Hi. A question please for those in the know. I bought my car above new in 2005. I think it was made relatively late in the first year of the production run. Now 15.3K virtually trouble free miles. How do I know if there is/will be an issue with my IMS? What are the symptoms?? Obviously I am concerned as the warranty is now up. Is it possible or probable that the car will never have an issue. It has been such a good car so far I am hesitant to follow my urge in upgrading to a GTS/GT3 ot TT. Any input would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Jim

 

Are you sure you don't want us to tell you there is a high risk of IMS failure so you can justify following your urge?

I don't know for sure, but I think if you've survived for 5 years without a problem you should be OK. Besides, not ALL 05 cars had the problem, just some.

 

Hi Ken. Thanks for your response. I'll have to do some searching around on this site and maybe Rennlist. I have heard about all these rear main seal, IMS etc. potential prablems that have not manifest yet.
Jim

 

I had an 05 997S which I bought Aug. 2009 from the original owner that had the IMS failure in June 2009. The car was just out of warranty but Porsche good willed the engine but he had to pay for the install. The car had approx. 15K on it when it went, from discussions with him he was just driving on the highway doing 65 mph when all of a sudden all of the dash lights came on and the engine stalled...he got to the side of the road and found oil draining out, had it towed to the local dealer and was told the engine was pooched via IMS failure!!
Only reason I bought the car was because there was an updated engine installed that came with a 2 yr warranty from Porsche!!

 

Wow! That is pretty scary to have it go on the fwy like that. I figured if it broke it would be more likely under 'heavy' use at the track, which I have not done yet.
Jim

 

Ya....it is scary!! The guy I bought the car from was in his 50's and seemed to be a fairly conservative driver!!

 

I have an 05 997S with 38,000 miles.
I also have a new engine. It was not the IMS. An internal washer broke which allowed the crank to wobble which messed everything up. Porsche covered it under CPO.

I will admit to worrying about the IMS prior to the new engine. Lot's of comments on this forum and others about how rare the IMS issue is.

If you want to keep the car maybe you could consider the IMS bearing upgrade kit. That's cheaper than a new GTS.

 

Try the auto Atlanta vin decoder:

http://www.autoatlanta.com/life/vin/vin.php?vin=

I think it may list m96 or m97. Not sure if those are the correct designations or if that actually relates to the ims. But maybe someone else will chime in.

 

Edit...and btw I have tried this on different 05 vins and gotten different engine designations.

 

Wow. How cool is it to find my car on the site?! It says engine code is M97.01 Does that mean I don't have to worry about IMS??

 

Just some of my two cents. I have a Launch edition of C2S,pure nice and love to drive it. I am the 3rd owner,the beast is originally from the States,now has 48K km on it. I was scared sxxt of the RMS or IMS issue, but after checked with few experts familiar with Porsche,here is some thing I would like to share:
1) The problem exists;but just small % of owners are unfortunate,sorry about that;Most of them,including me and you I belive, are happy;
2) Articles in this forum,written by untrained Porshce enthusiasts,MAY not fully understand the RMS and IMS cause&result,MAY exagerate the fact of how many Porsches have been murdered by RMS IMS issues;
3) My C2S,very unfortunate,starts to have RMS symptoms;
4) You can not ignor the problem,it's lkely a design failure joke from Porsche;but it is NOT for every 05 or 06 car.
5) My car has been sweating in transmission area under the body,I think the time for replacing a new SEAL is imminent;
6) It's just like a sickness, you cure it before it gets worse, you can conquer it;
So don't fear RMS,just be careful;If you are scared of being shut down on road,just check if the oil is sweating or leaking
Have fun

 

I have a 2005 c2s car is going in for a sport clutch, LWFW, and LN engineering IMS upgrade. The upgrade is more for a piece of mind but for 600 bucks I think it's well worth it!

 

You should check out the new issue of Total 911 - it's issue 69 (not making that up) - has the new speedster on the cover. Anyway, it has a full explanation of 996 / 997 IMS issues and seems to give a sensible context of the problem / cars affected. If you're not familiar, it's a great UK magazine - you should be able to find it at Barnes & Noble.

 

Mine says it's an M97.01 too, an '06. We need someone with an 07+ to check their VIN as we know it's only 05's and very early 06's that share the same revision.

 

A little bit of a bad myth surrounds cars that have seen track use...but in many cases a car that is occasionally tracked will have received better maintenance and more frequent oil changes. If there was one thing you can do to avoid engine problems in these cars, its to avoid the standard Porsche maintenance plan and change your oil as often as you would any other car (3-5k) or after every track day.

All 05's had the older style duel ROW IMS. The beefier single ROW IMS was a change for the 06 model year.

Most of my research leads me to believe that all 06's had the beefier single row IMS bearing as a result of a model year change.

Jason