Reesestewww

As I was reviewing my paperwork I noticed in the red box it states you must return the card along with your OEM IMS bearing or your product warranty will be voided.

I found it odd that you have to return the bearing too. Any insight on why LNE would require that, and failure to do so would carry a total void of warranty?

What if the shop didn't give the customer their OEM IMS bearing after it was replaced?

gnat

They want the bearing so that they can inspect it for signs that it was already failing. Basically they aren't going to cover a failure if there were already signs of damage prior to the swap.

Returning the bearing and getting the warranty is entirely up to you. I suggest that you look at the details of exactly what the warranty covers and make your mind up based on that.

For me I felt the warranty wasn't worthwhile when compared to wanting to hang onto it for a toy.

Reesestewww

Hi gnat,

Thank you for the feedback. My thoughts... we know what happens if the IMS bearing fails..... BOOM!

5CHN3LL

I don't know the reasoning behind returning the old bearings to LN. My ASSUMPTION is that if you make a warranty claim on your LN bearing, they examine the old one to see if it's stuffed full of glitter...but I have no way to prove that. They may also just want them for forensic engineering or to ensure you replaced the right OEM bearing with the correct retrofit part.

I'm not entirely sure that requiring you to send them something they didn't supply can legally be a stipulation for not honoring a warranty, but since the warranty is the cost of the bearing, I don't know that anyone has cared enough to investigate.

Spinout

I see a different side to this:

When I replaced mine with a LNE upgrade, I kept the bearing so I could show any future purchasers there was absolutely nothing wrong with the removed bearing and the replacement was purely for preventative maintenance.

Without, there leaves doubt it was replaced b/c the original was failing.

5CHN3LL

^ I agree with that thinking. One of the biggest concerns with buying a retrofitted car is the reason for the retrofit: did they retrofit because the old one was fragged, or out of an abundance of caution? If you have the old bearing, at least you have the evidence that it was the latter.

dporto

"Hi gnat,
Thank you for the feedback. My thoughts... we know what happens if the IMS bearing fails..... BOOM! "


Not necessarily. LNE considers a bearing that has "begun" to fail as a "failed bearing", due to the fact that as the bearing begins to fail it sheds fine steel particles. These particles contribute to the failure of the bearing itself as well as other parts throughout the engine. So, the engine doesn't actually have to go "boom" to be considered "condemned to death" by LNE...

gnat

I'm in the "I'd rather buy an unmolested car" group, but this move wouldn't sway me.

Note: I'm not accusing you of anything here, just painting a picture.

We know that there are those out there who have slapped a new bearing into a failing motor and sold it on to a poor soul that thought everything was good only to have the motor go on them. So for those people we know that they are already willing to stoop to near criminal levels of misrepresentation.

We also know that it's not really difficult to get your hands on a used bearing as we see them pop up on CL and eBay from time to time (and I'd bet with some calling around you could find a shop that has some running around that they'd give/sell you).

So what is to stop someone who is already screwing the next owner over from picking up a good used bearing and passing it off as the one they removed?

If the bearing has under 15k on it (10-15k seems to be the outer edge of life for the lipstick wearing pigs) and it wasn't swapped by a shop I trust (e.g. a certified shop or one that works on my cars), then I'm going to view it very skeptically.

gnat

I thought Charles explicitly said this in another thread?

gnat

Found it. Jake also explained as well in the same thread.

Note: I clipped the quotes for brevity sake. See the original posts for the full commentary.

5CHN3LL

Nothing. At the point someone has decided to lie their way into selling the car to you, you're screwed. Just because it's not foolproof doesn't mean it isn't a good idea...

gnat

My point is that it's such an easily circumvented thing that it is in essence meaningless to those of us paranoid about someone trying to rip us off. For the others just the bearing being replaced is most likely going to be all they care about.

By all means I'm in favor of doing whatever you want with your old bearing for any reason that has weight for you. Just saying I don't see any value by this particular approach as I would expect the skeptical ones like us would still be skeptical and the others that aren't seeing a scam behind every fresh IMSB swap won't understand the value of getting the original bearing (or that it could so easily not really be the original bearing as claimed).

5CHN3LL

I understand your point; I just disagree with you.

FRUNKenstein

Damn, I hate to get sucked into an IMSB thread, but . . .
Wouldn't there be some value to having your mechanic send the old, removed bearing back to LNE for inspection & analysis since they keep a record of it? That way, when a potential buyer asks about the swap, you can direct them to LNE to look up in their records the condition of the old IMSB? I suppose that you could convince your mechanic to send them a different IMSB than the one that came out of your car (assuming yours was failing), but that would require getting another person involved in your scam. I would assume that most ethical shops would be above that (although there is one that comes to mind that might be willing . . .).

Chiamac

I have the paperwork from the shop for that. If people want to question the shop then I don't want to sell them the car.

=)