JFP in PA

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.

To: JFP in PA

Our production bearings will be shipped with steel ball cages. We have tested two types of steel designs, nylon, and an exotic made of a low density phenolic. The phenolic one is put in a bell jar immersed in Mobil 1. You pull a vacuum on it, and the oil gets sucked into the phenolic. It will wick enough oil for years of dead storage to start-up lube a ceramic hybrid...... even if the sump oil level is below the bearing. These have to be custom CNC machined, and double the bearing cost. If you really want the phenolic cages, we can special order them (2 week delivery).

Why did we pick steel as the baseline? Many reasons, 1) steel cages are fitted more loosely to the balls due to the limitations of forming sheet metal. This gives the consumer the perception of a lack of quality in a precision device. They move around a bit relative to the ball. Does not hurt the bearing, but perception can be a difficult thing to get around. 2) Nylon nests the balls precisely and has slightly better capillary attraction for the oil film between the ball and cage (providing more oil "storage"). 3) If either of these cage materials gets some level of damage, the nylon will not damage the OD race when the hard ball rolls over a piece of it. 4) From a temperature standpoint, steel cages have the highest rating. The phenolic is second highest (about 350F), and nylon the lowest. The highest temperature rated nylons are just too close to this boxer engine's red line coolant temp (remember this engine uses a coolant/oil heat exchanger). We never encountered this problem, but it is too significant to consider production worthy. If this really catches on, we may consider investing in the tooling to mold out of a higher temp plastic, none are available now in this size.

We ship the bearing with a very, very light lube that really lets you feel the rolling action. If anything gets in the bearing during assembly, you will feel it. Once we are certain it is clean, we take a veterinary's large animal syringe (.040" needle) and inject some engine oil supplement to both rows of balls before slipping the support in place. This is where the looser fitting steel cage comes in handy, you can get the needle past the first row of balls.

Billl Ryan

Casper Labs, Inc.

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.

My name is Bill Ryan, and I am the owner of Casper Labs, Inc.. Want to say I am pleased to see some very well written posts on the subject of

our IMS kit. Let me try to answer your concerns. If something is missed,..... just bring it up again for a future posting.

My first contact with a ceramic hybrid bearing was in the 1980's. An SKF bearing engineer brought a prototype into Pratt & Whitney (where I worked) for a presentation to the engineering staff. We were told it was the bearing of the future, and the charts of performance improvements bordered on unbelievable (at the time). Back then, cost was also unbelievable. Years would pass before for a microturbine application (over 110,000RPM) would be saved by the many benefits of ceramic balls.

Ball bearings have been around for a long time. There is no magic, mystery, or art to designing bearings for an application. The technolgy is so refined that bearing manufacturers can produce these precision devices in vast numbers, at low cost, and with incredibly low failure rates. The world would be a very different place if this technology was not readily available to everyone. Every bearing company has a staff of application engineers ready to assist designers and engineers with any use of their product.

All Porsche OEM type IMS bearings are sealed grease lubed type. The seals are designed to keep grease in and dirt out. The seals were not designed to sit partially submerged in motor oil (engine off, dip stick full). These bearings run $20-$30 over the counter, and we have seen them go 225,000 miles and still be perfect (except the grease is gone and replaced with oil).

Engine cost was a big design factor when Porsche transitioned to water cooled boxer engines. Not using a pressure lubed IMS bearing set (like the 911) appears to have been one of these decisions to lower cost. While oil lubed open face ball bearings are routinely used in turbine gearboxes and main shafts , they have the benefit of much cleaner oil and targeted oil spray. Combustion byproducts are completely isolated from the turbine's lube system, and individual jets spray gears and bearings. Anybody who has lost their oil separator knows how much blowby exists in these Porsche engines. It is a dirty environment in the crankcase.

Now consider an OEM bearing that has been in service a while. The grease is gone. If the oil level is low (below the bearing), and the car has sat for days or weeks, and the trapped oil has leaked out. Just a tiny trough of oil sits in the bottom of the lower race. When the engine starts, some of the balls are momentarily dry. Lack of lube causes high bearing temp., which causes wear. Each time this happens, it gets a little worse.

Enter ceramics! They need practically no lube in many services, and are far more dirt tolerant than steel balls. Why did't Porsche use them? COST! It would have been cheaper to pressure lube the IMS.

Why don't we guarantee our bearings? Answer: No ball bearing manufacturer on earth does! It is so easy to damage a bearing installing it, that even the finest product can be ruined in an instant with a press, hammer, or dirt. Don't be the first customer in your favorite shop to get the kit. First time mechanics should have a core engine to practice on, removing and installing the orig. bearing. Remember that open face turbine bearings are assembled in a clean room. If your garage is not hospital clean, go someplace else. Powdered clutch disk facing and road dirt have no place in your bearing.

MTBF data? Good quality/properly designed ceramic bearings are so robust (when correctly installed and lubed) that any failure is, in all probability, the result of installation error or contamination. With dozens of mechanics in different locations and using varying proceedures, any meaningful data would most likely tell you which shops to use, and ...........which to avoid. Obviously, we will be tracking this.

Controlling quality is always important, especially in precision products. Our bearing design and quality specs are defined on a Casper Labs

engineering drawing. It is furnished to the bearing manufacturer with the purchase order. Their QC department has to provide a certificate of conformity to the drawing with the finished product as well as any test reports or analysis spec'd'. Casper Labs has internal processes to review and inspect all hardware and documentation upon receipt.

Hope this helped!

BR

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.

Not necessarily, but I would still keep an eye on it as the loose nut did not do it any favors………

Attach a fuel pressure test gauge to the fuel rail and check the pressure before and when the tank gets down to the magic level, if it suddenly falls off, I'd pull the fuel pump and reservoir and check them; they could be either blocked by debris or coming apart............

If you are interested, Pelican does list their "kit" on their website at the moment, but without pricing.

To my knowledge, there are no limits placed upon the purchaser of their tools, I have also seen them come up for resale online from time to time. You can also obtain similar tooling from aftermarket sources, albeit at a higher price.

I recently saw a just released photo of the Pelican kit, and I have to say that even without pricing being released, I am not impressed. The bearing (there is only one size) is sealed and appears to use spacers to compensate for the different style OEM bearings that were used, which would imply the bearing is the smallest style. I'm rather uneasy about that.

random bits of info:

CTEK on a fully discharged battery will show that the battery is almost fully charged (not sure how it is possible but it is the case).

it is sufficient to open trunk.

Maintainers measure voltage to obtain state of charge. Interestingly, a nearly dead battery will measure full voltage, but not have enough current (amperage) to turn the motor over, usually due to extremely high internal resistance. That is why the standard shop test for battery condition is a load test, not a voltage test.

5 I use the CTEK but just be aware that if you have a power outage the CTEK will not restart itself and will need to be reset in order to work. If you are going to leave the car unattended for long periods of time the CTEK would not be my choice.

Strange, I have several Ctek's, mostly 3300 and 7002's, and they all reset automatically after a power outage...................

The actual current number is four; three failed from either poor installation techniques (failure to fully install the spiral lock retainer) or the bearing ingesting debris from other sources (broken chain tensioner paddles, etc.). Only one appears to be the bearing itself, Jake Raby has been dissecting the engine to figure out what happened................

I knew that Porsche only sold the bearing with the tube (after all, the factory still says you cannot remove the bearings without splitting the cases); which just exacerbates the cost issue as well as the complexity..... Strange how $600 does not sound all that bad in light of this; LN's and Jake's work have altered the "value proposition" somewhat.

From a marketing prespective, those that now offer a cheaper alternative will need to work to address the question of "Is their's as good?"

I having been asking Pelican Parts about the IMS for over 1 year, but they keep saying not yet. I am beginning to think they aren't going to make it. Promises but no part!

No disrespect to Wayne, but as he already sells LN parts; I am surprised he would try to develop his own IMS retrofit. That said, to my understanding, his retrofit uses the same style bearing as the OEM (steel with seals), but employs a larger center bolt much like the LN unit. While the smaller center bolts on the OEM style can fail, I really do not think that the bolt is the primary issue, which is lubrication or a lack thereof.

All things considered, the primary costs for an IMS retrofit is not the price of the bearing; by far, most of it is labor. After paying all the labor hours, wouldn’t you want to install the strongest and most proven bearing you could lay hands on?

Including LN, there are now four possible alternatives either in the market, or close to entry. Some appear to be copying LN, others going the “low cost alternative” approach, and one that supposedly uses bearings within bearings in conjunction with a “knock sensor” to catch a failure developing. While I am confident that the market place forces will eventually result in “shake out” of the lesser players, it is an interesting example of what happens when someone finds a way around a profound problem that the OEM says cannot be done (Porsche still insists that the bearings cannot be changed without splitting the cases, and this remains the “official line” at many dealerships), and the concept quickly turns into a multi million dollar aftermarket business...............

I am doing the labor myself so yes the cost of the part is important to me. If I can pay half of the LN price for the same part and it is just as reliable then that is a no-brainier. My point is that LN has had a little bit of a monopoly and it's time for a little competition to bring the price down. $600 for a bearing? I think that is a little pricey. I wish Pelican or Casper Labs would come through for the ones of us who want reliability but without getting gouged! I agree with J_beede, where is the data for LN.

JFP in Pa, where is the data that you claim LN has, " the strongest and most proven bearing you could lay hands on". Where would I find that information? There is no question that it is our only option right now. Do you have a report that we can read to back your statement. I am very interested.

Again, I would look for the "Excellence" articles (there were two) from 2010 on the subject. I think Charles Navarro may have also addressed the relative strength characteristics of the LN bearing to the OEM style online at one time or another. That would also be well worth a search.

As for how much these things cost, price out an OEM replacement IMS bearing, you just might be surprised............

I also have to say that in defense of small business owners that spend both their time and money developing and sourcing what at least appear to be superior replacement components, I cringe when someone uses words like “gouging”. You do not have to purchase these products, you can continue to run the OEM unit, or even replace it with another OEM unit.

Thanks. Sounds like a plan. How can one tell if a PIWIS is real or not

I got this response from the OBD2 reader I use from Lemur BlueDriver:

Hi Steve.

Trouble code P000A is "Intake (A) Camshaft Position Slow Response Bank 1"

Probable Causes:

1. Sensor or solenoid faulty

2. Connector terminal contact is damaged or corroded

3. Wire harness - Check harness for correct voltage, open, short to ground

or short to voltage

4. Update control unit software - Check for the latest control unit update

5. Powertrain or Engine Control Module faulty

I have little use for software on phones as diagnostic tools; far too many times, I have had customers bring cars in that were supposedly throwing this or that code, only to find something entirely different when we get it into the shop and on our Durametric Pro system. The OBD software system that Porsche uses is far to sophisticated and specific for cheap generic diagnostic software on a phone to deal with, and even the people that make some of the best (and most expensive) OBDII diagnostics software for VW and Audi will tell you that Porsche's software is so unique that their stuff will not work on it.

As for figuring out if a PIWIS system is real or a knock off, that is going to be a problem. The only sure way would be to go to a Porsche dealer, theirs are all real ones. I have seen Asian knock off systems selling for less than $1000, when the real tool leases (it is never for sale) for in excess of $15,000 for the first year. You could also look for a independent that uses the Durametric software, about 85% as capable as the PIWIS, but one Hell of a lot cheaper; and even the Durametric software system can only be used on Porsche's, it is non functional on other makes.

The LN bearing uses a Timken silicon nitride bearing assembly that is both ultra low in internal friction and demonstrates a higher strength over a wider temperature range than steel counterparts, and the ability to withstand higher structural loadings as well. It also has outstanding wear characteristics under marginal lubrication conditions.

Unfortunately, I lent someone my copies of the “Excellence” magazine article on the subject, which contains more details of the bearings materials of construction, and have not gotten them back yet (another example of why you should never lend out stuff). Perhaps you can locate copies of the two part series they did on the subject about 2 years ago.

How could you tell if the Evap Cannister is bad without a code?

If the EVAP canister was dead, you would have a code. The tank filling issue is caused by an anti surge flap at the base of the filler neck not opening when the upper flap at the filler neck entrance is opened (the "click" mentioned above). On the early cars, there were lines inside the tank that would slip out of position and block the lower flap, causing the issue and requiring accessing the tank to move them back out of the way. Later cars, this problem tended to be electrical (the E6 fuse). If memory serves, there are TSB’s on both.

Try putting a piece of electrical tape on the cell phone connector behind the center console. See this post and this one

The E6 fuse for the telephone is shared by the fuel filler flap system. If the unused telephone plug shorts to ground, it blows the fuse needed by the lower flap.

I having been asking Pelican Parts about the IMS for over 1 year, but they keep saying not yet. I am beginning to think they aren't going to make it. Promises but no part!

No disrespect to Wayne, but as he already sells LN parts; I am surprised he would try to develop his own IMS retrofit. That said, to my understanding, his retrofit uses the same style bearing as the OEM (steel with seals), but employs a larger center bolt much like the LN unit. While the smaller center bolts on the OEM style can fail, I really do not think that the bolt is the primary issue, which is lubrication or a lack thereof.

All things considered, the primary costs for an IMS retrofit is not the price of the bearing; by far, most of it is labor. After paying all the labor hours, wouldn’t you want to install the strongest and most proven bearing you could lay hands on?

Including LN, there are now four possible alternatives either in the market, or close to entry. Some appear to be copying LN, others going the “low cost alternative” approach, and one that supposedly uses bearings within bearings in conjunction with a “knock sensor” to catch a failure developing. While I am confident that the market place forces will eventually result in “shake out” of the lesser players, it is an interesting example of what happens when someone finds a way around a profound problem that the OEM says cannot be done (Porsche still insists that the bearings cannot be changed without splitting the cases, and this remains the “official line” at many dealerships), and the concept quickly turns into a multi million dollar aftermarket business...............

Only problem here is that you have no data on the quality,performance, or longevity for this kit, the LN unit has over 4,000 units installed in the field. I'm sure Casper knows their bearings, but I would be remiss if I did not note that LN and Jake Raby tested the Hell out of the LN unit before they made it available; I have seen no data on what level of testing this other supplier has done. Sometimes you do get what you pay for.....................

Do you have wear data on the LNE bearing? I have requested this data from Flat6 and was told that the wear data was LNE property and they are not sharing it. I believe that LNE would agree that the real problem is lack of IMSB lubrication not bearing quality. The contribution that LNE has made--without question--is the bearing puller that alows the IMSB to be replaced (in some M96) without tear down.

No one does. As I mentioned, LN has a substantial installed base, but is still recommending replacing the bearing at typical clutch change intervals (40-60K miles). Wear pre se was never the issue with the OEM rear shaft bearing, they typically fail due to lack of lubrication (grease leaks out of the unit, engine oil that replaces the grease gets trapped and beat to Hell, bearing starts chewing itself to pieces). When you pull an OEM bearing that is on the way out, they tend to either have no lubrication inside at all, or are full of some really nasty motor oil that stinks to high heaven, indicating how beat up it has become. The LN bearings do not use seals, so the bearing is continually splash lubricated by the engine oil to reduce wear. The LN unit is also a ceramic hybrid style rather than steel like the OEM, so it is much harder.

LN has kept their data pretty close to the vest, which any small business man can understand. But the product seems to be working.

I'm not exactly sure what you are referring to, are you talking about a ball joint separation tool?