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YOUR RESEARCHIMS bearing alternate fix
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always good
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Reported cause · Original poster
Long story short, he believes the problem is a jumped cam on that bank.
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I agree your solution is a good one, working under the assumption that the problem is related to lubrication.
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Performed · outcome unconfirmed · Original poster
Drained the oil, cut apart and inspected the oil filter.
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so I used a %, 1% = 100% / 100 of known vehicles that failed at the time of legal action, so the reason I used 100 cars, is so its an accurate % for people to understand, I think everyone grasped this bar you.
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so I used a %, 1% = 100% / 100 of known vehicles that failed at the time of legal action, so the reason I used 100 cars, is so its an accurate % for people to understand, I think everyone grasped this bar you.
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so I used a %, 1% = 100% / 100 of known vehicles that failed at the time of legal action, so the reason I used 100 cars, is so its an accurate % for people to understand, I think everyone grasped this bar you.
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Suggestion
I've been charging that windmill since people started trying to use the class-action data as The Definitive Guide to How Long Your Bearing Will Last(tm).
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Hi folks. I'm a longtime Porsche owner and just picked up a 2003 996 C4 Cabriolet. Brainstorming an alternate means of replacing/fixing the IMS bearing.
1. Replace stock IMS bearing with another stock bearing. I would remove the seals making the bearing open. Replace the bearing with this modified unit.
2. Tig weld a bung on the cover to accept an AN4 aircraft fitting.
3. Notch the case so a 90 degree line will pass thru.
4. Make a spin-on oil adapter fitting which will have a tapped hole to accept another AN4 fitting.
5. Run a braided AN hose between the two, like others have already done.
6. Use a non-bypassing K&P Engineering cleanable filter on the spin-on adapter.
I have a machine shop and its no problem for me to make these components.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
Bob
Hey Bob
Congrats on the purchase! If you're looking for a challenge/project and not too worried about resale or potentially ruining your engine, then go for it! Otherwise, just buy the IMS solution and save a lot of time/headache and be done with it.
Cheers
Charlie
Don't waste your time trying to come up with a solution for a problem that has already been fixed.
Buy a good quality fix for the IMS from a reputable vendor
Then go back to worrying about the other 99 ways your M96 can explode
K&P filters are very easy to inspect and clean. I'm an aircraft mechanic and maintain several airplanes and use them on some of these airplanes. They don't allow bypass oil.
As for why...$1400 for a few simple machined components is pretty steep to me. What I described is exactly the same as the $1400 solution. Aside from using a stock bearing I see no reason why it shouldn't work.
For the M96 engine, one of the best things to get is the L&N oil filter adapter and magnetic drain plug. The adapter allows for the use of a spin-on oil filter with no bypass, unlike the OE oil filter canister. I consider it one of the essential upgrades for our engines.
I've applied Techline coatings in several engines I've built, mostly aircraft. DFL or ceramic coatings work well in extreme conditions where the oil film can break down. To me, if the bearing is bathed with a steady supply of oil and the forces acting upon it aren't great then its of limited advantage in a case like this. I agree the best solution is a plain bearing that's coated.
You can be the guy #2 to try and make a home-made bearing. Guy #1 is a Voldemort of this forum. Please keep us updated on your process and document how it is done.
Also, if you are going to sell your car after the "IMS mod", let the buyer know that it is a home-made IMS bearing.
This
http://imsretrofit.com/direct-oil-feed/
says: "Forced oiling of the ball bearing does not provide any benefit as the bearing does not require or benefit from additional oil. Lubrication alone is not the problem."
I really don't understand. What does this mean? Would DoF be somewhat helpful? There are some "diagnoses" written that the OEM bearing fails because the seals fail and the grease gets washed out, but then since there is no oil flow the bearing becomes loaded with bad decomposed oil (or some other foul stuff). If that is the root cause, then why wouldn't DoF help? If DoF alone is not enough, then how much help does it give?
Besides with my layman's understand of fluid flow, I have been concerned with tapping oil pressure from the system, and how it might affect oil flow in other parts of the engine. I suppose every oil pump is rated higher than the system needs, else we wouldn't have a pressure relief valve on the oil pump. It seems like an important aspect is to ensure that the DoF line and fittings are properly sized so that only the minimum required oil is going to the IMSB, or in other words which component of this solution meters the oil flow to the IMSB?
I'm in Indiana.
I have considered the loss of oil pressure and would put a small restrictor hole where the 1/8" NPT pipe would be welded to the cover. In my experience with other projects a 0.030" hole is more than sufficient for ball bearing lubrication.
Bearings fail due to heat or contamination. Period! If you feed a constant supply of oil, the bearing will be cooled and always freshly lubricated. Its that simple.
Is your IMSB broken?
If not don't fix it.
These only have an 8% chance of failure over the life of the car, so a 0.5% chance of failing per year (1 every 1,000,000 miles driven. I did do an exact calculation before but I've forgot it)
Are you going to renew linings and pistons as they can go as well.
I personally know a few 911 owners and own/ed a few 911's myself, never met anyone who had one go and mine have been fine.
The trouble with this site is, you have a lot of garages drumming up business with doom stories, which may well have happened but not quite on the scale they preach about.
(If there are any garages out who wish to correct me if i'm wrong please do so, but only with facts)
All the best Russ
But good luck which ever route you take.
Car is a 2003 C4 Cabriolet project car. I paid 8K for it. 44K mi. Bank 2 cylinders not firing. Haven't gotten into the engine yet but the previous owner is very sharp and a former Porsche tech. Long story short, he believes the problem is a jumped cam on that bank. I'm going to get it on the lift this weekend and start poking around before I pull the engine. If I pull the engine I'm going to do the IMS bearing mod as proposed. I may use the same bearing if its in good shape, and just mod the cover. As I've found out in many of my mechanical adventures when replacing something one can't assume there won't be problems with the replacement part.
Russ21...where did you get a figure of an 8% chance of failure over the LIFE of the car? The single row had an 8-10% failure rate by the time of the class action lawsuit (no sure when the data was presented in evidence...but it was certainly well before the 2013 settlement date). I'm sure many more have popped since then and will continue to fail. The newest of the cars in this failure rate range are only 13 years old...certainly nowhere near lifetime. Your calculation appears to be based upon faulty assumptions.
( don't know where you got 10% from as some of these cars have a 1% failure rate so average failure rate 4%)
Hi, yes the newest will be as you said around 13 years the oldest will now be 20 years and by far a massive 92% (96% if you include the 1% cars) majority have not gone in an average of 16.5 year, and some cars will be sat in a garage
and never used and some will be in the scrap heap, never the less when most of these cars were made the reasonable usable life expectancy of a car was around 10-15 (depending on make) years 100,000 miles.
So as I stated several times 1 in 1,000,000 mile chance of IMSB failure and that is a pessimistic estimate.
Please reply with facts
Hey Bob - from Cincinnati here. I agree your solution is a good one, working under the assumption that the problem is related to lubrication. I've seen some evidence posted here by people much more knowledgeable than myself that the failures are caused by irregular (maybe axial?) load. In any event, my initial recommendation still stands - if you can stomach a total engine loss, you are itching for a project, and you're not concerned with resale value, by all means go for it. Otherwise, there is a proven solution available that eliminates the possibility for failure completely. In some cases its best to stand on the shoulders of others and just enjoy your car.
Very wize as I would imagine there are plenty of people out there with a broken retro fit and had they left the original in, it may have been fine. Also there are cars with original bearing at over 250,000 miles.
Your "estimate" is based on flawed assumptions. You cannot just average the failure rates of single-row and dual-row cars. An M96 with the first iteration of the single-row bearing will ALWAYS have a far greater chance of IMSB failure than a dual-row-equipped M96. Further, any ball bearing is a wear item. As the bearing degrades and the ***** and/or races become pitted, degradation will accelerate...the combination of increased friction/rolling resistance due to no-longer-perfectly-smooth contact surfaces - and the internal accumulation of shed bearing material that cannot exit the sealed factory bearing - exponentially increase the wear rate. Assuming a constant risk factor of "one in a million" is a gross oversimplification (in addition to being entirely made up)...
https://rennlist.com/forums/996-foru...30k-miles.html
Judging by this I don't think the $$ bearing kits are any better. A sealed bearing in this application is stupid.
Firstly I was explaining to someone else, who was basically saying failures were 10% overall, overall it's about 4% so regarding the conversation I can take an average.
8% of cars fail at an average of say 85,000 miles remember some never fail in the life of a car even 250k or more ;
so you take 100 cars do 85,000 miles in each so you cover 8,500,000 miles divided by your 8% or 8 failures = 1,062,000 miles traveled
( I am not nor have I implied that 1 bearing would or could do this, what I am pointing out is on average (as I have stated many times) A 996 single row bearing will go every aprox million miles travelled)
This is not taking into account the 1% for the upgraded bearing which has a failure rate of 1 in 8,000,000 miles travelled.
Bob
Check out the EPS oil feed, might save you some time, it's a replacement oil pump drive shaft with a groove machined down its length , this lets a small amount of oil inside the ims shaft which travels through to lube the bearing at the other end , check out Europeanpartssolution.com
I fitted the full ims kit, roller bearing and oil feed , this was before the ims solution plain bearing by LN was on sale, I would probably go for that now but I've done about 5k on the roller over about two years and no probs up to now .
Good luck
Please people do your homework
8% of cars fail at an average of say 85,000 miles remember some never fail in the life of a car even 250k or more ;
so you take 100 cars do 85,000 miles in each so you cover 8,500,000 miles divided by your 8% or 8 failures = 1,062,000 miles traveled
( I am not nor have I implied that 1 bearing would or could do this, what I am pointing out is on average (as I have stated many times) A 996 single row bearing will go every aprox million miles travelled)
This is not taking into account the 1% for the upgraded bearing which has a failure rate of 1 in 8,000,000 miles travelled.
I am not sure what you tried to calculate, but you did that wrong. 8% of 8,500,000 us 680,000; that's one.
Two, for your group of 100 cars, there will be a bearing failure for every 680,000 miles traveled by the WHOLE GROUP. This is an absolutely meaningless statistic for the IMS situation, as I have yet to meet anyone who would wonder.....what is the failure rate of the IMS bearing for the total miles traveled by all 996s every produced. The answer you get is no way car specific and doesn't give you ANY useful data. So you find out of all 996s ever made, the IMS bearing fails roughly every 1,000,000 miles traveled by ALL OF THE CARS as the group. And that is useful to you how?
The failure rate of these cars in the dual row bearing was 1% and the failure rate of the single row AT THE TIME OF THE CLASS ACTION was 8-10% (it was to this larger cadre of failures I was referring). Since that time, nobody is recording how many additional IMS bearings have failed. Nor are they recording how many REPLACEMENT bearings or engines have failed (I'm not talking about aftermarket replacement bearings...I'm talking single row or large captive IMS engine replacements from Porsche). Further, Porsche would not reimburse anyone with over 100k miles or 10 yrs on it at the time of damage...meaning their own confidence in the survival of bearings past that time was also low. You really have no factual basis to assume 8% failure rate at 85k miles assumption 6 years or so after the data was presented in the litigation. You talk about miles driven on a fleet of cars and if the driving habits of all of those drivers was the same, maybe there'd be more validity...but
Glad to hear you're an A&P. We need some of that here.
Now, having said that, there are some pretty sharp folk who've engineered a good solution. Sadly, the price they charge for the fix-up is pretty high. I"m an amateur in this specific failure mode, but if you can do something less expensive, the proof will be about +200K miles of satisfactory run-in. Some issues you're going to have to confront: Previous less costly fixes have tanked seriously. For various reasons. The exact failure mode(s) are not well defined. I've seen a bunch of theories, and some actual measurements. So far I know we've had serious NRRO with some shafts. There has also been evidence of normalized run-out. There have been issues with foreign contamination of the bearing. With acid etching of the ball or race. Rust/oxidation. Axial skidding, chain woggle, and even cases of unknown seizure of the outer race.
I'm afraid that the true solution would address all these potential failure modes. Which would be to disassemble and mic the shaft, balance, and then do all the needed bearing load and lube design. It seems like there is not going to be a 'quick/cheap fix'. But - I will encourage you to work up anything. More eyes on the issue is always good. Unless you know starting with a good shaft, true gear teeth, correct chain, no contamination, just solving the bearing problem may lead to unpredictable results. A few things we do know. The problem seems to be more common on under-utilized low mileage cars. Single row bearings are more failure prone(I don't know the percent). Note also the intermediate shaft is a non-flow through unit. Having an open cage bearing with full flow of oil onto the cage is a solution, but the shaft needs to be drained as well. A certain amount of drainage back through the ball cage will happen, but I don't know how much outflow is enough for the spray into the bearing.
Good luck, keep us posted.
Thanks for pointing out this solution as I was not aware of it. If I were not so set in my DIY ways I would likely go with their solution since it uses pressure fed roller bearings. SKF has some bearing calculators online to determine the expected life of a bearing based on type of lubrication and contamination factors. It would be interesting to compare the two (roller vs. ball) to see which one in theory would have more life given expected contamination values one would see with normal engine oil contamination.
Thank you. I have an IA (inspection authorization) from the FAA so I have a bit of a keen eye for doing modifications in the airplane world. I've had to deal with analyzing ball bearing failures in some Lycoming engines that have a ball bearing support for magnetos so I'm aware of how they fail in bathed applications. In that case the bearings are fed with splash oil and I believe underutilization is a contributing problem. Water and acid gasses are byproducts of combustion which end up in the oil. If the engines sit for long periods of time then these contaminates cause corrosion on steel parts which is obviously hard on contact bearings.
Sure, just don't know the extent of damage yet, if any. Will get the car up on the lift this weekend and start poking around. Dropping the motor and transmission is something I was planning on doing anyway to do the IMS bearing fix. I know I don't have to do that but I want to do some other maintenance as well and its just easier if everything's out in the open.
Quite possibly related failure modes. Many of the failed cars have low mileage. If think right, the DOF uses a passage through the IMS shaft from the pump on the rear of the engine. The issue with this is the oil they are supplying is neither filtered, nor cooled. It's right from the pump. Not a best-case method, but it's something. To do it right, the IMS bearing should come out anyway to remove the inner plastic seal, for flow through. I don't know if they do this, but extraction of the bearing renders it unusable.
Now, I will deny ever writing this(haha) but I have heard - through various grapevines that if the car has a full-flow oil filter, and the failure is caught soon enough through short oil exchange cycles, and careful pleat inspection that an IMS bearing failure in its early stages is not catastrophic. This also is supported by people who have installed a 'chips' detector light in the sump, and stopped at the first indication of metal in the juice. (My most exciting flight was near Ft Lewis in an AH-1L when the chips light came on. I auto-ed into a bean field and they came and got it with a big truck and trailer)
Porsche reimbursed on cars upto 130k miles
your not talking sense, nore with facts.
have you abetter formula for working it out!!
if not please dont reply
Is this how you would talk to someone face to face? In front of your kids? Please take a step back and ask yourself is this a positive addition to forum or am I being a bit toxic? You've obviously read the lawsuit which is more than 98% of us. And I applaud that. But beating people over the head with it provides benefit to no one, not even yourself.
85,000x 100 = 8,500,000 / 0.008 = 1,062,500 ( don't make the classic mistake of 85,000 x 100 = 8,500,000 x 0.08 = 680,000) as this is 8% of the mileage not 8% of cars, but it is a very easy mistake.
Regards Russell
All I've done is work out a simple equation for people who ask a specific question regarding IMSB F. so people aren't frightened, as I once was regarding imsb thinking my first porsche was going to explode.
So now people can see how likely it is in the real world.
Some people doubt my equation and call me stupid or they try to dismiss it without a better scenario,
so when they question it I reply.
If it's questioned constructively I will give a constructive reply.
But if people criticise my spelling on a forum when they can't spell well what can I say.
I have had 1 other constructive criticism but his maths was incorrect, but I was extremely polite and explained his error without sarcasm.
If you or anyone comes up with a better equation I will back it, but you lot don't give me a hard time for helping people.
Regards
Russ
Oh, man, Russ, you got me....I made a typo...I feel so humbled and ashamed. Yes, I read the settlement, too...it was 130k miles.
Regardless, you are calculating an incorrect Mean Time Between Failure because you don't know how many miles each of the failed 8 cars in your insurance study (that you referenced elsewhere) traveled before failing. In addition the 100 vehicles/8,500,000 miles driven is not a large enough sample for a good FIT/MTBF calc...more like 1,000,000,000 miles would be a better sample. Nor do I think 85k miles in that survey really expresses the useful life period of the automobile, a 25k to 200K mile survey would be more in the belly of the "bathtub curve", where infant mortality failures and wear out failures are excluded.
Anyway, I see what you are trying to do, but, again, I believe the assumptions are wrong. No attack, no reason to get your back up. Truth is, neither you nor I can calculate a true failure rate because we simply do not have the data required.
Several of the novel concepts you have mentioned are covered by Mr. Raby's Patents 8,992,089, 9,687,974 and 9,687,974. The Spin On filter adaptor providing an oil outlet was just granted US Patent 9,909,469 and this issues on 6 March 2018. You may want to research these documents before moving forward.
your correct 100! so I used a %, 1% = 100% / 100 of known vehicles that failed at the time of legal action, so the reason I used 100 cars, is so its an accurate % for people to understand, I think everyone grasped this bar you.
So 100 cars is a representative of all the cars. DO YOU UNDERSTAND.
I'm really sorry you don't understand but I can't teach you maths I just don't have the time.
But I can tell you every time you answer the credibility you had goes down a few % :-)
LOL. I don't need you to teach me maths, Professor....I've studied probability and statistics and have a passing familiarity with failure analysis.
In another thread, you made the claim that your 8 failures in 100 car of 85k miles each was based on a study you saw by 1 insurance company, not by the overall figures in the settlement. Then you said 8% over the life of the car. Now you are saying you are merely simplifying the example to make it easy for the unwashed masses to understand based on the data from the class action. . Which is it? You also suggested that you can average the failure rates between the 2 classes of cars (dual row models and single row models) to 4%, which you cannot. You must look at them as discrete cases as they are completely different designs and in any engineering study would be analysed separately. .
You are presenting this 1,062,000 miles as a mean time between failure.
.
If you are relying on the insurance company analysis, then the data set is not big enough to do so, nor is it complete enough (ie no detail on when cars failed). If you are basing it on the class action lawsuit, the data is not complete (again, no data on when the cars failed) and does not cover the usable life of the car. To understand MTBF, you need to understand the up time of each car in the dataset....and none of these datasets provide that. These are facts that render your analysis inaccurate. That is all I am saying. . A failure every 1,062,000 miles, or whatever you suggested, is an optimistic view. Do i believe it falls to a MTBF of 100k miles if we had the correct data, NO.. I simply started out questioning your assumptions and you continue with your arrogant silliness..
Truth is, if I had a dual row, I'd leave it alone, myself. If I had a factory single row....I'd change that thing. I have a dual row with a replacement IMS (not The Solution) purchased by the PO, so I will be faced with a decision in a few years as the suggested maintenance interval is reached.
No problem!! I think you need to strip the engine down first though if your timing has slipped, you need to at least take the heads off to inspect, you may find a broken timing chain as they don't really slip??
Good luck bob!!
Keep posting updates!
I've been charging that windmill since people started trying to use the class-action data as The Definitive Guide to How Long Your Bearing Will Last(tm). It's maddening.
Mystery deepens on the cam timing. Drained the oil, cut apart and inspected the oil filter. I noticed small particles of what appear to be bronze bushing material but a relatively insignificant amount. Ok, cool, no evidence of major carnage. I then proceeded to pull the cam plugs to have a look at the notches. When turning the engine over by hand, the exhaust cam rotates but the intake cam does not. Huh? This is a three chain engine. Perplexed by this, a friend advised me to pull the scavenge pump cover to have a look. I was able to pull it out far enough to see a perfectly normal chain. The chain, exhaust cam gear, AND the intake cam gear turn properly with crank rotation. So, at this point, the intake cam gear must have a key that's sheared or the cam has broken (highly unlikely I think.) The notch side is not moving, but the gear is turning.
It doesn't have a key, it has a diamond dust (rough) friction washer that keeps the cam locked to the adjuster/actuator gear. The fastening bolt also has to be torqued to the specified amount.
Well the keyway would not allow fine tuning of the cam timing, and a taper lock would also be difficult to do accurate cam timing with cam chain preload.
There is a big bolt that bolts down the intake variocam+ sprocket to the intake cam. My guess is that bolt is loose. So I assume the engine doesn't run at all?
What's the history of the engine?
The engine runs, actually not too badly not firing on bank 1.
No metallic noises.
Long story short, car was brought into a dealership for the problem and basically abandoned due to sticker shock...dealer told owner he needed a new engine. 44K miles. Sat in storage for several years.
