That would actually be a great idea and would go a long way towards helping out the owners of the failed cars and making things right. But... it would never happen, Porsche would be admitting they'd screwed up.

^^^

Kurt, that's not a quote from me - that's from another member (G450X).

Rawknees,

You're right - strange, not sure how that happened.

Nice idea though (G450X).

Actually until a couple years ago engines and gearboxes for these cars were pretty cheap. I call it good will pricing. Porsche does it on almost every new vehicle they release. It usually stay in place until all the warranty and CPO agreements have lapsed. Then they stop making and stocking large quantities of these parts to sell "cheaply" to the poor souls who had a failure that wasn't covered under warranty. 997 and 987 gearboxes used to run us $3500 exchange for the IMSA racers. Now they are about twice that.

I owned a 2006 997.1 and sold it before it had 30,000 miles on it once I found out about the IMS issues. I was clueless like many buyers 10 years ago. Porsche totally screwed up on this engine design. They will ALL fail, it's just a matter of when. It doesn't matter how you maintain your car...that's just wishful thinking. The IMS bearing is a sealed bearing. It's not lubricated by engine oil. Once the seal breaks it's toast. By the time you find out about it 90% of the time your engine is toast too. This is one of the reasons 996's and early boxsters are selling for next to nothing. The only reason they still have value is the vast majority of the buyers are clueless to this issue and they think they are getting a great deal on the Porsche they never thought they could afford. The 997 may look different from the 996 but the engine configuration with the IMS remain the same. The 996 and 997 turbos, gt2's & gt3's use a different engine with no IMS. In my view you have 2 choices:
1. Sell it at a huge loss and move on
2. Buy another engine and install an IMS retrofit kit from L&N engineering in the new engine.
If you want to keep the car it will cost a lot to fix it.
If you don't want to spend any more money on it then hit the bid and sell it.
Unfortunately your situation will be common place a few more years from now as these cars age.

Amen to this brother. This is right on.

One interesting thing though, when I lived in California for more than a decade I saw a lot less IMS failure cars for sale than I see on the East Coast or the Midwest (where I see many). Maybe it has something to do with the cold and that sealed bearing? I have no idea. It's just an observation.

if you were the original buyer you may have some pull with Porsche ,

its worth a try , search Google and see if anyone has had luck at your mileage

I have a 2002 3.6 car with 110K miles on the clock. It gets regularly pummeled at the AX events. No issues whatsoever. If it blows up, I rebuild.

I think this is actually a pretty big overreaction. Lots of 986/996 have already gone 200k on the original IMS. How many 911sc went 200k without a major refresh? How much is a full rebuild on a 993 3.6L?

Yes it was a poor design and a weak point in the motor, but not long ago 100k was curtains for most air-cooled 911s. If the IMS does fail and someone wanted to invest 25k in a fresh built 4.0L motor with all reliability issues addressed they would own a 997 with GT3RS performance on the cheap. There are worse choices one could face than this.

Agreed. All bearings wear out eventually so sure the claim that every single one will fail has some teeth. But that isn't the premature failure that afflicted a certain percentage of these cars. The issue was/is real on some level but Theres also a ton of internet hype around it that isn't really warranted imo.

I install about 3-4 LN bearings a year. I've come to believe there might be some truth to the cold weather cause.

Another thing that really irks me when changing oil is how much glitter is in the filter housing on these. I personally would halve the oil change interval if I owned one.

any guess what is causing all the "glitter" ?

is it just this bearing or ?????

what is the 2nd biggest problem in these motors ?

And is blowing up a motor an "emissions problem" :)

The best thing folks can do if they want a Boxer or a Cayman is to look for an 09 car. Complete engine redesign with no IMS bearing. People I know that own the earlier cars are always in a state of worry. My friend cuts his oil filter in half looking for metal bits. And if you want to buy extra warranty, it's about $5000. On later cars the IMS bearing retrofit costs thousands. The 09 cars are getting more affordable.

I've never torn one down to look for the source.

I do see a lot guys running aftermarket air filters which don't do as good a job filtering out the abrasive dust from the decomposing granite we have here.

There are likely multiple causes/scenarios of failure which make definitive statements hard.

When there are actual "petals" of material I lean toward it being impending ims bearing failure.

These 2 statements contradict each other.
If no one knew about the issue, the prices would be higher, not lower.

They are dirt cheap because everyone knows about the dreaded failure.
In reality, $3000 makes the problem go away, and you have a crazy good value.

The BEST thing? Certainly, one option is to pay $30,000 for a Cayman. But, someone else might feel that paying $7k for a Boxster and then paying $3k to fix the IMS is a much better option.

Hairdressers and aerobics instructors definitely do!

Over reaction....not for me. I've owned, bought and sold and raced many Porsche's.
When I sold my 997 I never looked back. It was a great decision. Rolling the dice with a 986/996 987/997 is not a risk I wanted to take any further. I decided to fold my hand before getting stuck.

As far as the comments on how much it costs to refresh an air cooled engine in an SC or 993, there is no comparison since you would have an engine to refresh. If your IMS bearing goes you will likely have catastofic engine failure and will be left with a non rebuildable engine. The only choice is to purchase a new engine.

If you really like your 996/986 or 997/987 then spend the money on an IMS retrofit or trade your car for a turbo or gt3 that doesn't have this design flaw.

This is spot on except for one bit. There were three generations of the IMS bearing. Porsche actually made the problem worse when they got to the third generation which came about sometime in 2006. At least the first two generations of the bearing were replaceable. Apparently the third generation isn't even replaceable. Inconceivable ignorance on their part. Proactive Porsche owners could still save themselves from the financial heartbreak of their engines detonating but Porsche ruined that with the third generation IMS bearing. Volkswagen auto group made several stupid engineering mistakes beginning in the late nineties. I have a 2002 Audi A6 3.0 disassembled in my shop right now. It is one of the worst designed motors I've ever seen. I won't get into the specifics but it is an asinine design.