or heard of Wheeler Dealer until a few days ago.
I purchased the one episode yesterday afternoon on Amazon Prime for $1.99.
Unfortunately I wasn't very impressed with the show, so I doubt I'll be paying for more shows.
I had worked all night long the night before (except for a 2 hour nap) and had just taken a break for lunch around 2:30PM.
I fell asleep after the IMS Solution install and didn't wake up until 30 minutes before the Used Oil Analysis class.
I was happy that they used the IMS Solution, and the LN Engineering tools, but it looks like the IMS Bearing has already failed and likely the engine is not going to last.
Hopefully the IMS Solution survives the imminent engine failure so it can be used in the vehicles next engine.
I'll have to go back and watch the entire episode sometime this weekend.

e90steve

Do you share what the pre-qualification involves? Pardon my ignorance if it has been revealed before or elsewhere.


I personally liked the video. The host had some pretty great things to say about the 996 overall. The only thing I question is if the car wasn't due for a clutch or had any symptoms of a bad IMS (Besides the mechanic making a bad face when he finally revealed it), was it necessary to swap it out at that point in the cars life? Once revealed, it didn't exactly look like it was leaking (IMS and RMS) and the bearing looked to be 100% still intact. I didn't like the host saying "It's broken" without even taking a look at the IMS or even under the car to check for a leak. Just because a 996 has an original IMS doesn't automatically mean it's broken.

TexSquirrel

Pre-qualification is available at : www.theimssolution.com

http://imssolution.com/wp-content/up...-Checklist.pdf

Also Jake did a video showing how to do the pre-qualification on the Rennvision YouTube channel.

The "grinding" means it has started to fail and has VERY likely started to shed debris to the rest of the engine.

e90steve

Thanks! That was an informative video to watch.

The comment I was referring to was when the host first drove the car to the shop and was simply looking at it sitting there outside turned off. The host says "It's broken" without having said anything as to why it might be or even having taken a look underneath the car. His only reason for saying it is broken, is because it was original.

He made the grinding comment once he had the transmission removed, which is a fair time to make a 100% assessment.

User 63031

Appreciate you sharing your motivations on why you developed the pre-qualification, Jake. It seems your arguments stem mainly on what a customer expects when spending relatively big bucks on the engine and your wish to deliver perfect engines only so nobody comes back to complain when something unrelated blows. I appreciate that, and understand.

What I wanted to address is the way you wrote it down there, implies that a pre-qualification is (or should be) a mandatory step of the IMS-Solution install. This in turn implies that without proper pre-qualification, the >IMS solution< would possibly fail as a result. With my post I wanted to address that that last part isn't true and shouldn't be interpreted as such. That if you are doing the IMS and just the IMS - and are not looking to spend 10-20K on a new motor given other possible looming defects -, a pre-qualification is not required and will yield no merit to the buyer whatsoever. Installing the IMS Solution means at least the IMSB is fixed forever, regardless of pre-qual, does it not?

e90steve

I think all he's saying is simply that in his opinion, if an engine isn't healthy then you shouldn't be spending $ fixing the IMS when you have other serious issues to address first.

TexSquirrel

I bought my 996 with the IMS Solution already installed.
Knowing it had to pass prequalification to me meant that the engine was in perfect shape just 3 1/2 years and 28k miles prior.
I still did a thorough self-inspection before buying it.
If I end up buying a second 996 or a 986, the first thing I will do is install The IMS Solution.
I‘ll do it myself and the first step will be to pre-qualify it.
Actually my self-inspection will almost cover all the pre-qualification steps except for maybe the sump drop and bore scope.