Let me start off by formally introducing myself and my company. I am Mike Potolicchio, owner of TuneRS Motorsports. We are a Porsche performance, repair and restoration shop located in Coral Springs, Florida (Broward County). I have personally been in this business for close to 30 years, having shops not only here but in Europe and South America, specifically catering to Porsche’s and other European brands. I have been involved in Porsche racing since the late 80s up to now.
Some of you may know my brother as well, Enzo Potolicchio, who won the WEC FIA LMP2 championship last year (including 24 Hours of LeMans, 12 Hours of Sebring and 6 Hours of Sao Palo). I have worked with him as well in collaboration on race projects with his former team Starworks Motorsport and his newly formed team 8 Star Motorsports, running Grand-AM in both a 302R Mustang and Ford Riley Daytona Prototypes. We also helped start the 993 Super Cup series in South America and prepped several 993 cups for this series (including two of our own that we competed with).
Now let me get to TuneRS. In the past 5 years since we started, we have rebuilt over one hundred water cooled and air cooled engines. On the water cooled side, 98% of the engines we take apart, the IMS bearing has been FINE. Most of the IMS bearing replacements we have done using the ceramic bearing have been for “peace of mind” for the customer due to the fear they have in their mind that their engine could fail unexpectedly. I’m not saying we haven’t seen bearings fail causing catastrophic results, but in most cases it has been other components failing.
This new oil pressure fed system we developed still uses the original bearing (or you can use the upgraded ceramic bearing) and modifying the flange housing with a line from the oil sender or from the pressure sender on our oil cooler delete system. We used this new kit on our #93 Spec Boxster at the 48 Hours at Sebring a couple of weeks ago as our first major test before announcing it, and we had great results.
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None of the components on the kit had any issue (leaking, fraying, and clearance). We dropped the transmission out of the car as soon as it arrived back at the shop, removed the flange housing to inspect the bearing after 320 miles of HARD driving (RACING) around Sebring, and found it to have negligible wear on it, and the ball bearings covered in oil from proper lubrication now.
External oil pressure feed lines have been used since the 70s, if not before, to provide proper lubrication to internal components (oil pressure feed system on air cooled Carrera tensioners? Same idea, different application), so it’s not something we came up with out of nowhere, we just adapted old technology into modern use.
I don’t like to preach fear into the minds of Porsche owners, just preventative measures. The internal components these vehicles came manufactured with are fine but of course can always be upgraded for preventative purposes. We like to see Porsche owners happy, using their car and not being afraid to drive them because of some things that have happened here and there.
I will monitor this thread and answer any questions as they come.
Regards,
Mike Potolicchio