IMS Upgrade or Extended Warranty - 986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners

Just purchased a 2000 boxster w/ 86000 with no service records. The car runs great and was inspected by a porsche mechanic prior to the purchase, only issue was a RMS leak. Was not going to worry about the leak until the clutch needed replacing. After doing some reading on the forum, I have been debating going with the IMS upgrade mod next spring or purchasing an extended warranty. CarChex quoted me their Gold "Cover All" for 3 yrs/36000 miles for $3800 up to the replacement cost of the car. Question is to everyone, knowing that I might need to replace the RMS next spring (it should be covered in the warranty) and with the age of the car, would it make more since to go with the extended warranty and if the IMS fails, the coverage should be enough to replace the engine. btw, Would a IMS replacement/mod be covered under a extended warranty before it had a chance to fail? fyi, I attached the coverage by CarChex if anyone is interested. Cheers, Stephen

Personally, I'd save the cash, do the upgrade when you get a chance and enjoy the vehicle. These "warranties" have a way of evaporating when it's time for them to fork over the $$$. Besides, for that kind of coin, you could stash the cash and use it as a hedge against repairs, if you go 36 months trouble free (pretty likely in my book) you're 3800 ahead...

Apparently one other member had this covered by his insurance (do a search of recent Raby threads), but I also recall him having difficulties in them actually coughing up the dough.

One good thing about this warranty is that they let you do your own maintenance, which mine specifically disallows.

Have you done a search of this company regarding customer complaints? That would be the first thing I'd do. Who stands behind the policy and what is their financial condition? How long have they been in business? Since Porsche has seen fit not to offer their own extended warranty coverage on these cars, you wonder how an outfit with less info on the product than the manufacturer thinks they can make money at this? BMW and MB offer extended warranties but Porsche doesn't; do you think Porsche knows something that CarChex doesn't?

Not an easy question. I have a Warranty Direct SecureCare extended warranty, it cost me $1944 for 4 years and 60K miles on top of my mileage at that time (35450). It's already paid for about $1K of stuff, and I'm going in to get a water pump done with it soon, so it'll be getting closer to breaking even. Another guy just had Jake do his IMS and with some extras it was $3500. Question with the warranty is - will they pay if the IMS blows? Some people have had major issues with getting them to pay for this failure. It's a risk you take when you have a warranty. But as I noted above, a warranty covers more than just an IMS failure, and there are plenty of things that fail on Boxsters.

I'd self insure. Up to the replacement cost of the vehicle is the key. They are going to use the lowest value imaginable to come up with this price and a replacement engine won't even come close to being covered in it's entirety.

If you have any kind of written inspection and it is accessible by the insurance company you will be told by the inspector they send out to authorize a repair, that it is a "pre existing condition" and they won't pay to repair it. They may tell you that anyway even if nothing is in writing. Insurance companies are not in the business of paying out money, they are in the business of taking your money and making more with it by investing it and they don't have to pay interest with the money they take from you. You also may be lucky if the company you bought the policy from is still in business next year or haven't sold the company and it has a new name and a new set of restrictions. I've gone through this with what was supposedly one of the better extended warranty companies around and I ended up canceling the policy and getting my $3600 back. All of the repairs I've done new rotors, alignment, RMS and IMS replacement don't total $3600. My two cents would be to put the money in an interest bearing account and pay for repairs out of it.

That was me. The "extra" was a clutch replacement (labor & materials) and a RMS. All this would have cost me ~$1800 to have done around here. I got a new flywheel from a friend and they installed that included in the price. If you're ready for a clutch, then the real cost for the IMS retrofit is more in the neighborhood of $1700-$2000, depending of what a clutch job alone would've cost you. To me $1700 was money well spent, particularly when Jake showed me that my bearing was in the early stages of failure. Spending money on an overpriced policy to potentially cover an IMS failure, and then spending a lot of time and effort being jerked around who knows how long by a well-financed warranty company in an attempt to collect just wasn't an appealing prospect. $1700 was the cost of my "insurance" policy. The rest of the potential problems that come with Boxster ownership I can deal with - and afford. Put your $3800 in a rainy day fund and go for the retrofit when you need a clutch. You'll almost definitely come out ahead in the long run. Don't forget, there's lots of profit in these aftermarket warranty policies, for the dealers and brokers that sell them, and for the companies that issue them. Actuaries figure out how much they're going to have to pay out. If it's $0.50 / $1 of total premium paid, I'd be surprised.

The warranty companies I have dealt with had been less than impressive.. In fact they define "un-professional". They will screw around for weeks trying to complicate the red tape hoping that you'll just give up on the claim. The last client that I did warranty work for (jhandy here on the 986 forum) had his car at my shop for two months screwing with the warranty idiots. They finally paid for his IMS replacement but only after they screwed around for over 6 weeks with the claim. That experience was just too much... I no longer work with vehicles that will have repairs covered by some aftermarket warranty. Its just not worth the hassles, lies and red tape. You are much better to save a hundred bucks a month as a "fix it fund" for a rainy day than paying for a headache with a bunch of cubicle sitting idiots that wouldn't know an IMS bearing if it fell out of the sky and landed on their desk. BTW- The guy they sent out as an "Inspector" on this last job looked like he was ready for an African Safari with a dozen different flash lights, mirrors and gadgets.. we laughed our asses off for a week thinking about "Frank Buck"...

Jake, we got to the same place a long time ago. When someone comes into the shop and tells us they have “third party” warranty coverage, we point to a sign we have up (and on our billing/quotation documents) that says “We do not participate with any third party warranty companies or programs. All services are cash, check or credit card payment only.”

Last Friday I elected not to renew my Porsche used car warranty on my 2001 S. The OPC wanted $US1,750 for the 12 month warranty plus a 12 monthly service is required before issuing the warranty @ $US630 - a total of $US2,380. Considering the car has only done 4000 miles since its last service by the OPC when I bought it (and that's about my annual mileage anyway) I took the advice from members of this board and PPBB and decided to bank the money and wear the outcome. I do do my own maintenance so this had a direct bearing on my decision, but I think a lot of people run scared after reading some of the horror stories that appear on the net. Just be vigilant and half the Porsche service intervals....

Always read the fine print and if you can understand it, that's even better. Let's face it...you are buying insurance that your car may break. They have it written so that you usually will pay 30-40% of the bill. I just saw a 2000 3.2 engine with 200 miles on it on ebay. Asking price was $4995, but they were taking offers too. The market is now starting to show more engines for sale so the price usually will be negotiable. Maybe it's time to buy a spare...but then your engine may go 150,000 miles with no problems.