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I’ve recently become aware of the European Parts Solution IMS bearing and wondering why no one seems to talk about it. It’s touted as a permanent solution to the M96 IMS issue and comes with a five year/30k mi. warranty. This cylindrical roller bearing apparently has twelve times the load capacity of ball bearings and utilizes the bearing cage for lateral thrust loads which has always been the weak point of roller bearings. It also has a provision for pressure fed oiling by punching a hole in the rearward part of the IMS in front of the oil pump and adding a slotted oil pump drive shaft, but the website strangely walks that back stating that it’s not necessary because the bearing is constantly bathed in oil. it seems like a pretty ingenious solution without the need for the oil filter adapter and external oil feed lines of the LN IMS Solution. It’s also $579 instead of $1800. Has anyone had any experience with this product? It seems like a viable option when considering the LN and other products out there…
EPS is a company that has questionable products like their control arm. (see attached image) These things are known to break and have been mentioned on many forums. Obviously, the EPS control arms are made from substandard metal quality that could be dangerous or even deadly when they snap. Would you then trust a product that could potentially grenade your engine? Now regarding their roller bearing IMS product, Lee Jenkins of Hartech, UK sees a lot of failed EPS IMS roller bearings and posts them to the Porsche engine rebuilders forum monthly. Examine his most recent post. (attached below). Their IMS bearing product doesn't even sit flush on the shaft which has shown to grind into the IMS bearing flange over time. To make matters worse, they created a method to extract the Large Single Row 6305 IMS bearing on post 2006 engines. This a bearing that doesn't need to be extracted in the first place because it has very few reports of failure and is proven to handle the load of the M9X engine. Common sense would tell you that attempting to enlarge the IMS port by grinding into the case would introduce horrible amounts of metal shaving inside the case. What could go wrong?
Last edited by ZuffenZeus; Jul 5, 2023 at 11:53 PM.
“Since we started to sell our EPS Cylindrical IMS Bearing in 2013, we have sold 5,000 units in total, and we have NOT had a report of a single failure.”
This thread may or may not get trashed. While I have an EPS and do buy LN products, threads that have shown a LN failure often disappear into the ether. I follow several shops on IG that have posted various LN failures over years. Just believe that info should be transparent on this forum but it isn’t.
The only piece of advice I will offer is not to bore the block if you have a newer M96, doesn’t matter how hard the shop tries to keep metal shavings out of your oiling system… they will most certainly not get all of them out. I was fortunate that there was no damage after my oil change but I’d caution against that particular method of installation.
My car had an EPS bearing in it and when it came out it was in perfect shape and the shop that installs tons of LN ones said it could have stayed in there. The only reason I replaced it was because records were spotty and I had no knowledge of it being done. I put in the LN retrofit and it's been fine too. Just like the OEM bearing that has been fine for many. The biggest difference maker seems to be frequent oil changes (5k miles or less) and driving your car.
what part of this thread besides our self-proclaimed LN/FSI affiliated GOD is negative toward EPS?
The LN article makes several good points about roller bearing vs. ball bearing for the IMS, in particular a roller bearing's capacity for taking load in thrust. I'm not a mechanical engineer but the explanation makes sense to me. It can be inferred that it made sense to Porsche engineers as well, because out of the roughly half dozen different IMS bearing solutions they released, not one was a roller bearing.
I’ve recently become aware of the European Parts Solution IMS bearing and wondering why no one seems to talk about it. It’s touted as a permanent solution to the M96 IMS issue and comes with a five year/30k mi. warranty. This cylindrical roller bearing apparently has twelve times the load capacity of ball bearings and utilizes the bearing cage for lateral thrust loads which has always been the weak point of roller bearings. It also has a provision for pressure fed oiling by punching a hole in the rearward part of the IMS in front of the oil pump and adding a slotted oil pump drive shaft, but the website strangely walks that back stating that it’s not necessary because the bearing is constantly bathed in oil. it seems like a pretty ingenious solution without the need for the oil filter adapter and external oil feed lines of the LN IMS Solution. It’s also $579 instead of $1800. Has anyone had any experience with this product? It seems like a viable option when considering the LN and other products out there…
If you do go with the EPS bearing, be sure to not punch a hole in the shaft to oil it. The ims has a freeze plug on the oil pump side that serves two purposes - one is to keep oil out of the tube, and two, to keep the oil pump drive captive. We've seen that plug fall out and the oil pump drive fall into the shaft, causing a complete loss of oil pressure. Lastly, the oil pump drives are known to fail with spirited use, so putting one that is notched with a stress riser the whole length of it is a bad idea.
As they say, the shaft (and bearing) is submerged in engine oil. No need for additional oiling. I'm sure their offering the oiling option was to attract potential DOF buyers who do not understand that the M96 engine is wet sump and by design, the shaft sits at the bottom of the engine and is bathed in oil.
The LN article makes several good points about roller bearing vs. ball bearing for the IMS, in particular a roller bearing's capacity for taking load in thrust. I'm not a mechanical engineer but the explanation makes sense to me. It can be inferred that it made sense to Porsche engineers as well, because out of the roughly half dozen different IMS bearing solutions they released, not one was a roller bearing.
We try to put all the information out there to let the potential customer educate themselves.
Interestingly enough when Porsche did release their "Retrofit", it was a sealed single row ceramic hybrid bearing:
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EPS IMS Bearing
