chaoscreature

I am looking at a low milage Cayman S for sale but am concerned as I am sure many of you were about the IMS failure. I can afford the car, but if the engine grenaded I would not have the money to replace it.

Reading through the Cayman S forums I found a lot of good information on the issue, what it is, preventative maintenance etc. but not a single thread on "MY IMS FAILED".

I wanted to create a poll, but I can't seem to figure it out...

So how many people here have had an actual IMS failure?
How many people caught their bearing failing and replaced it in time
How many people performed upgrades or installed the IMS Gaurdian?
How many people have done nothing and their engines are still A-Ok?

Thanks for the help! I have driven a few Cayman S's at the track and love the cars. I am excited about the prospect of owning one, but I don't want to purchase a time-bomb either!

- Peter

chaoscreature

Okay, I guess I did figure out the poll... it appears after your submit the post!

Cayman_Sense

The 3.4L Cayman S engines don't have the same issues as the other 996/986 engines. IMS isn't the cause for concern as that was upgraded with new (then) Cayman S platform.

The issues with these cars revolve more around oil ingestion and oil starvation. Typically (not always) these engines will go because the connecting rod bolts and cap. They are a less-than-ideal design that tend to stretch over time and eventually come apart. These are a few fixes for these (search here or planet-9) but at the very least, if you're tracking the car, a deep sump, air/oil separator and the appropriate oil will help tremendously. Also, long left-hand sweepers/ovals tend to exaggerate the issue.

Hope that helps.

chaoscreature

Hmm, I thought the IMS issue was across all of the water cooled engines from 1997-2008. LN Engineering sells a kit for these engines, but they state the fix must be done with the engine out.

Thats great news! I have spoken to a few people today about the cars and the consensus is the engines are pretty resilient.
Thanks!

Cayman_Sense

No problem. I would say that these engines have an Achilles heel, just not the IMS bearing. Good luck in your search!

Own Goal

Spend most my time here but last few days have had a poll over on Planet 9, the Cayman / Boxter site. Poll was how much spent on major engine work, $1-2, 2-3,4-5k and the BIG ONE. Had right at 200 respondents last I looked. Seems to be running about a bit under 8% on THE BIG ONE (IMS totaled). However, did not make a split between street only and tracked so probably half of that if a street. The other interesting thread is the "blue paint" motors. If have some blue die on the cases like on one time bolt heads means it was a "reclaimed" motor from a dealer swap out. Not too neat eh for a factory new Porsche? Seems about 20% so far on those. Yes, I got one. See how it goes.

utkinpol

all M97/M96 engines have a potential for IMS to fail. look up 996 forums, 997 forums. There is plenty of tech info describing what happens and why. As of what to do - imho from monetary perspective only 'sane' solution is to go with newer DFI motors which are IMS free - especially if you plan to track the car and run it at 6k+ rpms for long enough time.
If you can retrofit LN bearing without a need to take engine down and splitting the block - by all means, do it every 20-30K miles to make sure your bearing is still alive. it is worth to spend $1500 every 2-3 years imho.

If you have newer '06+ engine like i do where you need to drop engine down and split a case to see what is going on inside it gets way more complicated. Just hope new single row design will hold up better than old dual row used to be but with time as I understand all those bearings are destined to fail IF they lose internal lubrication after seal gets broken and motor oil gets inside. After that it is just a matter of time.
It is just a sh$tty design, that`s all. At 6k+ rpm if bearing got nothing but motor oil inside it will simply run dry as motor oil will be pushed out and it will not be able to do it for long enough time. If you pull out cheap $20 factory crap bearing and put in $300 LN ceramic bearing you will have a bit more time until it fails. But by design, if any bearing runs dry - it will fail. and it will run dry if seal gets cracked and lets motor oil in. as this bearing runs submerged into oil all the time - well, it figures.

Rods are bad, rod bolts are bad, 6th cylinder cooling is bad, IMS bearing is bad. whatever fails first will total the motor. If all was built well at factory and torqued well and never overabused - it will last 100K+ miles as some cars do with no issues. Just like a russian rulette.

Best thing for a track is a car with cheap no interference motor what only need rebuilds from time to time. Porsche has no such motors, so, if you start running your car hard - budget in money for new engines in 100-120 track hours.

chaoscreature

Hmm,
The car I am looking at is a tremendous value... I would love to get one of the more modern engines but I just can't afford anything newer than an 07 unless it has a lot of mileage.
I will try to get a third party warranty through Fidelity to cover just the motor/transmission. Anything else I can take care of. I heard it's about $3k for two years of coverage for these cars.

I will probably AX the Cayman once or twice but I will keep beating on my 993 for track days. LN engineering says to keep the revs up, but they are probably implying between 3-4k not 6-7k

chaoscreature

One other thing, the owner is being kind enough to hold the car for me until next weekend when I can travel out to pick her up.
I plan on doing a PPI but are there any Cayman S specific things that I should keep an eye out for or check specifically? If I can catch something early enough I could save $350 on my PPI. Hopefully everythings good though!

utkinpol

best resource for crocs is planet-9.com forum. a lot of info there.

STLPCA

At this point that's nothing more than rank speculation and hardly a matter of "fact." There is no authoritative explanation and until there is let's not spread the paranoid rumors constantly festering at P-9. Personally, I seriously doubt there's any validity to the "reclaimed" motor theory which, by the way, makes absolutely no logical sense.

Macster

Porsche has the option of in a warranty replacement of the engine supplying a remanufactured engine. I do not have the warranty booklet handy but I think as much is stated in the thing.

These engines can be examples that failed some final test on the engine assembly line and were moved off to one side to be reworked and then once checked out set aside to serve as warranty stock.

Or an engine could have been removed from a car and used as a remanufactured engine base. Either at the factory or later after the car was delivered to the customer.

Even today, Porsche puts a dear price on old engines that can serve as a core.

For instance, the difference in the price of an engine for my 02 Boxster (2.7L) is $10K with no engine to serve as a 'core'.

That is the price of a factory sourced engine for my car is $16K with an engine that meet the core requirement, and $27K without.

That suggests to me that Porsche wants good cores to remanufacture them.

The blue paint may not be anything other than, well, it is not unknown for as an engine (and car) as it proceeds down the line to get dabs of paint on various items, bolt heads, etc. as a sign the items, bolts whatever were inspected, torqued down.

The blue paint may just be an artifact of the original manufacturing/inspection/check out process.

(In fact I went looking through some pics I have my Boxster's new fuel pump and the new (replacement anyhow X51 engine I mention below) and I see blue paint dots, smears on the pump fuel line connections and on the oil scavage pumps of the X51 engine.)

I vaguely recall reading/being told that a remanufactured engine had an 'X' added to the end of its serial number.

I tried to photograph the serial number of a replacement X51 engine going into a modern 996 some months back but the tech forbid it.

I did look at the number and there was no 'X'. What I did see was an asterisk. As best as I can remember I saw nothing of the serial number that suggested the engine was remanufactured.

In the case of the X51 engine it may not have been. The car was new enough Porsche might have still had sufficient stock of new engines set aside for use as warranty replacement engines that it had not yet needed to start supplying engines returned to it under warranty and remanufactured for use for warranty replacement.

My Turbo received a remanufactured tranny (6-speed) when the original one developed a selector shaft seal leak. The tranny was replaced under CPO warranty. I remember (or imagined it anyhow) that the serial number ended with an 'X'.

However, I looked through all my pics of this car and I can't find one pic of this transmission and the serial number, though.

While I had thought I had a pic of this because the 'X' was there but I guess not.

The car will be going in for a roadworthy inspection shortly. I'll try to remember to snap a pic of the tranny serial number then.

Sincerely,

Macster.

chaoscreature

Thank you all for the great replies. I have a PPI scheduled for tomorrow with IPB Autosport thanks to many referrals found on the Cayman boards.

I checked out the Planet-9 website. lots of great information there. Much more than I can digest at once. Assuming the PPI comes back clean I will be haulin' off to purchase the car tomorrow and will be home on Sunday hopefully with a wonderful new addition to the family! I will post pics when I get back.

At this time I am thinking the car will not get tracked at all. If everything is as the owner told me the car is pretty pristine and I will try to preserve it's value as best as possible. Well, okay, I might take it to the AX once or twice
Thanks again for all the help.

chaoscreature

As promised here is the new car!
She only had 2,900 miles on her when I bought her. The odometer now reads 3,609 after driving home from Sacramento along Highway 1. The owner had kept the car garaged with a tricklecharger on it, parked on rubber tire cradles and underneath a car cover. He took it out about every two weeks to keep the oil circulated.
From the wear marks on the tires (or lack of) I could tell this Cayman had never been driven hard in it's short trips. The car is basically in show room condition and I couldn't be more excited!

In the owners manual it says to never "lug the engine". For the Cayman S what does this mean, no sub 3k driving? Is 2600rpm on the highway in 6th okay (not up hill)?

capri

Does it matter whether the Cayman S is auto or manual in relation to the IMS issue ?
Still debating whether whether i should go for the Cayman S in manual or auto. If auto would
be less IMS prone, i can go to that route. Thanks