peavynation

If so, maybe that's what kept it from failing.

garrett376

for those who missed part 1... why did you go through this? what was the failure? Thanks..

jyoteen

As Bon Jovi would say....

This IMS bearing has been out of the car sitting on the bench for a couple of weeks sloooowly seeping of the oil that was inside, so yea, it was well lubricated

jyoteen

Initially, I had no idea, but I do know I had pulled up to a gas station after a drive and as I was pulling into the pump area, I heard a noise that was pretty much like a spun bearing, rod, metal marbles in a can, etc.

I shut off the engine pretty immediately, as in within a second. So, obviously, after reading all the posts here, I thought my number was up on the IMS. Had the car diagnosed and cylinder 5 had 90% compression. Pulled out the motor and it was found that the valve seats had disintegrated and the others had stress cracks.

So, I had the top end redone completely and I figured while everything was apart, may as well do the IMS bearing.

As you can see, the IMS bearing was in perfect shape, but at least that's been 'taken care of'.

garrett376

Did you find out what caused the noise you heard? I assume it's not pieces of the valve seat in the combustion chamber, otherwise you probably would have replaced the pistons, right? Just curious; thanks for the info.

jyoteen

there were small fragments of the seat material in the combustion chamber, but because I was idling and turned the thing off almost immediately, the 'pits' caused by the seat material was really minimal and the cylinder walls had no damage/scoring. So I didn't have to replace the piston.

Here is the picture, which looks al lot worse than it was. I made it clear that I had no problems replacing the piston.




Here is the normal piston for comparison

Macster

Valve seats failing? Wow. It is possible but quite rare in my experience. I have come across at least one Boxster with a broken valve (intake) spring but I don't think I've ever heard of a modern Porsche engine having a valve seat go bad.

That others were going bad suggests a bad batch of valve seats.... If you have an engine with one there have to be others though.

It just occurred to me though that with so many "failed" engines being removed and shipped back to the factory and a new engine installed -- under warranty at least -- that maybe some of the IMS failures were actually valve seat failures. Since the noise symptoms seem so similar -- based on your description and those of other owners who've had their engine suffer the IMS failure we can likely never know.

Anyhow, sounds like you got the engine repaired and back up to good health with less expense that I would have thought. I'm glad you found a way to resurrect the engine without have to spring for a new one.

Nice going.

If you haven't already, share the name of place you had teh work done. Sounds like a place to file away just in case...

Sincerely,

Macster.