Jersey John

Rolling the dice? There's a '03 911 with 29,000 in the PCA classifieds. Original owner, mint car. Blown motor. Probably a great buy for someone that knows how to rebuild an engine. You never know. Wasn't going to be me, I hated to spend that money on the IMS but I'm glad I did.

mikefocke

And you know the IMS was the cause how? Lots of other causes get overlooked and the IMS gets tagged as the cause. And even supposing the IMS failed, was that the cause or was some other failure that led to debris grinding away at the IMS the real cause.

joseph mitro

it's not Jersey John claiming the IMS. it's in the ad.
https://www.pca.org/classified-ad/343287

Jersey John

Yes, I didn't link the ad because I didn't know if there were rules against that. Gotta feel bad for the guy. I wish I had the skills to fix the motor, I was watching a video of a guy rebuilding one, they are not 350 Chevy crate motors for sure.

mikefocke

Jersey, sorry I kinda presumed you were someone trying to promote a sale. My bad. I'd be asking the seller how he knows. There are darn few mechanics who really know the internals of these engines.

bcrdukes

It's always easy to presume an engine failed due to IMS, but like mikefocke said, very few people have enough experience and exposure to engines caused by a failed IMS.

ER17

I'm working on one similar right now. This kid had just replaced the IMS bearing a few months ago, but it shut down on him while driving, with oil pressure warnings. The local "trade school" diagnosed it as main bearing failure. Upon teardown, I found the oil pickup tube totally blocked with debris. It seems the fine "mechanics" he used never pushed the bearing in far enough to put the snap ring in place on the shaft. This allowed the chain to move enough to break a link and lock up the scavenge pump, shearing the key driving it off the cam. It also wiped out every chain tensioner wear pad in the engine.
Fun stuff! Oh, and the bearings were fine.