LN Engineering IMS center nut issue

So im trying to pull the flange to replace the o-rings and i cant get the center nut off. It looks so easy in the video on the ln web site. I can spin the stud but i cant get the nut loose. I am tearing up the flat head retainer. Do i die grind the nut off and get a new one? Can i put some heat on it in case who ever installed it put lock tight on it?

I'd call Charles/LN Engineering... he'll steer you right ... How about cutting that slot a little deeper with a dremel/die grinder?

Possible... i was able to move it a little tighter but it slips when loosening. It looks like the nut is a standard flange nut and available from porsche for a few bucks. I have a feeling ill be cutting it off. Im assuming i dont want to break the stud.

You definitely don't want to break the stud if you're not planning on replacing the bearing. I would do like deporto suggested and deepen the recess, or deepen and flatten the sides it of it. OR just dremel some flats on each side of the stud to use a open end wrench or cresent. Or you could dovetail the recess and customize an old screwdriver with reverse dovetail so the instead of pushing off under torque, it will pull in/down.. Someone definitely put some Loctite on there, a little heat will help too. Trying to Demel/cut the nut off without damaging the threads on the stud would be too difficult/precise to do in situ IMO.

+1, that nut is definitely Loc-Tited, will need some heat to soften. Also, when I did mine I dremeled the stud recess and sacrificed a flat blade screw driver by grinding it to snugly fit the recess. After heating the nut up with a heat gun, not a torch, I held the stud by inserting the screw driver in the recess and using a small adjustable wrench on the flats of the screw driver as close to the stud as possible and using a box wrench on the nut. Nut came off just like butter. Best of luck.

Dporto for the win. I was able to slot the stud farther in and used a very tight fitting screw driver. To make the slot i had to break out the dremmel flex whip because i could not get the dremmel close enough to the stud and still make a square slice. I did talk with ln and they didnt really have a solution so i just went at it. The stuck nut was probably cause by what ever sealant they used on the thread. I also used a small butane torch to heat up the sealant. Here is a pic of the tools i used for future refferance.

And 10min later.... its ready to be re-installed with new seals. Just waiting on usps.

Is it an optical illusion that the bearing does not look centered in the bore? Looks like it is pulled to the right. Good job on getting the nut off.

The question is did the OP take out the tensioners before he did this work. It sure does look like the shaft is off center.

Even with the tension off the chains, they will exert some minor force on the shaft...think of just the weight of the chain alone. As long as the tensioners have been removed, no issue here.

Pre-requisite to removing the IMSB flange is to pin the crankshaft and remove the tensioners, in particular the IMS chain tensioner. Hopefully he did that. Never been there done that so maybe someone with more experience will weigh in. Jake or Charles...

I just did the variocam pads in both sides so the cams r pined and all 3 of the tensioners r out. The ims shaft just kinda floats around at this point. Im assuming the origjnal installer was lazy and never pulled the bank 2 tensioner under the ac compressor and the o-ring on the flange was cut when installed. In a side not if u pull the cooing cassett/ oil pump assembly off the front of the motor to get to the bank 2 timing chain pads u need to have all 3 tensioners out too. Also u can not set the timing on that side with it out because the oil pump centers the shaft. Oh and usps 2 day priority got delivered 8 days later from lne, time to put it back together

Bravo De Jeeper, bravo. You guys amaze the heck out of me

Flang is back in. Im pretty sure i found the cause of my rattle. Ims tensioner is well short of the new one. I can scew it fully in with my fingers. Betting it was putting very little tension on the chain.

I am not understanding this. Was this exercise so you could replace the O-ring and seals on the IMSB flange? Why did you not use the original torx bolts on the flange? You replaced with some other bolts? I thought those bolts were micro-encapsulated and torqued...one time use. Good catch on the tensioner. My oh my that is a big difference.

The ims flange was leaking badly so i ordered the seals and bolts from ln-e. Those where the new microencapsilated bolts supplied by ln-e. They sell it as a $20 kit. The reality is u can just used a good sealant like Vibra-tight. To "re-encapsilate" the original bolts. The torque value is 7.5ft-lbs so im 100% sure u could reuse them from a strength point. One thing i did find was inner o-ring that sits inside the center bore of the flang left half of itself on the stud threads. I also found an additional o-ring behind the center nut and the center stud was not tight. The nut was super tight in the stud but not to the back of the flang. The shop that installed it for the po must not have had a lot of experiance with the install.

Quotes source post: 17209542

I'd be interested to know if the new tensioner eliminated your rattle. Here's a pic of my bank-1 tensioners, new one on the right. It eliminated my 1 sec rattle so I don't plan to change out the others at this time.

I should know by end of week. I did replace all 3 tensioners so i wint be able to tell which or if all 3 were bad. The new bank 1 looked the same as yours. For the cost of these, around $170ea, it was worth it to pm these parts while my motor was out..

Or they had too much experience, and they cut corners trying to get the job done fast. I see this all the time.