FVD Brombacher

Guys, I am new to this 911 game and wanted to share with the community, my experience with FVD Brombacher. I have recently purchased a 2002 C4 Cab and fallen in love with it after a 30 minutes drive. Being an engineer, and knowing that every machine requires proper lubrication and maintenance, in order to function properly, I didn't get scared by horror stories I had found on the internet about IMS, RMS, engine blow ups and so on. I decided to bite the bullet and buy a car with 97k miles for which I had no service records or any history. I liked the car and I knew I would have to spend some money up front to make sure that I have a peace of mind. The first service was to address the IMS and RMS since I knew that there was small leak at the bottom of the engine. I did a lot of research about the issue and decided to buy the IMS bearing from FVD Brombacher. The reason I chose to go with FVD was the fact that they didn't even advertise any of their products yet they existed in this business much longer then any of their competitors. Secondly they offered a ceramic bearing very similar to the stock with improved sealing materials which would ensure lifespan of 500k. I came across their name at one of the British Porsche sites and have heard only positive things about them. I liked their no-aggressive advertisement approach. Plus their parts were made in Germany. Anyways, after I did the initial service, having replaced not only IMS and RMS but the myriad of other parts, I decided that I needed to improve my car's sound and performance. I started by buying a pair of bypass pipes from FABSPEED. The pipes looked good and sounded good. Maybe a little too loud. However, the main problem was the unbearable resonance at highway speeds. I couldn't drive the car more that 10-15k. I went back straight to the shop and have them removed. FABSPEED wouldn't take them back as they were used and had a slight discoloration. This was what put me off from my future dealings with FABSPEED. Then I contacted Rhonda from FVD and inquired about muffler upgrades. Rhonda provided a valuable technical expertise to me and helped me learn about the car. I ended up buying Brombacher Sound muffler and Stage 1 kit which included MyGenius device with the tune provided by FVD and KN intake. After I had it installed, the sound of the muffler was hugely improved over the stock. However, there was a resonance at about 4000 RPM which was caused by the KN filter. I had the filter removed and FVD agreed to refund me. They suggested BMC flat panel filter which they sent me with a huge discount. After I had the BMC filter installed the sound was amazing. The main objective of my upgrade was to retain the Flat 6 sound but amplify it to 97-110 db. Also FVD had a benchmark video on their website, which I was impressed with and wanted to mimic. I wanted to get that deep throaty sound of Flat 6 without any distortion or intake sound present at any time during driving. I contacted Rhonda again for further upgrades and she proposed to replace my stock catalytic converter with the sport 200 cell X pipes. Which is exactly what I did. Upon installation of the 200 cell Cats, my car's performance was improved considerably so I have plenty of torque in all ranges of the engine speed.I have so much low end torque that I don't need to downshift from 4th gear at 30 mph. The car pulls strongly all the time. What impressed me the most was the sound my car now makes. It is deep throaty at idle and low speeds while crisp and clear Flat 6 sound. Very similar to air cooled engines but considerable deeper. This is one of best exhaust sounds I have heard. It is hard for me to quantify the performance improvements without Dyno-ing the car, but I am confident that car pulls lot harder than the stock. The car has lot more than 284 lbf that FVD has advertised. I know because I have a BMW M240i which makes 369 lbf. My 911 now doesn't lag behind in torque too much. The torque delivery is very linear and substantial. I am very grateful for all the help and technical knowledge I received from FVD's Rhonda and Dragan. They proved to me that FVD is a professional organization with reliable products. Rhonda is an unsurpassed source of knowledge on 911 and Dragan is a top notch engineer who specialized in tuning and engine management. Dragan has provided me with tunes my car runs on. I am looking forward to future upgrades with FVD. I will keep you posted.

So glad to hear that you had a good experience. I have their deep sump kit and love the function and fitting. Welcome and please post some pics of your car!

I'm very close to pulling the trigger on fvd brombacher mufflers and x-pipe. Can you clarify what muffler you installed? Was it the T�V certified set or the regular sport set?

It is the sound version: https://www.fvd.net/us-en/BES9960500...t-version.html The TUV would be too quiet. The sound version is not overly loud either. You can easily control the loudness by modulating the throttle. l recommend the 200 cell cats with it. Makes it sound lot deeper and more throaty. It also retains the Porsche flat 6 sound.

I will as soon as I get a chance along with the exhaust sound.

..

Quotes source post: 15756142

What's the service interval on the FVD IMSB retrofit ?

Boxman 90, Let me start by saying that FVD did not ask me to post my experience on the board. If they did, I wouldn’t have done it. I thought that I owed it to the community as, I know that I can always go back to Rennlist to search for answers and thanks to the people such as yourself, who are willing to share knowledge and experience with others, I was able to learn a lot about these cars. I am so sorry to hear about your failure. If that happened to me, I would be all over FVD asking for compensation. I am very concerned about reckless companies who put out on the market products that have not been tested and proven to work within the specified requirements. Sadly, there a lot of products like that nowadays. Yes, I installed a single row ceramic bearing in my vehicle three months ago, and for me, I guess, it is premature to comment on the quality of their bearings. My original stock bearing was intact with no signs of failure after 97000 miles. There was a leak thru the flange of the IMS shaft due to worn out seals on the shaft. I will post some pictures of it later. I cannot predict that my bearing will not fail after a period of time. I am hoping that it will not. In the meantime, I will enjoy my car and do other modifications. I will share my other experiences on Rennlist regardless if they are good or bad. The consumer deserves to know. I am all for consumer protection against unscrupulous companies. Cheers, Mirko

According to some posts by Rhonda, their service interval for IMS bearing is 100,000 km. However, I would check with Rhonda.

..

Quotes source post: 15758670

I agree with you Boxman. This one stinks to high "reverse-marketing" heaven. When I see the first post of a person to be a virtually advertisement, then I usually think it's a reverse marketing ploy to bring free advertisement to a company. If this person had instead established themselves first and contributing to the forum in different ways over a reasonable amount of time, then it would have come across differently. I don't give this thread any merit. Moving on...

Mas Popcorn!

user 63031. I didn’t realize that my honest attempt to help others via sharing my good experience with an aftermarket company would be misconstrued as an attempt to advertise the company’s services. My apologies for that. But not everyone is after profits. Some people are genuine. I am not an outsider either. I am a licensed professional engineer of province of Ontario in Canada who has been designing automotive, aerospace and military vehicle components for 30 years or so. I have worked in my past for Boeing, General Dynamics Land Systems, Bombardier and GM, just to name a few of the large companies. I am running my own consulting business now. I have designed everything from machinery, tooling, automotive components, aerospace tooling and components to components of light armored vehicles (Styker). I am a real person and my profile can be googled. I have a plenty of design experience utilizing bearings in various applications and have researched the IMS issue for quite a long time before buying the FVD single row ceramic bearing. In terms of FVD dual row bearing design, you may be right about your claims. I have no experience with it. I do not make any claims about FVD or LNE IMS bearing products, but I don’t like companies with aggressive advertising. The IMS bearing is not a rocket science and it is a part of the badly designed intermediate shaft for which Porsche has not taken responsible action to resolve. Properly sealed and constructed ceramic bearing should last for a long time before it starts failing. Eventually, they all will fail. It is the company’s responsibility to properly test the product and specify the maintenance intervals. From what I have heard, LNE bearings have failed too, same as FVDs. They all have failures. My single row bearing (provided by FVD) was installed three months ago and it is functioning fine so far. I will definitely let you know if it fails. If it does, like I said before, I will be all over FVD and will not give up. Till then, I will enjoy my car and will consider this issue closed. Thank you, Mirko

Oh, my post is not aimed personally at you at all btw, Mirko! No worries. My main goal is making sure that passers-by from Google get the complete picture when they search for FVD IMS Bearing experiences. Your experience so far is particularly positive, mine particularly negative - I guess that provides a fair balance. I actually quite liked their philosophy of going with the Porsche approach of a sealed bearing and improving on that with better seals and ceramic *****. However, with that in mind, it really baffles me that they did the absolute - and i mean absolute - opposite for their dual-row bearing, which has no ceramic ***** nor any true seals at all. But still they sell it at the same price and with the same service interval specifications - logically this simply cannot be true with such different bearings. They purposely don't even mention the absence of proper seals on their dual-row kit, while it was the main selling point of their single-row... It just makes no sense, and these discrepancies discredit their apparent 'expertise'. I still believe for IMS they just shift boxes of parts with a huge mark-up and don't have any actual expertise or R&D on those themselves. I'm quite sure your single row will be fine. Then again, I never held a FVD single row - is it actually sealed? Their site says, both for single- and dual-row, that the bearings have a seal specifically made for its "relubrication characteristics"? And one sentence earlier they say it has super high quality grease inside... From their site: This is what I mean with discrepancies, it can't both be true. Either you have a better seal than stock + lifetime high-quality grease, or you have no seal and it has great re-lubrication characteristics (with engine oil, washing out the 'expensive grease' almost immediately). Can't be both... They changed the picture of the dual-row too now, haha. Used to be a nice silver metal shield, making it obvious from the photo that it was a shielded ZZ bearing an not a seal, but they have now painted that black as if it's sealed, or maybe actually switched to another bearing after my comments. Curious.

Here are a couple of pictures of their bearing. I looks sealed to me. I agree with you on the technical part of your comments. The sealed bearings should last for a long time if properly constructed. On the markup issue, all these aftermarket companies sell low volume products. That's why the markup seems high. If you tried to make a flange like this it would cost you a much more then they charge. They don't sell too many of these bearing. The market is very limited. I am not surprised that aftermarket companies put out vague statements with regards to their liability for products. They are after all small companies with not enough budget to cover for warranty claims. Below are couple of pictures of my original bearing and the engine transmission interface.

FVD Rhonda is awesome

[QUOTE=mirko_tripic;15759068]Here are a couple of pictures of their bearing. I looks sealed to me. I agree with you on the technical part of your comments. The sealed bearings should last for a long time if properly constructed. On the markup issue, all these aftermarket companies sell low volume products. That's why the markup seems high. If you tried to make a flange like this it would cost you a much more then they charge. They don't sell too many of these bearing. The market is very limited. I am not surprised that aftermarket companies put out vague statements with regards to their liability for products. They are after all small companies with not enough budget to cover for warranty claims. Below are couple of pictures of my original bearing and the engine transmission interface. Hmmn. Well, they used the right tool for the job. #rabyinvention #faultlesstool

That is correct. They did use your tool .

Quotes source post: 15759366

They all do.

No experience with FVD's IMS or RMS kits but I have purchased brake kits, exhaust kits and numerous front splitters from them and they ship same day for me and Rhonda is always responsive and a sweetheart to me.

Their exhaust systems and tuning are awesome. We'll see how long they will last. I have heard that no aftermarket exhaust systems last very long. I agree about Rhonda.