Republished with permission from Porsche Club America. Original article written by Manny Alban.
Benefits of joining Porsche Club America
The PCA often organizes various events, meets, and group challenges, making it an ideal community for Porsche owners and enthusiasts.
With a PCA membership of only $56 per year, you gain access to activities such as:
- Regional and national events
- Car shows and driving tours
- Autocross events
- High-performance driver education
- DIY tech tips and technical Q&A with the PCA National Technical Committee.
- Club racing, sim racing, online activities, and more.
The club brings enthusiasts together to support Porsche ownership. Every membership includes the Porsche Panorama magazine, access to PCA.org with The Mart, exclusive bi-annual members-only raffles, discounts on parts, and a free PCA logo window decal.
If you’re interested in connecting with like-minded individuals, consider joining Porsche Club of America on their website here.
1999 Porsche 911 Project
A few months back we had Jake Raby and Charles Navarro visit the Porsche Club of America National Office to offer guidance on a major project with a 1999 Porsche 911. For those who do not know these two 996 gurus, Jake owns Flat Six Innovations. He has studied the M96/M97 engines from Porsche and has figured out ways to both improve performance as well as reliability. Charles owns LN Engineering and has developed solutions with Jake to improve the IMS bearing in the M96/M97 engines as well as improve engines that have suffered bore scoring and are able to be rebuilt.
For those new to the Porsche world, the M96 and M97 engines were made from US model year 1997 to 2008 and are found in the Boxster, the Cayman, and the non-turbocharged 911 Carrera models. When shopping for any of these vehicles, you will often see questions regarding the intermediate shaft (IMS) bearing and when it was replaced, bore scoring, and more. PCA has covered the IMS bearing inspection and replacement in previous videos, as well as bore scoring.
From this visit, we have produced four videos that will be of interest to both 911 and Boxster/Cayman owners. Here’s what you can look forward to:
This video is already published. Jake Raby walks us around the M96 engine and tells us what we should replace once the engine is out. It’s an informative tour of the engine’s parts that need to be replaced at some point of its life.
The second video being released covers the removal of the parts we are going to replace. This video further illustrates the benefits of having the components easily accessible versus trying to squeeze fingers and tools in tight areas.
The third video covers the replacement (or re-installation) of parts that were taken off the engine. This is where you will find some useful tips and tricks from Jake that he’s learned from years of rebuilding and improving these engines.
The last video is the reinstallation of the engine and transmission and subsequent issues we encountered.
Initially, our planned project with the 1999 911 was to install the IMS Solution which is a permanent IMS bearing that is designed to be constantly lubricated with oil from the engine. Due to the car having almost 100,000 miles, and after determining severe camshaft position deviation with a Durametric tool, it was decided that pulling the engine and transmission would be the wiser choice, for easier replacement of the cam chain pads. Having almost unrestricted access to all the parts we were going to replace while we were in there was simply going to make this job a less stressful adventure.
While this video series isn’t necessarily meant to be a do-it-yourself guide, there are many tips and tricks that should help DIYers should they choose to take on these jobs. Most importantly, the series will help M96/M97 engine owners better understand why it may be a better choice to replace many of these parts at the time of an IMS bearing replacement rather than putting them off for later.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss one of these videos! We’ll be dropping them over the next couple weeks in September.
