JFP in PA

You might be interested in the fact that the center bolt failure we saw was not the only one we are aware of, there have been at least two or three more, all were factory engines that had never been apart. Two of the bolt failures involved bearing failures as well the the center bolt, all of which failed at or very near the under cut area. I am not aware of any of the LN style center bolts failing, even on the very small number of bearings that have had problems.

We have actually seen a 986 that suddenly shut off while at a traffic light, was complaining of a large oil leak under the engine (it was huge) and some strange noises in the transmission area. What we found was part of the IMS center bolt had snapped off where it necks down for the oring, and was lying in the bottom of the bell housing. Prior this this happening, the car had been fine. While the engine was damaged due to valve to piston contact, the IMS bearing was rather loose, but otherwise seemed OK.

Actron makes an real fuel pressure test setup (CP 7838) that works perfectly and has adaptors so it can fit just about anything with throttle body or port fuel injection systems. List price is less than $60, but you can easily find one for about $35-40.

Two things to look at: (1) Look at your crank position sensor (mounted on bell housing). When the CPS starts to go bad, the DME does not see the engine turning over and does not turn on the fuel and ignition, so the car will not start. The car will also not thow any codes when this happens. (2) Check your fuel pressure and delivery volumes. The pressure test is quick (there is a metric shrader valve on the fuel rail that a test guage attaches to) and relatively inexpensive if you do not have the equipment to do it yourself. I the pressure is in range, check for delivery volume; the car needs both to run correctly. If either (or both) the pressure and volume are low, it could be the fuel filter on the early cars, or a bad fuel pump.

Glad to be of help.

For the most part, that is correct because the action of the dying bearing overloads it. But there have also been cases where the bolt let go and the bearing was still in reasonable shape.

" Correct me if I am wrong, but there are some savings by Casper using oem parts (support and center stud). This is great if there are no issues. Has anyone ever heard of any issues with the support and stud? Is this just a bearing problem and the support and stud are fine? If that is the case then Casper could be a good choice. " LN increased the size of the center bolt to add strength, and removed the OEM under cut for the oring (LN relocated the oring to the flange) as the center bolt has been known to fail by breaking at that point:

The Pelican bearing has some other "interesting" elements as well: It is an all steel OEM style replacment with grease and seals. It also only comes in one size, but includes spacers to make up the difference of the larger bearing if the car was a dual row style. It supposedly will sell for $165.

Check your crank position sensors; it is in the bellhousing because it reads off the flywheel. When the CPS goes bad, the DME does not see the engine turning over, so it does not turn on the fuel and ignition and the car won't start; because DME sees nothing wrong, no codes.......

I also checked your data against 35 UoA's pulled at random from our data base, coming exclusively from Turbo's over a period of 3 years; while your VI, 40C, and 100C viscosities look like nearly fresh oil, and your TBN values looks equally good, the average of the reports I pulled at random are a mere fraction of those values after an average of less than 4,000 miles. I also see much higher fuel and water intrusion values as well, which I would expect from a Turbo car.

Yes! Mobil 1 must be using an entirely different formula in Europe.

No. If you look at a picture of the slave, its actuation arm/rod is inside the bell housing when it is installed, so you cannot see anything moving. It would be possible to pull the starter and insert a fiber optics cam to see it move, but I rather doubt you really want to get into that level of diagnostics. You can pull the slave and operate it outside the bell housing on a bench using compressed air to see if moves correctly.

As I have stated before, I have no love for vacuum bleeding systems, they invite too many problems. Positive pressure, like from a Motive bleeder, it the best approach. The clutch needs to be bled with the pedal held fully depressed to the floor, after which you will need to manually pull it up, and then it will function normally. The clutch master rarely is a problem, we see many more slave problems, ranging from leaking to simply not working, often stopping suddenly. Fortunately, the slave is not that bad a DIY project.

Have you contacted TRG and asked them? They are usually pretty helpful.........

By far, the best tool for this is a shorty double box wrench. I have one from Sears that is about 3 1/2 inches long and it gets right in there with room to spare. Put the wrench on first, then the drain tube, so the wrench stays in until you are done. There is more than enough room to swing the short wrench in the limited space. The best way to get at the bleeder is from below; many like to remove the rear wheel so they can see better, and because they are going to do the brakes as well. As for how high, that is a matter of preference; I've done them on the lift or on jack stands, either takes about the same time. With the correct wrench, and doing it from below, bleeding the clutch adds about 2 min. to the total time for a brakes and clutch system flush, just don't "over think" the problem. If you do not hold pedal to the floor while bleeding the clutch, you will not totally flush out all of the old fluid in the system, so it is a good idea to do so.

No one is trying to specifically be negative towards either DIY'ers or entrepreneurs’ trying to develop alternative products. But there needs to be some level of appreciation, particularly in the case of the IMS retrofit, how this started out versus where it ended up. When Charles and Jake set out to develop a realistic answer to a problem that Porsche said could not be done, I’m sure they had no idea how convoluted what was basically a good idea would become. Early on, both men went out of their way to try to support people attempting this retrofit, only to find out how all consuming it would become due to the demands it placed upon their time. To be simplistic, there a simply too many ways one of these installs can go wrong due to poor judgement, not product design; and then the phone starts to ring. Pretty soon, you find huge amounts of your time taken up trying to sort out what should not have happened in the first place. I can tell you from practical experience, even independent shops can spend can end up spending way more time talking on the phone about installs they have had nothing to do with, and that is simple not a good use of your time. There are a large number of DIY installs that have gone perfectly smoothly and without any problems; unfortunately, those get lost in the clutter of the smaller number of ones that didn’t. Secondly, this latest alternative is either the fourth or fifth coming into the market to my knowledge. One or two have been pretty innovative in their approach compared to the OEM design; another took the “low cost provider” route. To date, the first of the “innovators”, while initially very interesting, seemed to quickly die due to unresolved technical problems that left installers and car owners on the hook with some big problems. The second of the “innovators” is still in the early stages, but again appears to be an overly complex design with a lot of things “still to be determined”. There is also a simpler lower cost alternative, but with somewhat of a caveat: Because of the materials of construction and the design of the retrofit unit, it now appears that the suggested replacement intervals for the retrofit bearing may be rather short, perhaps as short as every 36,000 miles, which somewhat puts a dent in the “low cost” concept. So those of us that live in this space 10-12 hours a day, six days a week, tend to take a “show me” approach towards yet another new product offering, and recommend others take a “wait and see” attitude as well. That doesn’t mean that we believe there is anything intrinsically wrong with the new product, we are just being cautious due to experience……………

The keys for these cars are a reoccurring theme: Expen$ive. They require a special (read expensive) tool to cut, which many locksmiths do not have. I am not aware of any aftermarket source for the blanks. The coding is an issue because it requires proprietary software (PIWIS) to accomplish. Unfortunately, for the most part, only the dealer network has access to all three components, which limits your options. You can try shopping around different dealers, they often vary widely on what they charge, but in the end you are probably going to have to pay more than you want to get it. Not that it will make you feel any better, but we went through a similar process to get a second key for a customer’s Nissan; the key was $150, the programming was another $95, and everything was “dealer only” for the same reason as Porsche: The market is too small for the aftermarket to tool up and do it for less.

The clutch slave is located in a tight spot, but is not much of an issue to bleed. Removing the rear wheel helps to see it, but really does not make it any easier to get at. Just be sure the clutch pedal is held to the floor (an adjustable hood prop or section of 2X4 seem to be the preferred tooling) the entire time you are bleeding the clutch. When you are done, the pedal will remain on the floor and must be pulled up manually, after which is should be fine. If you have done a full bleed of the clutch hydraulic system (let it run for a bit, it hold ssome fluid volume) and it still feels funny, your clutch slave may be on its way out.

Two common problems on this starter, neither of which requires changing the starter or the solenoid. The first is the cable running to the starter gets corroded, reducing current flow and causing starting problems. The cable and connections can be cleaned and reinstalled unless the corrosion is severe, then the cable needs to be replaced. Second is the Bendix drive in the solenoid starts to hang up due to lack of lubrication and/or rusting. This requires pulling the starter, cleaning and lubricating the Bendix drive (we use DuPont dry Teflon spray lubricant, but it can be done with white lithium grease as well), and the problem goes away. Before you start buying expensive parts, start looking at the unit to see if all it needs is some cleaning and lubrication………

You will be fine, the Motive unit needs to clear the air out of the line before the fluid flows, and this will just sit above the fluid level in the system reservoir during the bleeding session. It will not get into your system. Small bit of advice for the future: I always suggest that people fully hook up the Motive unit dry (no fluid) if they do not use it regularly, then pump it up to about 10-12 PSIG and let it sit for about 10 min. to see if the pressure holds. If it does, you are golden and can release the pressure by unscrewing the pump cap on the Motive unit slightly until the pressure vents off, then fill the unit, pressurize and commence the flush. The reason I suggest this “dry pressure” run is that if the unit, the line or the cap it is connected to are leaking, you will find that and be able to fix it without brake fluid, which is Hell on paint, spraying all over the place. Better safe than sorry.

Thanks.

One of the primary reasons LN moved away from the DIY market and began to suggest that this installation is probably best done by professionals is the shear number of ways the IMS retrofit can be screwed up during installation. Both my shop and others can tell you about the teary phone calls we get when someone gets it totally wrong; the list of how many different problems can be created would probably scare most DIY’ers near to death. (My personal favorite in this department was the guy(s) who took out the chain tensioners to get the “bad oil” out of them, and then use the starter to turn the engine over to get it to TDC; and wondered why the engine would not start when they were done, not to mention the "extra" parts they had left over.) Worse yet, professional shops, and in some cases even Porsche dealerships, can and have totally blown the installation. While not rocket science, doing one of these retrofits requires some modicum of automotive knowledge, specific tools, the crucial ability to follow directions, and most of all, patience; which far too many people seem to lack. The bearing is a press fit into the rear of the shaft; the factory probably receives shafts with the OEM bearing already pressed in by their supplier using industry standard fixtures and hydraulic presses. The variation from one factory shaft to another as the result of how they are assembled is probably too small to even be measured. Field extraction, while simple enough if you get that far without totally botching the disassembly, needs to be followed by the insertion of the chilled LN bearing using the correct tool and method. Cock the bearing a little bit during this step, and you will end up beating the living Hell out of it trying to get it to go in. Then you have to use an extractor to pull it out again, off axis, which stresses the unit yet again. Then try to straighten everything up and beat it in straight this time. So by the time it is installed, both the shaft and the new bearing have seen their own little version of World War II. If a tech with years of experience, on a lift in a well equipped shop can foul one up, what are the odds on two guys using borrowed tools and lying on their backs in the driveway while one holds the flashlight getting it right without issues? Even very highly qualified technical people can only develop “idiot resistant” approaches to getting something complicated done correctly; “idiot proof” is a total myth. Unfortunately, God for some reason seems to also side with the idiots.

What type of cage materials does your bearing use?

You are too quick for me Loren................ :thumbup:

The clutch pedal should be depressed to the floor and held there while the system is being bled. Afterwards, you will need to manually pull up the pedal, after which it will operate normally. You can use an adjustable hood prop, or even a hunk of 2X4 to hold down the pedal.