chsu74

^ Ed will catch hell for this ring girl from Mark. knuckle sighting.

Sneaky Pete

redridge

OK, Ill go down with Ed....

What round are we in?

Robin 993DX

Just did the IMS bearing upgrade on my 100k+ mile 99 996C4. The original bearing was completely soaked with engine oil but the bearing were still in good shape.

roadsession

Robin 993DX - so do you mean the sealed bearing was no longer sealed but soaked with oil?

Robin 993DX

The seals were still on the bearing (popped it off to check for bearing condition after it was removed). But the inside were completely soaked with engine oil, so obviously the cover/seal didn't do it's job in keeping the grease inside.

The bearing rolls very smooth no noise. I can only remotely guess that it is because I change my oil every 7000 miles and always used Mobil 1 0w40 (lighter weight) and used this car as a daily driver?

OZ951

Good job Robin, how did you go with collapsing that retaining ring on the double row bearing, did it seem like a lot of force required ? Did it collapse with a bang?

Robin 993DX

A lot of force was required at first, I was worried about the tools breaking. So turning it out slowly a little at a time to let is settle and rest. And then all the sudden "Pop" after that it came out with ease. The retaining ring were very thin and small.

One note to be aware of is that prior to this job I was looking at some of the older instructions on some web site where the extraction tool used were different which require you to pop the shaft into the housing. I did that first and realized that the shaft was needed by the new extraction tool to pull the bearing out from behind. I frantically used a magnet to fish out the shaft from behind the IMS bearing. Luckily I am pretty good at fishing.. :P

Eharrison

Ha! I did the samething! I pulled the flange off and the IMS bolt popped into the shaft. My heart sunk. But did the samething you did getting it out. I would recommend leaving the flange nut on a couple threads until the flange is loose from the engine.

OZ951

Sounds like a good tip - I have this task on my near term to do list... IMS kit is sitting in a box waiting to be installed.

Jake Raby

If the IMS bearing was filled with oil, the bearing was beginning to fail.. Stage 1 bearing failure occurs when the outer seal is compromised and the permanent lubrication is washed away.

The pictured IMS bearing was fitting loose in the tube, hence the fret marks on it's outer diameter.. This is a case where I use loctite 640 to mount the bearing more firmly into the tube, so it doesn't depend so much on the snap ring.

The directions that call for the stud to be knocked into the tube aren't older, they are just for the pro-grade puller which was the only puller we had available until I designed the DIY puller last year. We still prefer to use the pro-puller so I have kept those instructions on my site for others that use that puller as well.

The dual row bearing uses a lot of force to be removed from the tube, but generally I load the bearing up pretty heavily, walk up stairs into my office and 10-15 minutes later I hear a "pop" and the bearing then comes out like nothing.

BTW_ IMS Bearing kits do no good sitting in the box, not too long ago someone that didn't want to do without his car in the "nice weather" cost himself a new engine when he kept his IMS bearing in the box one minute too long. He "didn't have any symptoms" but neither do the majority of people that die from a heart attack. The IMS bearing doesn't have to ask your permission to fail, it doesn't have to have any symptoms and it isn't prejudice.. We had 3 failure calls before lunch today, two were IMS related and another fell to a cracked cylinder head. Nothing like a failure Monday to stimulate the economy!

Brucechas

Jake, you are the man!

Jake Raby

Nope.. Just well experienced.

Brucechas

That is a fact, Sir.

chris walrod

To add to this, we (Robin and I) did this similarly. First pull we loaded-up the tool with a healthy amount of torque on the nut, then relaxed it, then loaded it up again with hoping the wire retainer had collapsed enough to clear the groove in the shaft. The second 'load-up' greeted us with a very constant and productive bearing removal action.

Similar action to removing output flanges from front drive Japanese transmissions (or the 996 gbx for that matter).