looking at a nice 05 S to purchase and I am not sure of the IMS situation for the S model in 05 . After 3 986 boxsters and my current 996 i am all done with bearing swaps . A clutch and bearing on top of the purchase price will be a deal breaker for me . some help would be greatly appreciated .

 

Search engine will give you more info.

Good luck with purchase.

 

The 2005 997 is susceptible to the IMSB issue. Some of the 2005 cars have a serviceable bearing, and some have the larger bearing that is not serviceable without splitting the engine case apart to access it.

If you want to eliminate the bearing issue, then you need to buy a 2009+ car with the DFI engine. Another option is to buy a turbo or a GT3 as they use a totally different engine that doesn't have the IMSB issue.

 

Yes the 997.1's have IMS bearing issues but nowhere near as bad as the 996's. Mid year 2006 and up have the final revision of the bearing. It's larger and difficult to replace. But failure rates are so low with them that it's really not necessary to proactively replace them, unless the car is a 100% dedicated track beast. It all depends upon your level of fear, uncertainty and doubt.

So if you are worried about the 997 IMS bearing coming from a 996, look at late production year 2006 through 2008. Or skip to the 997.2 series - no IMS so no IMS bearing.

 

IMS Failures in even the early 3.8s is very rare

 

I am hoping it has the larger bearing , just for the fact that i would not have to do the swap on the crappy 996 single row and spend more $$$$ . I have already done this on 2 cars . I would not worry about the big bearing at all . 05 cars are kind of crazy because you have no idea which bearing you got in there . I will wait for a clutch job to figure it out anyway . I waited 5 years to do the clutch on my boxster S. when they pulled the single row out it was in mint condition.

 

but when it happens i bet it's the older single row .

 

I don't remember the source (maybe a poll in one of the "997" forums) for this table but apparently you can check the engine serial number to get a rough idea about the type of bearing. Others say the engine serial number was not sequenced (rather randomly placed) with the vehicles into which they were put.

 

i am thinking this car will most certainly be the m96 set up , with a build date in late 04 .

 

M96 is the base 997 engine. M97 is the S engine. With a build date in 2004 it very likely has the smaller, replaceable bearing but that's not definite. I replaced the bearing in my 05 S last year when doing the clutch and the oem bearing looked fine.

 

what was your mileage when you changed the bearing out ? any other issues ? also the 3.6 in the 997 is not the same as the m96 in the 996 the motor had many changes . The AOS for instance was moved to a totally different location on the motor among other things .

 

Yeah the 997 base engine is M96.05, the 5th iteration of the M96 engine, and the 997 S engine is M97.01, I was just pointing out that you won't have an "M96 set up" in the 997 S that you're looking at.

My OEM bearing ran for 46k and 10 years without issues. My only issues have been the clutch died early IMO and the clutch slave cylinder went out a few months before that too. I've also added a 3rd radiator and low temp thermostat to hopefully help with longevity. Changing the oil every 6-12 months is one of the best preventative things you can do on these cars too. As long as the car you're looking at has been well taken care of and it passes an inspection then just buy it and drive it hard and don't worry

 

FWIW, my 2002 C4S had the M96 engine with the smaller, single-row bearing. This is thought to be the design that is most susceptible to failure. I had my bearing changed for an LN Engineering ceramic bearing when I replaced my original clutch at 125,301 miles. My original IMSB showed no visible signs of wear or impending failure.

 

thank you for the info. looks like you have had a good run in your 10 years of ownership . i agree with oil changes being the key . pre IMS update I changed every 3K , cut open filter etc. after bearing replacement i change the oil every 5k now.

 

seems to be fairly common that most bearings last . on the boxster forum there are a few guys that have 250k plus on the stock bearing .