Wow... that would be quite a bill. You deserve many miles of uninterrupted fun!

 

This is scary.... I too was looking at a 1999 996. Looks great. Price fine.

Not sure this is the car for my first Porsche now.

If I DID buy this, should I count on $3K to get the needed cluth, RMS, and IMS replaced?

GEorge

 

Check out the IMS Guardian @ Flat6Innovations.com. I installed it in my car. It will also alert you to other potential impending engine problems.

 

Be cautious... A 996 is cheap to buy, but be aware that repair and maintenance costs can represent a significant part of the purchase price. NOTE: It would not be unusual for a MY99/00 to have a replacement engine (a.k.a. REMAN). These engines are generally not candidates for the IMSB retrofit. Depending on the vintage they have a newer bearing design that cannot be extracted via LNE's tool. That means engine R&R and tear down to replace the IMSB. $$$. Good luck.

 

True. However a replacement engine is easily identified by the engine number. Any PPI will uncover this - and I wouldn't buy a Pcar (or any other for that matter) without a PPI.

 

So Ia m wondering what the failure rate has been for the factory engines that were used to replace the original engines pulled because of RMS / IMS and sleeves. I never heard a peep about that. Anyone??

 

Well, since you won't hear a peep about the failure rate of IMS period, you definitely won't hear about IMS failure rates on factory replacement engines.

 

True enough. No one knows execpt Porsche.

FYI: Two of the three used 996 (MY99 and MY00) that I recently considered had suffered IMS failure. One seller provided the full gory details. The second was clueless wrt the IMSB topic and was stunned to find out that their car had suffered a severe failure in 2005 and had a reman engine. The third 996 had its orginal M96 and I never made it to the PPI stage with that one.

It may be that the failure rate is higher among the resale pool.

 

Seems like extended service contract companies would have good data as well.

Seems like a 996 might not be a great way to go or wait til I an afford a newer one where it seems this is NOT an issue. What year was this NOT a problem

Hmmmm... or a newer boxster S where its not an issue either. Hmmmm

George

 

Generally speaking, the M96 engine was constantly revised/updated by Porsche, so each newer model should (in theory) be improved over an older one. Porsche did a major redesign of the engine for the 2009 and newer model cars.

There are people who deny this problem exists and there are people who swear that all of these engines will ultimately experience the same fate. As with most things, the truth is somewhere in between the 2 extremes.

For what it's worth, I personally know of 5 996s, ranging from 99 to 01, with miles from 28k to over 100k. All of them are still on their original engines and none of them has suffered an IMS failure.

 

Gotta love those early cars with dual row bearings!!!!

 

I am thinking that there at 50,000 996/997/boxters built between 1999 and 2007 that have this curse. If I would be Porsche, I would keep really quiet if the problem is still there but I would be really vocal if the problem was indeed solved with the latest seal(s).
As Porsche has been very quiet to date on the subject.... I am just wondering.
The real issue for the Porsche is that ANY 996 can implode on you because of this issue at ANY time for NO reason (ie not driver induced) and that, My Dear Watson, is the problem. Hence the tumbling resale value of the 996 that will never recover. Just being realistic here. That is until Porsche officially states that the latest seal(s) are indeed going to solve the problem. Just the mere statement that the new seals would have SOLVED the issue would do wonders for the 996.
If I would be Porsche ( and if the latest the seals would have solved the problem) I would make the seals available FOR FREE to all the Porsche owners so they could install it as part of a major service or when the clutch needed to be replaced etc.

 

Porsche is not going to announce that the problem is solved if they have never acknowledged that it even existed. As far as I know, there has never been an admission of a problem from Porsche.

As far as resale value of Boxsters and 996s, that really isn't Porsche's concern. All they care about is selling new ones off the showroom floors.

 

KevinR -Of Course not BUT the Porsche folks DO read these forums and things happen when you make enough noise. Assume that there are many discussion a high levels at Porsche taking place on this issue... don't forget .. they are Germans!!! Nichtwahr??

 

Porsche does not have a "new" seal for the bearing. They do have a new seal for the IMS flange, however that only prevents oil leaks on the outside of the case, not bearing failure. What Porsche DOES have is a larger bearing to install, with similar load capacity to the original dual row bearing (1999-2001), but it is still sealed on both ends... the seal may be one of the reasons why they fail, among other things... if you don't replace your IMS bearing with an LN engineering retrofit, a recommendation is to actually remove the seal from the outer race of the stock bearing.

Read more on the subject here:

http://www.lnengineering.com/ims.html

Courtesy of the above website, here is a picture of the revised larger bearing that is Porsche's current unspoken "answer" to the IMS bearing problem (note that the outer race is sealed, but these too can still fail):



Any car can implode for any reason, but primarily owner neglect. The biggest thing to help longevity for any car is to keep the oil level proper and clean. There is always a reason for failure.