I am usually on the air cooled side, been a member for more then a decade. I am looking at a 2005 base coupe tiptronic.

Do I need to be concerned with the IMS bearing? 57k miles

Thanks!

 

It depends of your definition of concern. If this car was built before (check with VIN) March 2005 then you can spend money and change the bearing if you want. IMS solution is the latest. If it has larger non serviceable bearing then you can just enjoy it or buy expensive $15k warranty by buying 2009.

 

Yes. Some '05 have the smaller IMSB that can be replaced without a tear down. Other '05 have a larger bearing that requires tear down to replace. The bad news is that determining which bearing you have generally requires the transmission be dropped. I believe LN Eng or RED have an inspection tool that lets them identify the bearing in situ.

 

There was a great overview of the different IMS bearings produced by PCA with Jake Raby. Search PCA IMS on youtube and you will find it.

You can check the engine number online to see if it fell before or after the cutoff date for the old vs new bearing. However, I believe the conclusion from Jake in the PCA video was there is no definitive way to know if a 2005 had the old small bearing vs new large bearing without dropping the transmission. In your case with a Tip you wont need a clutch anytime soon, so that becomes more problematic.

The stats from the class action suit showed about a 10% failure rate for the old small bearing vs negligible failure rate for the new large bearing found in 2006 model year and later cars.

Personally I wouldn't buy the car unless you had definitive information showing the IMS was replaced, or you budget $2k for the bearing. In that case if the car is priced right then go for it! Its a great car and the base models are a hell of a value.

Last point, do know if you decide to purchase the car, your resale will be hindered as a 05+tip+base isn't a combo that most are looking for. On the flip side that just means you have an awesome car for cheap :-)

Good luck.

 

 

Yea, as long as you can get eyes on it to confirm its in good shape, no worries. I would not feel comfortable taking the risk without.

One interesting factoid Jake mentioned in the video I wanted to pass on. Due to the physics the smaller bearings typically fail at low rpm from lugging the engine whereas the few observed failures of the larger bearing where from high RPM track use.

 

With any 05 car, the only way to be truly sure of which IMS bearing you have is to pull the transmission and look at the bearing flange and nut - larger nut = larger bearing / smaller nut = smaller bearing as shown in this photo.



If you pull the trans and have the larger bearing, remove the outer grease seal from the bearing and put it back together. If you have the smaller bearing, replace it with the IMS solution (the likelihood of failure on a smaller bearing is too high) - The Solution is an oil-fed bearing used on the air cooled Mezger engines you're more familiar with that doesn't have any rollers or ***** to come apart - just rides on a film of oil.

If you don't want to pull the transmission, look at the engine # and if it's a higher number than M96/05 69507476 odds are you have the larger bearing, but again, on an '05, no guarantee without visual inspection.


Here's all the info on IMS bearings and engine #s.

There are three different serial number types for the three engine variants in our cars - base model M96.05 3.6L engines, S-model M97.01 3.8L engines, and the X51 power kit M97.01S 3.8L engines. All three have slightly different engine serial number formats.

For S-model non-X51 M97.01 engines the serial number is of the format M97/0168YXXXXX. The last 8 digits matter and are the following format:
685XXXXX = M97 for MY05
686XXXXX = M97 for MY06
687XXXXX = M97 for MY07

So the first two digits are 68, followed by the year digit, followed by a five digit serial number. But the full serial is M97/0168YXXXXX.

For X51 engines I believe the format is M97/01S68YXXXXX (added 'S' between 01 and 68).

3.6L base engines have a similar format M96/0569YXXXXX (not positive on the 05, can someone check?).

With replacement engines there is an 'AT' in front of the final eight digits. So a S-model 3.8L factory replacement engine the format would look like M97/01AT68YXXXXX.


For 3.8L motors, up to M97/01 68509790 has the smaller IMS bearing and Engine number from M97/01 68509791 has the larger revised IMS.

For 3.6L motors, if the engine s/n is M96/05 69507476 and up it has the larger bearing.

 

Some cars that had the smaller bearing may have had it replaced (proactively or when it failed).
The one in my early 05 car failed in 2012 and I have the records for the replacement.
You could take the VIN to the dealership and see if they have any service records.

 

You would need to know the specific Porsche dealership that did that work in order for them to access it for that VIN. As difficult as it is to believe, one Porsche dealership cannot take the VIN of a car they haven't worked on and pull service records for it that has been done at any other Porsche dealership. It's also possible that replacement was done at an Indy and then you're out of luck unless you know the Indy that might have done it and can speak directly with them.

 

It's actually a bit worse actually.. If the dealership changed owners, then chances are that the old records might be gone - this has happened to me a couple of times with my Audis.
For my 997, I was in the same boat - evaluating my options for the IMS when I just looked into the pile of old service records.
The dealer had discovered lots of metal in the oil, and as if it was nothing, did an IMS retrofit with the aftermarket bearing.. not the Porsche bigger bearing.
It was both a heave of relief and suspicion :P

 

subscribed for Pete's excellent summarized content.

 

+1

 

Yes

 

2009 C2S

See these Porsche Club of America vids:

I am pretty sure the first vid talks about how to ID the bearing type... in short, it is pretty difficult subject to a few variables.

Peace
Bruce in Philly