Re: TechnoFix DOF

I had a ‘99 Boxster with Tip that Pedro checked out and I loved as well as other Porsche’s over the years. I’m getting the itch again and looking at an older Boxster S stick. I’ve read up on and looked at Pedro's videos on IMF DOF and completely buy into the concept but have several questions. First, Pedro describes how oil can get in to the shaft, turn sour and acidic and attack the bearing. The DOF sends pressurized oil in to the bearing and, I assume, thus also thru the bearing into the shaft. Doesn't that fill the shaft with oil? Also I don’t see any return path for the injected oil to the oil supply and filter. Am I missing something? Obviously, results speak louder than theory but I’d like to know if I’m right or wrong on this.

Thanks

..whether its the tiny bit squirted on your IMS or the majority of it circulating through the motor. In the end it just falls, via gravity mostly, to the sump.

A pickup tube routes it to the oil pump and 'round it goes.

Grant

Grant

gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com

Hi:
Let me try to explain a little better what happens
The DOF doesn't put pressurized oil into the bearing.
The bearing is usually replaced with a new one that has no outer seal but has the inner seal in place. The '97 to '04 models can have the bearing replaced and start of fresh.
The '05 - '08 cars keep the larger bearing but the outer seal is removed. The bearing gets inspected before proceeding with the DOF installation.
When the engine is running, a stream of oil will bathe the bearing. It's not like we connect an oil line to the bearing and pressurize it with oil.
The pressure of this stream varies depending on the engine's speed. The volume of oil is also very small. Just 100 mL/min at 60 psi.
At idle, with the engine up to temperature, the oil pressure is 20 psi or less. Cruising at 70 mph the pressure is about 60 psi.
Remember that the IMS bearing is spinning so any oil hitting it gets shed by centrifugal force. No volume of oil lingers in the bearing. That's why the stream has to be constant.
The back end of the bearing receives oil but not under pressure so no oil should get into the IMS. It is sealed on the back end.
But even if some oil were to make it into the IMS and become rancid with time, as soon as it makes it back to the bearing it will now be washed away by the continuous stream of oil.
The IMS sits just above the oil level in the oil pan. The oil that gets shed off the bearing after bathing the innards just drips down to the oil pan and mixes with the rest of the oil.
BTW, the oil feed point for the DOF has been provided by the factory, so there's no drilling or tapping into the engine whatsoever. There is one port on each one of the heads that the factory provides and are just plugged with a screw-on plug. The oil galley that feeds these ports are exclusive to them and feed nothing else, so no oil is robbed from lifters or any other part that gets lubrication. Also these galleys are fed immediately after the oil filter and oil cooler so the oil that goes to the IMS bearing is filtered and is at least 35 degrees F cooler than the oil in the pan so it does double duty of lubricating the bearing but also as important it cools it off.
The small amount of oil and pressure that the DOF requires for use does not affect the rest of the engine's oil needs since the oil pressure regulator maintains and regulates the oil pressures.
I hope this explains better how the system works.
If you have any further questions feel free to post them or contact me directly if you want to talk.

Happy Porscheing,
Pedro

Pedro Bonilla
1998 Boxster 986 - 311,000+ miles: [www.PedrosGarage.com]
PCA National Club Racing Scrutineer - PCA National HPDE Instructor - PCA Technical Committee (Boxster/Cayman)

---

Racecar spelled backwards is Racecar

"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting" ... Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney in "LeMans"

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older"... Mario Andretti

"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose" ... Ayrton Senna

I am in no way an hydraulics expert, but if you apply 60 psi to, for example, a 100 square in tube and it exits a 10 square inch hole, wouldn't the pressure be multiplied? Say to 600 psi? Or at least be 60 psi? In this example.

But we're not increasing pressure because the cross section of the oil galley is the same as the oil line and output port.
There have been many DOF units sold and installed for many years now.
The DOF is, to my knowledge, the only IMS bearing System that had not had a single documented failure to date.
Happy DOF'ing
Pedro

Pedro Bonilla
1998 Boxster 986 - 311,000+ miles: [www.PedrosGarage.com]
PCA National Club Racing Scrutineer - PCA National HPDE Instructor - PCA Technical Committee (Boxster/Cayman)

---

Racecar spelled backwards is Racecar

"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting" ... Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney in "LeMans"

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older"... Mario Andretti

"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose" ... Ayrton Senna




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/19/2017 07:39PM by Pedro (Weston, FL). (view changes)

Thanks Pedro, I really appreciate your patience. As I said before, I think the product is a must have, I just needed to understand it moire than I did.

Steve

Pedro....your competitor Jake Raby made this comment on FB: "I'd never spray oil on a dynamic component within the engine." Now, I've watched your video(s) and your patient explanations make a lot of sense to me, but I'm not much of a mechanic. Perhaps you could explain what he means by this and refute it.....your explanations are very easy to follow.

BTW, it won't be anytime soon, but I got a rough quote from Tuner S Motorsports in Coral Springs, who I think you are loosely affiliated with. Your shop is actually closer to me though. Can I assume your costs are roughly the same? I've got a 2000 S with 94k, a limited service history available, and a strong clutch, so I'm pretty much going to follow your guidance and wait until I need a new clutch (gives me time to budget too). The car does have PCA stickers on it so who knows, maybe it's been dealt with in the past...... but I have no way to know for sure. My indy guy has done some solid maintenance for me (AOS, belts, brakes), but I'm not trusting the IMS work to anyone but a Porsche specialist.

Thanks in advance for your input!

I would never expect Mr. Raby to endorse our product.
I don't endorse his.
There are several products that have been on the market for 5 or more years and address the IMS issue.
To my knowledge there is only one that has not had a single documented IMS failure after it has been installed.
Which one?
Which one feeds a constant stream of cooled and filtered oil to the IMS bearing?
You guessed it, the Direct Oil Feed.
Happy Boxstering,
Pedro

BTW the DOF does not spray or inject oil; it feeds a constant stream into the open bearing.

Pedro Bonilla
1998 Boxster 986 - 311,000+ miles: [www.PedrosGarage.com]
PCA National Club Racing Scrutineer - PCA National HPDE Instructor - PCA Technical Committee (Boxster/Cayman)

---

Racecar spelled backwards is Racecar

"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting" ... Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney in "LeMans"

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older"... Mario Andretti

"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose" ... Ayrton Senna

Lubrication is good. It really does not matter how the oil gets on a surface, as long as it does.

That oil must be clean - i believe the DOF takes a filtered stream.

But honestly, i'd rather have non filtered oil than none at all :-)

Jake has some good stuff, but i believe he's involved in branded rebuilt motors that use the IMS retrofit. I can say, with first hand inspection experience, that the retrofit wears faster than the OEM IMS bearing, for 6x the parts cost.

Is his journal, oil fed bearing good? Sure. But i believe it sprays oil on itself :-) Admittedly from a teeny tiny distance -- within the journal itself. But i fail to see the difference.

G

Grant

gee-lenahan-at-gee-mail-dot-com

... a fine mist which is a no-no because of foaming.
That’s why when lubricating the innards of an engine you want a stream not a spray.
Happy Porscheing
Pedro

Pedro Bonilla
1998 Boxster 986 - 311,000+ miles: [www.PedrosGarage.com]
PCA National Club Racing Scrutineer - PCA National HPDE Instructor - PCA Technical Committee (Boxster/Cayman)

---

Racecar spelled backwards is Racecar

"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting" ... Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney in "LeMans"

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older"... Mario Andretti

"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose" ... Ayrton Senna

Good stuff guys....

And please don't take this the wrong way.

If you want to know what Raby means..... ASK RABY. HE is the only person who can tell you what he means.

Now, will he respond? Probably not. And if he did respond, it would be in the form of some incomprehensible gobbledygook which no one could understand. It would be indecipherable not because it would be highly technical, but because ultimately it would be a sales pitch disguised as an answer. Raby isn't stupid, but he isn't nearly as gifted as he would like to have you believe. And, contrary to his imaginings, he's far from the only (or best) game in town.

BTW, I have no skin in this game. My IMS bearing went boom and Porsche gave me a new engine with their best IMS bearing.

Quote
RecluseRoad
Pedro....your competitor Jake Raby made this comment on FB: "I'd never spray oil on a dynamic component within the engine." Now, I've watched your video(s) and your patient explanations make a lot of sense to me, but I'm not much of a mechanic. Perhaps you could explain what he means by this and refute it.....your explanations are very easy to follow.
quote]

For the record:
The IMS solution has not experienced a single failure, of any kind, in any application.

It had been insinuated earlier in this thread that this was not the case, so I’ll tell you from the source, that their have been ZERO failures of the IMS Solution.

Yes, Raby responded. Will his reply here be deleted? That’s to be determined.

Also, I’m no one’s “competitor” in this realm. My part of the IMS Sales has been over since 2009, and we don’t even perform IMS retrofit work at our facility anymore. We are too busy producing engines to deal with any of that.

Pedro and Jake are the Hatfields and McCoys of IMS land...still bickering year after year.

IMS Solution, IMS Retrofit, and TechnoFix DOF differ mainly in oil pick up / delivery methods and bearing types.

IMS Solution and TechnoFix DOF use direct oil feeds to the bearing. IMS Retrofits use splash oil.

IMS Solution picks up oil from an oil filter adaper; the IMS Retrofit picks up oil from the sump; and the TechnoFix DOF picks up oil from the cam cover.

IMS Solution uses a plain bearing; TechnoFix uses whatever ball or roller (t think) bearing is in the car.

These things fail so infrequently that its hard to say definitively which is the best and, more important, which one is best for the price.

It seems come down to answering this question: For each bearing type, what damage results when the IMS fails regardless of the method of lubrication. Some failure modes are relatively benign leaving the engine salvageable and others are catastrophic.

There’s no such bickering back and forth. I mean, Jake just said he’s too busy building important engines to be bothered with folks with stupid IMS issues. Lol. Good thing my 01 is still going strong on its original factory bearing!

You have developed and productized several products for each of 3 variations. Maybe a dozen in all.

The audience for such products is dwindling as more cars are taken off the road by accidents or fall into the hand of people who won't spend serious money maintaining them. Those who love their cars may have already replaced or decided not to.

You have infrastructure costs (buildings, personnel, equipment, etc) that must be covered.

You have trained a bunch of people who can do the job of simple clutch and bearing replacement more local to the customer. You have wholesalers to deal with local small lot purchasers. The products for the old cars are still selling. But not in the same volume I'd wager. So on to the next thing.

You make the decisions on what you want to work on or sell directly based on your view of the possible markets going forward.

Develop products for and build expertise in engines/cars whose buyers are in the economic strata where they might be repairing or improving their cars, not worrying about cars that can be had for peanuts and are liable to be ill maintained and so worn that you are better off not being directly involved with them. Seems sensible to me.

Last week I had a local businessman with 12 locations tell me he elected to sell out his family run auto repair/tire business 6 months ago based on his view of where the auto repair business would be in 5 to 10 years.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/25/2017 03:56PM by mikefocke, '01S Sanford, NC. (view changes)