Parts came in this morning for the 996 project, so I was able to knock out quite a bit of work today. Started out by installing the secondary air valve, oil/air separator, oil cooler seals, waterpump, and also was able to button up the intake manifold. Water pump on, and the front engine carrier back in place. New LN Engineering ceramic IMS upgraded bearing and center shaft installed. And the bearing flange installed along with a new RMS. Then it …

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996 IMS Upgrade

Starting tearing into the 996 project today to see what we were looking at. The first thing was to go after the intermediate shaft bearing which is the weak part of these motors. Then was the waterpump and a few other misc. items while the engine is out. I had to get the exhaust out of the way, so I pulled the headers/mufflers/cats (pulling cam covers later). Someone had upgraded the headers at some point (and mufflers) and replaced the …

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Ooops, I said it, the dreaded IMS issue of the boxsters and 996’s.  This weekend we tackled upgrading the IMS bearing in a buddy’s 1999 996 C2.  The IMS issue is the main cause of failures on the engines found in the early boxsters and 996’s.  The early design was a dual row ball bearing, followed by the later design of a single row bearing.  Typically failures are seen on lower mileage cars that are driven sporadically.  The theory for …

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