IMS Replacement L&N EARLY BEARING **FYI

If you have an early replacement L&N IMS bearing, READ THIS My 2003 996 had its beariing replaced in December of 2014 at 35,559 miles...the car was only driven about 1400 mies after that until I bought it recently at 37,800 miles recently . This is from L & N The bearing was never properly registered with us. It is for certain a Single Row Classic which is the first revision of IMS Retrofit created and publicly offered. It was sold with a 30 day warranty period and has a recommended service interval of 4 years or 50,000 miles, which ever comes first. I would highly recommend having the bearing replaced and upgrading to either the Single Row Pro or the IMS Solution to prevent any sort of failure. So, ????

It looks pretty clear to me. The clue is "4 years or 50,000 miles". You said the bearing was changed in Dec. 2014 - Dec 2018 was 4 years... The mileage doesn't matter at this point since the time span has been met. The fact that the bearing wasn't registered, means there's a chance (good chance?) that the engine wasn't "qualified" (if you don't understand what this qualification process means, do a search - there's plenty of info here, or go to LN or Flat6 Innovations website for an explanation) before the retrofit was performed. This is an even better reason to replace the bearing sooner rather than later. The retrofit bearing is a maintenance item, The Solution is forever. Good luck

Interesting, what a way to not stand behind their own products.

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What would you like them to say / do?

I only posted this to alert EARLY L&N users that they better get their "bearings"...straight. And perhaps the "EARLY" bearing was too quick on the market? I will have the bearing on my car replaced in the very near future with a more "substantial" bearing...

Perhaps you should consider what can happen if you don't follow the recommendation.

Even the new LN bearings have a service interval. Like mentioned unless you have the solution they will all need to be replaced at a certain timeframe/mileage.

I am quite surprised that the service interval was not clear. When I was reading about ims, and the replacement bearing was 4 years or 50000 miles, I know that it will likely be 10 or 15 years before I do 50000 miles. I had my previous toy car 13 years and drove it 37000 km. About 22000 miles. So, with the 996, I would be in to many replacements no where near the mileage. What I would really like to understand is why a bearing has a time service interval? I opted for the Solution. Install price is about the same. $1200 extra for the part plus the extras like the filter adapter.

I'm not sure what the issue here is. All LN bearings, except for the solution, have a service interval. Not sure why they have a time and mileage interval (as opposed to just mileage), but I assume they know their own products. These service intervals are readily apparent from their website. After confirming that my car had an LN bearing, its the first place I went to learn more about it. I am going to the solution next year when my service interval is up. I won't come near the mileage interval, but why take a chance?

I'm thinking 1400 miles 4 years...I can wait a few months...there are guys who have NEVER changed the bearing and have 100,000 miles.... 8% failure rate???

1400 miles? Um, yeah...I'd be rolling the dice on that. I'd sleep like a baby too.

I got the same reply from LN for my retrofit that was installed in 2016. Service interval aside has there ever been a report of an LN bearing failing? I haven't heard of one... But please do tell if there has been.

Somewhere less than 10% of factory IMSB fail. Yet our aftermarket manf states 5 years replacement even if few miles. Now, is their bearing better than the factory that has shown in many 996 cars to go hundreds of thousands of miles? Why does the LN bearing wear out? Is it legal CYA? Sure like to know the thinking behind LN bearing failure risk after 5 years.

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I'm not too worried about mine. So much so I wont replace it when I do my clutch in maybe a few years. If it blows up... 4.0L here I come!

+1 Great fear mongering led by aftermarket parts sellers. Change your oil, inspect your filter, check cam chain dev., do oil analyst. Drive it like you stole it.

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Interesting. I wonder what the cut-off is between the 'early' and later versions because their website says '6 years or 75,000 miles'. I'll check my install date when I get home but I hope I have the later version even though I'm not buying the replace every four years regardless of mileage line.

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Part CYA and part to sell more bearings??

I will offer two opinions. First, the service interval in terms of time is representative of the incorrect application of a spherical bearing where there should have been a lubricated sleeve bearing from the start. They cannot control the conditions inside the crankcase enough to extend the hours in service much. Second, the failure rate that everyone implies as not being 'too bad', is actually completely horrible. I've mentioned this before, but 8% or 5%, or even 1% is unbelievably bad in terms of MTBF, or failure rates for modern cars/parts. Consider, a 1% failure rate the life of a brake hyd line would have cars crashing on an hourly basis in the US! As for the bearing, I didn't consider registering my bearing with the good folks at LN. It was my opinion also that the old bearing would(and did) have far more value when handed to the buyer of my car, as proof that the orig bearing was in perfect condition upon replacement. The value from registering the bearing to gain an $800 refund in the face of a $20,000 engine rebuild were immaterial.

Almost anything sold in a car has a service life. When Porsche sold the car new did they give a lifetime warranty? Not a chance. If the warranty was 5 year or 50k do you think they would help you at 5.1 years and 3,000 miles. Not a chance. LN put a service life for many reasons. Minimal miles on an engine over 5 years can be just as bad as 50,000 miles in 5 years. Short trips can cause moisture build up and fuel contamination in the oil which can damage the bearing as it sits. Mileage dosen't always matter. There could be nothing at all wrong with your bearing after 20 years. Its all conditions that are not within LN's contol. That is why they CYA and put a service interval. I'm sure off the record they would most likely tell you to drive the **** out of it and enjoy it. But then if it blew up people would be looking to them to "stand by their product". They are a bussiness and they are out to do the best the can by the customer. But if they were not first and foremost protecting their name/brand they would be out of bussiness. It's easy when your the customer to bitch....trying being on the other side of the table. I wonder how many claims they and flat 6 get a year that dosen't have a thing to do with them. I'm sure they evaluate every one and determine the cause. I bet every one of those customers believe the results. Their is a reason flat 6 and LN are on top of their field. They know what they are doing and do stand behind their product.

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When I got my LNE bearing done (I was fairly early on with the IMS bearing days and there was no Pro or The solution or even the Guardian), there was no time/mileage wear suggestion FWIW. My car had already done 96k miles before the bearing was ever switched to an IMS bearing.

doc speaks the truth. It�s a real issue. Be proactive or pay later. The reality is the older and longer these cars go the more failures will occur. Irregular service, infrequent driving, etc. are going to compound the issue. Do as you like, your car, but the info is out there.

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^^ I'm not sure I'm following the point of your post ? Your car looks nice, but your writing style...not so much

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^^ This pretty much sums it up.

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+100

This issue will never go away. I find it funny. If you�ve never had an IMS bearing failure it�s just fear mongering. If you�ve had or seen a failed bearing, then it�s a serious problem to be considered. Keeping your head buried firmly in the sand doesn�t make the problem go away. You can ignore it and cry fear mongering all you want, until you can�t.... I wouldn�t wish an engine failure on anyone, but it will happen again. As the M96 engines age, it will happen more. Your car, your choice, but the cost of being proactive is cheap compared to a full rebuild.

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x2!

There is a couple of thoughts here, Im a retired Engineer and ran an Engineering business that sold products all over the world. We designed blowers, pumps, compressors, a lot of heat, different metals, seals and bearings in operation. So a lot of time spent with designers at SKF and *** 1. The replacement bearing is and supposed to be better than the original manufacture thats what they are "selling you on to begin with". 2. If they have done there home work and testing correctly, it should be better than the original, or were they testing on customers back then? 3. They have a better solution now correct? again because more testing. 4. Yes its past the 4 yrs but miles is so low, they should explain why age is limitation and not miles. 5. If you want to retain customers and build a good business, they should contact the customer of line and work with him, discount on new bearing kit. If I was the designer/seller of the kit I would want the old bearing back so I could analysis and see if I could work out what has happened. 6. If they had dealt with customer with a little more explanations, this thread would have read a little different. 7. For my part it makes me a little more around questioning there testing and warrantees process. Thats my 2 cents worth, the business I was in was in built great products, went from $1M- to $160M, products still in the field after 25yrs. We gave great service and listened to the customer, we had issues, failures out of warrantee, but we treated our customer with respect and they will always come back. John

My 2 cents, The IMS bearing and shaft in the first gen m96 from 97-2000 was robust thick shaft with a dual row sealed bearing. The decision to use a sealed bearing where dirt and debris from the lubrication could lower the life span is not uncommon and well evaluated. The bearing life expectancy was more than the life expectancy of the engine in general. BUT if the engine ever overheated due to cooling system problem ( leaking water pump ect) the bearing seal would be damaged and bearing failure was soon to be inevitable. Porsche never being satisfied and always looking to make the product faster/lighter, couldn't leave well-enough alone, looked at the IMS bearing and shaft, and decided they could make it lighter by using a thinner tube and a single row bearing (2001-2005) without sacrificing dependability. A big boo-boo. The thinner tube had more run-out, would not stay pinned to the gears, they may have even gotten a bad batch of single row bearings (very likely). I had one poor soul with an 04 Targa had 2 IMSB engine failures within 10k from new. On his third engine I put the 06 up updated (large) single row engine in. Porsche had a similar boo-boo in 2010 on vario-cam gears. Looking for ways to save weight they lightened up the vario-cam gears and even used aluminum screws to save a few grams. The screw manufacturer recessed the Torx drive recess too far and the aluminum heads would pop off the screws and valves would start hitting pistons. We replaced a good number of engines in Cayenne. Panamera, and Gt3's due to this. At any rate, things will fail, even the LNE has said they have had a few of the Classic Retro failures that were not due to bad installations or qualifications. The LNE "Solution" is the only one to trust wholeheartedly if you got the funds. Not because I think it will outlast the engine or be less likely to fail, but because if it does fail, it will be what I call a "soft" failure. By that I mean the failure will happen slowly, with plenty of warnings. and no chance of suddenly jumping time like what can happen if a ball or roller bearing looses ***** or rollers. When the Solution first came out I knew it was the one to have, but the price to me was out of line. I know they got R&D tied up ect. But I wanted it just the same, and one day I saw them for sale at Pelican for $795? I knew that was a missprint, but couldn't help myself and ordered one. After thinking about it for a day or so I double checked the part number and checked tracking and the Solution was halfway to my house. Having 3 m96 engines ( a 996 and a 986 I had bought as rollers for my sons to enjoy) I ordered 2 more ! The next day I get a call from Pelican telling me there has been a mistake and they are turning my shipment around or I could pay about three thousand more and they would not turn the shipment around. Not having the extra funds I just told them to refund me my purchase price. So not willing to spend 6k for 3 Solutions, I'll just keep on installing bearings of my choice whenever I am near the IMSB.

This thread is reminiscent of the "when should I replace my timing belt" threads on other forums...or even oil changes. The manufacturer's replacement schedule is a guide. What you actually do should take into a account your use of the product and the cost versus risk of replacement. Sticking with the timing belt analogy, we know the belts wear and break at some point. Let's say the replacement interval is 75k miles or three years. Does that mean that the belt will break at 75,001 miles? No. It could break at 50k (less likely) miles and it could break at 100k miles (more likely). Your risk tolerance drives the replacement point. Got 75k on the car but plan on selling at 90k? May want to roll the dice and leave it alone. Paranoid? Replace it once a week. Planning on keeping the car to 160k? may want to replace at 80k. Then add in type of use. Drove only 300 miles but the belt is three years old? May want to replace if you live in climate that experiences extreme temperature swings or excessive moisture. If the car is garaged in a temperature controlled environment you may want to leave it. Each mile or day you go outside the service interval increases risk of failure, but only incrementally. Don't forget, replacing on schedule does not eliminate risk either, it just reduces it. On a completely different note, just what sort of reasoning do we think there is behind the recommendation based on age? Is it potential pitting due to contaminants in the oil? If so, type and frequency of oil changes should/could affect this lifespan considerably. The service interval is guide. It makes sense to inject a little logic into this decision.

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95% of the P car owners havent had IMSB failure. With this stat of 100,000 996s 5,000 will have failed. Thats mean 95,000 havent. The amount of IMSB fear vs facts is simply not in line with the math. Logic and reason based on facts vs fear. I'll take facts for 1,000 Alex.

As quite a few here have already stated, everything has a service life. My bet would be that LN is following the bearing manufacturer's directive on the service life of the particular bearings they use in the retrofit. To do otherwise would be foolhardy as company that then sells those bearings. Additionally, you need to ensure the cleanliness of the environment where those bearings are being installed if you are going to offer a warranty for the product. Take a look at the imsretrofit.com site, LN provides a substantial amount of resources to better understand the issues with the IMS bearings as well as recommendations for installation. It looks to me like they are fairly up-front regarding the entire process and products available to us. I have a 997 2S that I intend to keep for some time, so I will go with the solution on my rebuild next year (my car has many many miles )

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Like I said with time the number will go up, and it will go up substantially. The cost of failure is extremely expensive too. If you had a 5% chance of having a heartattack everyday but could reduce it to <1% with medication would you skip the medicine? But it�s your car and your heart.... You�d feel a whole lot different if you were one of the 5,000.

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You flew too close to the Sun

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So, if I ran a business with hardware, I'd probably pick 5 years as a warranty as well (at the most). I'd never go longer than that. Because it's a huge liability. You could get a run of bearings with bad steel that corrodes, but it takes 8 years for it to come out. You don't know it's bad because you didn't test it for 10 years in multiple cars (who has a chance to do that?) and maybe your "accelerated wear testing" didn't break it either. But 10 years out you could be out of business because 20% of your install base is taking you to court to cover the cost of their motors. So, to reduce liability, every manufacturer caps the warranty on their products.

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Fear. Logic goes out the door. Personal health and a car analogy is funny.

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Ah so you�re one of those apples to oranges guys: round, fruit, grows on a tree, juice.... I could go on. Your car will work a bit better with a busted engine than a man with a bad heart. P.S. Denial isn�t logic. P.P.S. IMS bearing failures don�t care if you fear them or not. It�s actually irrelevant.

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Yep..lol I should have "flew under the radar"

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I'm an EE not ME so cut me a bit of slack please. 3. Yes. Changed from a caged spherical bearing to a oil supported sleeve(bushing) type bearing as found in cam bearings everywhere. 4. The general consensus is that impurities in the oil begin to etch away the bearing race given time as fluid(hesitate to call it 'oil') rests in the bearing saddle. This is not definitive, but has some case study to it, and makes sense as well. 5. LN has a very good rep in this business, and if the OP contacts them, then that may be exactly what they do. It would incumbent on the customer to contact the vendor, as this is a one-and-done sale, not an ongoing repeat type market. 6. LN & J Raby has probably spent thousands of free hours on this and other forums explaining, answering, communicating, etc. A search using "LN" or "Flat 6 Inn" would yield massive amounts of data, including videos, pictures, graphs, specs, analysis, and commentary. GTAFB. 7. Well, the warranty is published. There are alternatives means and fixes out there. I gave my 2 cents on my warranty opinion already, but it is what it is. For those that want a real heavy duty warranty, send the engine to Flat 6, write a massive check, and be done with it. Because, for all they publicize, there is a whole 'nother massive book of stuff they have tested, and they don't publish(much). Hard to fault the business model when the guy has work backed up through 2019, and into 2020. YMMV, objects in mirror, contents have settled, closed course pro driver, and may cause **** leakage.

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I'd spend $2K to insure my $20K motor, it just makes sense!

So now not only do 996 owners have a fear of the "dreaded IMS", now we are fearing the replacement bearings put in? This is so crazy to me. If you are afraid, change it ever 2 years and consider it the cost of having fun. Or just drive the damn car and enjoy it. The cost of the replacement isn't astronomical so just do it and move on. I have no doubt the "solution" will also be a topic of discussion soon enough saying that needs to be swapped too. I for one do not feel the 5yr or 50k replacement thing makes sense. So if I replace the bearing, park my car for 5 years, you are telling me I should replace it even with ZERO miles? Ridiculous. Personally I will probably change mine again after 30k, which will be 8-10 years for me.

It�s not crazy once you come to realize a roller ball bearing isn�t going to have a long life in this application. It was never a good design. That�s the problem. Ignoring this and hoping for the best may work, but eventually your luck will run out.... bearing, runout..... there�s a joke in there somewhere.

There was a comparison to timing belt service life vs IMS bearing. That is … apples to oranges. The rubber in timing belts has a life time over which it degrades. Seven years I think. Also if you leave a timing belt installed and park the car for 7 years, the pattern on the timing belt is set around the pulley and it is more susceptible to breakage. All that makes sense to limit the timing belt service life to xx years and xxxx miles. A bearing, well, that is a different animal. I can replace the IMS bearing in my car, push my car into the garage, cover it up for 5 years and after 5 years my IMS bearing is no longer any good? Well, that seems hard to believe. What is believable is a warranty statement from a manufacturer that has xx years and xxxx mileage but that is purely a business decision statement not an engineering statement. Believable yes, but it does not make it right.

Well, my friends, the best that is going to happen is 5 years, unlimited mileage. The Solution is more costly, and the best there is, and 5 years, unlimited miles for a bearing is pretty damn good. Considering that Porsche originally offered 12 months, 12,000 miles on the WHOLE CAR. If you buy a replacement core engine direct from Porsche you get 12 months - again. Sigh,,,,

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I understand fully there is a "shelf life" to the bearing, what I don't understand is how a large percentage of owners dwell on it. Just consider it a maintenance item and move on. To go to the timing belt example, it needs to be replaced every X amount of miles. Treat this bearing the same way. I am not "ignoring the problem" as mine has been replaced. What I am ignoring is the fact that if I only put 5k miles on it in 5 years I need to do it again, I would wait until I got closer to 25-30k miles and for me, that will be 10 years.

So refreshing to see this new topic come up rather than the ones that have been beaten to death over the years here on Rennlist.

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If the intermediate shaft runout is the problem, why aren't we discussing replacing the shaft? /X3

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It's not an insurance. Not in the slightest. You spend $2k to insure one specific failure mode on this engine for a limited time. The engine can still grenade through one of the other bazillion failure modes Charles has identified. I'd spend $2K to insure my $20K engine too, but the IMS solution is not that.

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Even this is a stretch. There are no guarantees. You are just reducing risk of this part failing, not eliminating that risk.

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This ^

Good lord! Why are we even talking about this? The whole deal with “most” IMS failures is with garage queens—low miles, low revs, “spoiled” oil trapped in the bearing. It makes perfect sense to put both a time and mileage limit on the replacement. When you replace the clutch, replace the bearing. Don’t loaf around at 2000 rpms every Sunday when you drive it two miles to get coffee and a paper before returning it to the garage until next Sunday (unless it’s raining...). AND... It STILL may fail prematurely. Too many stories out out there and too much history. Drive it frequently and drive it moderately hard. Have fun! TC

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100% (Marco Island, FL) /X3

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We do discuss it, and because all of them are not out, and you can't measure it with it still in the motor, you have to measure it AFTER the failure, during the rebuild process. Then put a good one in.

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...said almost every 996 owner ever - before one of those fear-mongered fictitious modes of failure crops up in their own car.

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An unbalanced shaft takes out the bearing but the bearing gets the blame. Would explain why some motors last 200k miles and others 20k.

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Do the math. 7-8% is terrible but you would think it was 50% of all 996s. Funny how many people support the fear with such odds.

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Its a lot more than 2k for IMSB and all the while your in there. I havent seen a CA IMSB from a Cert Inst for less than 5k.

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I'd drive it out of state to replace it then. Much like your Real Estate, your IMS bearings are overpriced too. LMAO

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Alternately, I shopped around, got the 2 row bearing on discount for $672, borrowed the tools(12 pack of beer), replaced the friction disk for $116, RMS for $17, and a few odds and ends and was out of the whole job for around $850. Took pics, and video, and handed the old bearing to the buyer. Second best $850 I spent on the car. The best was the cooling system upgrade.

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Not if you do your own work!

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We inspect every intermediate shaft that we rebuild for this reason. The 06-08 shafts are the best, with most having zero runout. Runout defined as concentricity of the bearing bore to the shaft and sprockets. The single row shafts from 00-05 are the worse, typically with a few thousands. Anything more than .005" should be replaced, but we have run shafts with upwards of .010" with an IMS Solution with zero issue as the IMS Solution is much more forgiving. If there is any wobble in the main drive sprocket indicating the sprocket has started to slip or is crooked and the shaft is discarded.

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Charles, have you guys seen many issues with the factory (AT Stamped) re-manufactured engines?

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M96 soapbox: the popular refrain that the IMS issue affects a fixed percentage of cars is inaccurate. 100% of non-retrofitted 996.1 single-row M96 IMS bearings will fail if the rest of the engine survives long enough. Furthering the notion that a finite number of cars are affected does nothing except perpetuate the paranoia about the 996. The IMS bearing in the M96 will always be a weak point in the design. 996.1 single-row engines are the weakest ones; until every one of those engines has been refitted with a "Solution," it will continue to be one of the most likely points of failure for that engine. Parts being subject to greater-than-calculated loads don't just stop failing because they've been in service for 20 years...996 engines will continue to die from this failure type. This is just a reality - it's a machine; it's in the process of slowly breaking. There is no cap on how many 996's will be affected; you can't just declare your car immune to an IMSB failure because it made it to 50K miles. Even if I lay down on the floor and wave both feet and both fists in the air, single-row bearings will continue to be crap parts. Cars equipped with those bearings will continue to occasionally die when the bearings self-destruct. Upon learning of a heart valve condition that (a) only affects 10% of the population, (b) has killed thousands of people over the past 20 years, and (c) can be corrected at any time with surgery, many folks are going to choose that open-heart surgery - in their opinions, the risk and expense of even this invasive and dangerous preventive care outweigh the much smaller chance of dying unexpectedly. Just driving the car and ignoring the issue is a totally adequate maintenance strategy if you're willing to accept the risk of what it will cost to rectify if your car does turn out to be in the "small" group and/or just walk away from the car if the motor grenades. However, that risk should be based on reality, not our frustration with what we may perceive as paranoia or "fear mongering." Like it or not, the potential failure pool for IMSB-related M96 death is still large. Those owners who WANT to do something to ensure their 996 lives as long as possible should not be dissuaded from fixing a part that has been proven inadequate merely because some of us are frustrated about the volume of crap that has been talked about the 996... 996AE, this isn't a call-out or criticism of you - you bring up the same points that others have been bringing up for years. I'm not saying you're wrong - just suggesting that everyone should evaluate important numbers with the correct dose of rational skepticism.

This 5chn3ll guy is right. I�d say he is understating the problem actually. The dual row bearings are more robust than the single row ones, but they can and will fail too. If is not the correct question, when is. This bearing may outlive other critical engine components, but it may not. Even dual row bearings aren�t safe. I personally held one in my hands that was going to fail very soon. The engine had a head crack and bad intermix issue before the bearing failed though. This made it a salvageable core. If the bearing let go, it�d have been in much worse shape. But the it hasn�t happened to me, so it�s not true crowd will likely never see the light. Anyone thinking a greased ball roller bearing can live in a 0 to 3500 rpm, cyclical, and damp (oil, oil mist, fuel and water vapors) environment forever isn�t looking at things closely.

Thanks, Anthony. You're right that more than the 996.1 single-row cars are affected, but everything I've read from guys who actually have dirty fingernails and everything else I've found is consistent in that the single-row cars are the most drastically impacted - so I stuck with that smaller group to avoid being lumped in with the "mongers." I have a dual-row car; at the time I did the retrofit, about 5 years ago, there was MORE paranoia than there is now. In hindsight, I probably would not have replaced the dual-row bearing with the LN hybrid bearing. My goal is to keep the car forever (or for as long as I can); spending that money on the Solution would have been a much better investment, but the data to support that conclusion wasn't yet available.

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At 5 years aren't you at the point in time that you should do it again? The Solution is the solution!

I’m planning on doing the solution when I have the money to allocate to it. My IMSB just got replaced last year so, I’m in no big hurry. However, I’m going to replace it well before my relatively new clutch needs replacing. Maybe 2 years. I think there’s a qualified LN shop in Ft. Meyers. I’ll start talking to them soon. Excellent post, 5CHN3LL! TC

Now we are making much more sense. And it doesn�t really matter how any feels or if anyone is scared / worried. It�s a bearing in a tough application. It won�t last forever. Timing belt tensioners have bearings in them. No one says to service it, but I always put a new tensioner with new bearing with every timing belt.

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About 90% of the "timing belt failures" I've seen are actually a tensioner or idler bearing of some sort.

[QUOTE][/QUOTE The words "pro-active" and "unnecessary" seem interchangeable ! Updated IMS kits use cylindrical "all steel" bearings and don't have the short service lives of the older 'ceramic-hybrids" that were "sold" to the public. One kit offers a lifetime replacement warranty at a fraction of the higher friction bushing style( Solution? )

[QUOTE=My99996;16734194]

�Higher friction� The IMS Solution is supported radially and longitudinally by a pressurized film of oil. Please enlighten me as to how this is �higher friction�.

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[QUOTE=wildbilly32;16734548] Pass the popcorn!

5 posts - and every single one is trolling. Keep it up, Ace.

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Profile -> User Control Panel -> Edit Ignore List

I'm all for free speech. That's why I have never used the ignore feature, and have no plans to do so. I prefer to call out the ******** for what they are. If you've ever visited the OT P&C forum, you'll know what I'm talking about.

It's not a free speech issue because I'm not preventing him from posting. I just prefer to avoid trolls and their dubious information.

True. That is one way to deal (or not) with it. Your way has positive aspects.

I also point out that each of his posts concern IMSB issues/complaints. Troll indeed...maybe with a hidden agenda...?