[dtw]

Mileage?

Doing work yourself, or paying a shop?

If it is a '99, I really wouldn't worry about the IMS bearing - it should be a dual row which had a drastically lower failure rate than the later dual row bearing. This is well documented in the class action suit.

Instead, I would get an oil analysis kit from Blackstone labs, and send them a sample for analysis. If you are feeling like you want even more peace of mind, drop your sump at your next oil change. It is not difficult at all. Inspect the sump pan for metal shavings and/or plastic bits/chunks. I like pulling the sump on these engines and seeing the inside clean enough to eat from.

One other great metric you can do - find a friend with a Durametric setup. You can plug it into your ODB II port and get some realtime diagnostic information. There's a lot of key info, including readout on your camshaft deviation. Look for variances from side to side, as well as overall deviation over the factory specs. Any well-equipped indy should be able to do this for you as well, mine has the actual PIWIS tool from Porsche that does all this as well. You'll likely pay a diagnostic fee especially if they have the Porsche tool, as they have to pay a substantial license fee each year to keep that up and running.