Should rephrase - What happened to Germans being considered the epitome of engineering - perhaps just an old wive's tale?

Out daily drive is a BMW 116i from 2013, 115,000 kms with lots of engine issues (Peugeot engine!!!!). Needed new chains, big problem with some cam valve.
We love our Nissan 350Z convertable. 125,000 kms, NO big problems. Just oil, tires, clutch slave cilinder.....
Now I'm working on my Porsche 997, 130,000 kms. The ultimate boy dream! The engine needs new cilinder slaves, new valve guides (bronze) etc.....
Spend a little fortune untill now…….

Im looking at a 2005 C2S with 26k miles. This will be my first porsche but the ims bearing failure makes me nervous. The build date for it is 6/05 but not sure if its safe to purchase the vehicle or not.

I did ask the salesman to look into the history of the vehicle to see if it had any problems before.

What are you opinions?

https://www.porschenewportbeach.com/...9177dedd2e.htm

Looks pretty clean. Price is in the ballpark for the low mileage. Needs a full PPI with DME report and any maintenance history you can acquire.

Regarding the year, with it being an 05, do this as the last step of the PPI after everything else has checked out. You'll need to factor in $1,000-$3,000 additional to the price. The $1,000 is the labor to pull the transmission and look at the IMS bearing flange to see if it's the larger bearing or smaller bearing. If it has the larger bearing, have them pull the RMS, remove the bearing flange, and remove the outer grease seal from the IMS bearing. If it's the smaller bearing, have them ready to replace it with the IMS solution, and never worry about the IMS bearing issue again. This is why I say $3,000 at the top of the range. Maybe you can explain your concern to the dealership and negotiate the price lower because of it.

If they're not willing to move on the price, you can go by the engine serial # as a guideline as to whether or not it has the larger or smaller bearing, but there's no guarantee to that without pulling the transmission. From an engine serial # standpoint, the guildeline is: For the 3.8L S motors, up to M97/01 68509790 has the smaller IMS bearing that can be replaced, and Engine number from M97/01 68509791 has the larger revised IMS bearing that is more reliable, but cannot be replaced.

Those chromed lobster fork wheels are going to be very heavy and will really need to be replaced. Adding that much unsprung weight on the car will make the steering lethargic and keep it from being all it can be. You'll want to get good set of forged wheels - I happen to have a set of polished forged Champions for sale that will bring out the metallic of the Atlas Grey paint, like the current chrome ones do, if you're interested and decide to move forward with the purchase.

Good luck.

I don’t think the term “safe to purchase” is necessarily a correct term and shows how overblown the IMS has become. My guess is that car has the larger non-replaceable, but less failure prone bearing and I would just wait till it needs a clutch to check/remove the seal.

I think that is an excellent low mike example of an 05. My guess is they don’t move much on that price.

Thank you for the replies.

I am waiting to hear back from my salesman and I will ask about a PPI and a DME report.

Yes, I definitely plan to negotiate on the price as I would like to drop the transmission to see which bearing it has. Maybe I can try to get the engine serial number from him too.

Thank you for the offer on your wheels but I am actually set on purchasing some forgeline zx3r's for the car or any C2S I purchase.

On the 05 the transaxle does not have to be dropped to perform a visual inspection of the IMS bearing flange, to determine which bearing the engine has. A bore scope with a 5.5mm tip, or smaller can be used to clearly see the IMSB flange, when inserted through a specific piece of real estate between the engine, and transaxle.

I suppose I should show this in a Rennvision technical video on the topic. I don’t think anyone else has figured it out. (imagine that :-)

Watch this low mileage car. Inspect it more closely than a high mileage car, and that means following my procedure in the 4th video of the bore scoring video to ensure that no scoring is occurring. You cannot be careful enough. Don’t have blinders on simply due to the mileage, that is a huge mistake. With 26k miles the car was not driven enough to show any issues.

Do you have any recommendations on who can perform the service of inspecting the cylinder walls here in Southern Cali?

Callas Rennsport is the only shop in SoCal that we work with.

Tony adopted my procedure for this verbatim..

That said, you can do the inspection at home with 80.00 worth of tools, including the bore scope. My part 4 of the bore scoring video series shows you how to do this step, by step.

Good luck on finding the right one. Asking here is the first step to ensuring you have a good experience. And you cant get better informed people than Jake and @bgoetz to assist. I would concur with their points. Some additional points:

1. Ive found salesman at Porsche dealers to be highly uninformed about the 997. Most of these guys are just focused on getting a soccer mom into a Macan lease. I looked at a 2005 and asked the salesman questions I knew the answer to, just to see if he knew anything. He didnt. I first thought he was being purposely vague. I then realized he truly had no idea. I shared Jakes video with him to give him a bit of an education. He actually sent me a thoughtful note thanking me and apologized for not being more informed. He then dropped $2.5k off the price :-)

2. 2006-2008 997s have the improved large bearing IMS which cant and doesn't need to be replaced. A failure can still exist but the probability is extremely low. If you suffer from anxiety I would expend your nervous energy worrying about African Killer Bees instead of IMS issues.

3. However a 2005 you must replace the IMS because it uses the older small bearing IMS that has a ~9% failure rate according to Porsche stats. As Jake's video will show you, they switched to the large bearing in mid production so some 2005s have the newer large bearing, others have the small bearing. You can guesstimate by the engine number, but Jake found there is no way to know without taking the transmission off for a visual inspection. I would budget $2500-3000 to replace the IMS and clutch in one shot for any 2005 unless it has receipts showing its been replaced.


And as the other guys mentioned, make sure to get a PPI from a reputable shop in the area - and not from the dealer selling the car.

Keep us posted.

Hi All,

I've tried to read as much as possible in this thread but there is too much!!

So, I am rebuilding a 996 engine and we are looking at using the later IMS with the larger IMSB from the M97 2006-2008 engines.
The car will be used for road and track days.

What is consensus here:
- the later IMS design is robust and will be fine? (couldn't see any actual reported failures here although I might have missed them)
- I should spend another 2k on the IMS solution with direct oil feed since I am already spending so much on the rebuild?

Any insights much appreciated!

Many thanks

You should spend the additional money for the IMS solution and take the chances of failure to essentially zero. An oil bearing with virtually no moving parts is a far superior design, without races that can wear, cages that can disintegrate, etc. There's nothing to fall our of the IMS Solution that then becomes ingested by the motor and trashes it. I can't think of a good reason to do a rebuild with anything else.

^ This. I put my money where my mouth was.