rsabeebe

exactly. couldn't agree more. the part is clearly flawed and the result is the total loss of an engine (not a small concern). we're not talking about a faulty sunroof or something here. this is a major issue and a failure rate of 1:100 is miserable. i'm just sayin'.

Luxter

Indeed, the spindle holds no radial loads. It merely keeps the bearing snug agains the flange.
Here is a good picture that I hijacked from another forum to better illustrate this concept:

rsabeebe

Here's another issue to consider; at what point do we consider the bearing 'past' the failure stage? It would seem to me, never. Let's say most 997s are still under 60k miles. Will the rate of failure continue to grow (beyond the estimated 0.5-1%) as the cars continue to increase in mileage? I'm currently sitting at 64k miles and certainly do not feel as though I'm past any potential 'failure phase' and good to go from now on. I know most bearings that have been replaced are considered in 'good condition', but is it realistic to say that the failure on this is so comprehensive that a month later that same bearing could have failed? At this point, I'm curious if anyone is seeing a pattern of failures as the mileage continues to rise on our cars. I guess I'm just not one of the 997 owners who can blissfully drive his car not worrying at all if the motor will let go at any moment. Who has a cheap GT3 to sell me???

Spokane5150

What would be cool is a retrofit kit that lubricates the bearing externally. Apparently, the turbo and the gt3 continuously lubricates this bearing. Sure seems like someone could engineer a system to do this on the standard motors.

eflight

I'm more likely to lose my car due to some soccer mom hitting me while driving and using her cell phone than an IMS failure.

BED997

My basic math from doing internet searches during lunch shows about 200,000 911, boxsters, and caymans made over the years ('98-'08) with the M9x. At 1%, that's 2,000 cars. I realize some more of these boxsters and caymans had the engine past '08 but I gave up looking for sales volumes. Then I screened out the turbos - a little less of 20% of yearly production on average. The 911 M9x count is about half of the production - 95,000ish cars or so.

So, I think we'd see a "camry-like" recall at those 1% numbers .There is little chance you could keep that out of the news. I just don't think 1,000 911s have gone down over this in a 10 year span.

At about a quarter of these levels makes more sense to me - a 1/400 chance, but probably way less... maybe 250 911 cars +/- . Even that still seems to be a bunch. But enough hammering on this



I'm with you on the soccer moms and the texters - I go driving to find the back roads for this reason.

utkinpol

most of 996 owners imho already did ln retrofit work, at least from looking across 996 forum it is a no-brainer thing everyone does. same applies to any 2005 997 owner imho. if my engine would accept LN Eng bearinng i would get it done when my clutch was replaced last fall. but i have this new design that may not be replaced wihtout having to split the block.
my car had no IMS failure so far, i had other minor issues but so far I have no metal in the oil and IMS seems to be fine.

Luxter

Here:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/boxst...n-idea-15.html

Not a ball bearing.

Lvt19672

Hey Paul what production date did they start using new design bearing?

utkinpol

it is a tricky question. it used to be a post where somebody wrote down starting engine numbers for both M96 and M97 motors but then this info was imho retracted as it was not consistent. it should be still on this forum archive somewhere if you search for it.
only reliable way is to drop gearbox and inspect IMS assembly, measure the nut there as LN Eng web site describes.

usual 'safe' approach is to assume if car was produced after june 2006 then it will have new bearing. but some late 2005 cars also had motors with updated bearing and some early 2006 cars did not have it, so, it all depends of what motors were put into those cars during assembly.

vladeden

Apparently there are many P car owners that have suffered a great monetary loss due to the IMS failures. There are also even more of us with IMS time bomb worries.
I would think that now is the time to address the NPA and force a recall or start a class action suit.

Any competent attorneys here looking for a challenge ??

Luxter

It is actually engine number that determines that.
Engine number 685 09 791 and above have larger, non serviceable IMS bearing with 22mm nut on the spindle, according to Porsche Service Manual.
Your engine # is etched on bottom driver side oil pan.
That equates to about March - April 2005 production date IIRC.
So, in fact most (except early 2005 production run) of 997.1's have larger, non serviceable bearings installed.
Hope that helps.
Cheers,
=L=

user 72902

Just to clarify some of the misinformation on the IMS bearing. It is a sealed self-lubricated bearing and does not fail due to contaminated/improper lubrication or insufficient lubrication. It is similar to a wheel bearing that goes hundreds of thousands of miles without a failure. Bearings don’t magically go bad; rather, something must cause the failure. In the IMS case when the stud on the end of the IMS shaft is missing the IMS bearing acts as a centering device for the shaft and the bearing takes on lateral loads it is not designed to handle. Eventually the seal on the IMS bearing fails and its lubrication is lost. Now the bearing must rely on external lubrication to function properly. Seals have to fail before the lubrication of the bearing is an issue and something has to cause the seals to go bad.

utkinpol

on a heavily tracked car it takes 3-4 seasons to kill wheel bearings, BTW.

RollingArt

I think all the pro shops that are making a living off the IMS issue would disagree with what you've posted. Where do you come up with this stuff? Do you pull rabbits out of a hat also?