3.6L Bad IMS failure - what is salvageable?

[JJK78-951]

Greetings everyone,

Apologies in advance for the long winded post, but thanks for taking the time to read it! Just before Christmas I bought an 04 C2 convertible that had suffered from an assumed IMS failure was was kinda hoping for an easy fix. Car itself has been a bit of a garage queen with just over 39K miles on it and regular oil changes reported on the Carfax and receipts from seller. Previous owner was clearly not a Porsche person and from what I gathered not that much of a car guy, with what he told me and everything I have found I have no reason not to believe his story - here is my Cliff Notes version:

Car was running perfectly fine, no odd noises etc. and while cruising down the road at moderate speed (back roads of North Carolina, yes this is the automatic car from Craigslist about 2 months ago), the owner heard a loud noise and immediately pulled over, car was leaking oil, had it towed to the shop.

Do not know if the shop cranked it up or not, but they didn't even drop the oil filter to verify the IMS was bad, although in their credit a quick look through the transmission inspection port could easily verify it was bad, but I don't think it was run.

Once I got it home I scanned it as I forgot to bring my scan tool with me, but was pleasantly surprised when the car had no codes at all and the readiness is currently set. It appears that the "loud noise" the PO heard was the nut/stud on the back on the IMS cover popping off and hitting the torque converter a few times, found the nut/stud in the transmission inspection plug which is why I say the shop that diagnosed the IMS may have found it and put it in there. So next obvious step was the "how bad is it" and I drained the oil, pulled the filter and was AMAZED! I had found the lost city of GOLD! Ok wasn't gold but rather finely ground bits of IMS that made it past the oil pickup tube screen... soooo...

Fast forward a bit and now I have pulled the motor and just got the heads off last night so I could remove the IMS cover to see the IMS bearing, only to find there was no IMS bearing, just hollow tube with some ball bearings and shrapnel inside

The actual good news is that everything in the motor itself appears to be in good shape, no valve/piston contact etc. I haven't split the case yet and I know there is debris near where the carnage happened but found very little metal throughout the rest of the motor. Outside of the filter/pan areas and most debris I found was in the bottom of the chain housing on the drivers side where I found... call it less then a penny's worth. Found a few specs on some of the lifters on the drivers side and some in the main oil pump front cover area too

I was all for throwing a new IMS at it and driving it, but after finding that the IMS had completely come apart and really needs a full rebuild i'm leaning towards parting it out, or maybe putting a V8 in it Did it with a Boxster so I ain't scared!

So that leads me to the title question I guess... What is salvageable and what is trash since the IMS came apart in spectacular fashion? Obviously every needs to be inspected, but I won't sell parts that could be bad if they can not be properly cleaned or are known to fail after something like this happens. Mainly thinking of bit that pass oil through them, like oil pump, scavenge pumps, lifters, but anything that hangs out in the oil like cam solenoids etc.

Thanks again and hope you all had a nice New Year~
J

[JFP in PA]

The only way to know what is salvageable and what isn’t is to take the engine apart, clean and examine every part. While some parts may realistically be reused, the question becomes when does the value of your time outweigh whatever you may recoup from this engine.