IMS poll
 

This is basically a cut and paste of a poll in one of the Carrera forums.

Many have been asking to understand how many of m96 cars have had IMS (intermediate shaft) failures. Although the people on this board are not necessarilly a random sampling of Boxster owners I would like to see a poll to get a better sense of it.
• Please vote only once for each Boxster you own (yes or no).. you can post multiple times but only vote once
• Please include details of your car and engine if it failed via IMS and when.
• Please let us know if there were any mitigating factors (low oil, overheat, etc) that might've led to the failure
• Please post only about IMS failures, this is not about RMS failures
• Please post only for your car, no heresay or posting for a friend who doesn't frequent the board
• Please post what was done to rectify the failure if your car failed (CPO engine, engine out of pocket, used engine, sold, insurance fire, pushed it into a river etc)

p.s.
The 997 poll on this has a 5% failure amongst the 500+ poll respondents.

p.p.s.
If you upgraded the IMS, please reply indicating at what mileage you did so.

No failure, switched to LNE IMS at 64K miles.

No failure, 48K, stock, no plans to replace. Change oil every 5K, does see occasional track time on street tires. 2002 S

No failure, 21K, stock, no plans to replace. Change oil every year, about 1200 miles.

didn't vote. where's the option for "replaced/upgraded before failure"?

yeah that does skew things since its become a fairly routine upgrade in a short amount of time.

But I guess I'm trying to gauge how long the OEM IMSBs have managed on their own. Seems like most hold off until the clutch goes which generally puts you in the 70K to 100K mile territory.

64k miles, have not replaced the bearing but plan to the next time the clutch is changed.

I wish we could get something scientific on the issue, it really is tough to find good data on how frequently they fail. Easily the toughest point when recommending a Boxster to someone or advising them when they are already interested.

now that there are options on addressing the IMS, something that wasn't possible when this issue was first raging, and given the falling prices for all Boxsters (ditto for water-cooled 911s), my hesitation to recommend the car to someone doesn't really come from an exploding engine. It's more to do with the things that have always been true of this brand, the parts are expensive and the labor needs to be specialized. But if it were cheap and easy to own these cars everyone would have one and they'd be rotting/neglected like so many econo boxes parked on the street.

well i did mine backwards. i took the car in for the bearing and had the shop do the clutch while in there...

In the beginning Porsche might have had a handle on these figures because all Boxsters were under warranty and they got the failed engine back. But at this point, not even Porsche knows. Why don't they know? Because they don't keep track of all the cars that have bypassed Porsche service or installed aftermarket bearings or have been scrapped.

Any attempt to sample online is cursed by sample bias. Not to mention small sample size.

My 2004 Anniv. model IMS failed at 27K one year out of the 4 year warranty. Replaced by Porsche. Oil always changed every 4K or 5K miles. No warning. No abuse.

Still have the car and have over 46K miles and car runs like new.

Also have a 2012 Black Edition Boxster S and I'm glad it doesn't even have an IMS!

did Porsche replace the engine with another single row OEM IMSB?

At 78,000 Miles, the PO had overfilled the crank with 4 extra liters of oil ... I bought it and had it rebuilt and have put on 10,000 Miles in two years.

I don't know the exact details but it was supposed to the latest version and was described as more robust.