Jim in St.Louis

Joel Reiser of Panorama magazine says, "Ï believe every one of them of them will fail" Can we put together a survey of high milage Porches, with IMS engines, to proove him wrong?

ep3_lol

I think we've already started: https://rennlist.com/forums/boxster-...-ims-poll.html

Technically, I suppose you could say he's correct. The bearing can't last until the end of time. But practically, from what those that pay attention have seen, that statement is asinine.

Macster

You can't prove him wrong.

Every car would have to be driven until it could be driven no longer either due to IMSB failure or some other service/useful life terminating event happened to the car.

sjfehr

Context is everything. The failure rate of the bearing seals and washing away of lubricant grease is likely 100%. Now, whether a particular car's IMS will be lubricated well enough with engine oil to run for the life of the car without catastrophic failure is another question entirely. Even high-failure rate cars are suffering a less than 10% total failure rate.

I'm approaching 100k on my '04 986S with the original failure-prone IMS. I'm a bit worried about it, but take the precaution of frequent high-rpm runs to ensure proper lubrication.

perfectlap

That sort of infers that there is a German sports car engine that will last indefinitely. Which woud that be?

MSTACH

GT3 engine

FlatSix911

Metzger forever!

perfectlap

DOH. What I should have bought but GT3's look terrible as Cabriolets. lol

Too bad there was never a GT3 Boxster. If this were BMW they would have built it and everyone would have one.

I was reading an interview recently and this Porsche engineer said that after all of these cars and different series they never ever referred to them as a Metzer engine. That's only come about very recently.

MSTACH

u can install gt3 engine in boxter!

sjfehr

It's a real crime the GT3 engine isn't offered for the Boxster/Cayman platform right out of the box.

Marine Blue

That's a very broad statement considering there are now three variations of the Boxster. Perhaps they should define it better so as not to hurt the value of the newer Boxsters and Caymans which not longer have IMS.

mikefocke

But of course he is right, every part that moves against another will wear out eventually. In every engine including the GT3.

As the failure rate of even the least reliable IMS M96 design is less than 10% and some of those cars are 12 years old, his statement is both absurd and stupid not to mention wrong and self-servingly designed to attract attention.

aowolf

I did the LN upgrade at about 110 or 120k, I'm at least 50k into the new bearing. I had engine oil inside the bearing seal when I took it out. I'm glad I changed it, so I can worry about the other horrible ways the engine could die ;-)

gfl

Porsche's own data from the discover in the lawsuit showed a failure rate (aggregate) of under 20% so far.

Many motors fail for other reasons before the IMS.

I just pulled a 150k IMS and it was OK. Not great, but OK.

So fear mongering should be labeled as such.

Am i a naysayer? No. I bought TWO (!) LN IMS bearings and put them in when other work was being done.

Grant