996 IMS Upgrade Part II:

Parts came in this morning for the 996 project, so I was able to knock out quite a bit of work today.

Started out by installing the secondary air valve, oil/air separator, oil cooler seals, waterpump, and also was able to button up the intake manifold.

Water pump on, and the front engine carrier back in place.

New LN Engineering ceramic IMS upgraded bearing and center shaft installed.

And the bearing flange installed along with a new RMS.

Then it was time to tackle the camshaft chain tenioner pads and chains. Typically I see these chain pads start to really show wear around the 75k mile mark. This motor has about 60k miles on it, and while it was out, we figured we had better do them. Cam tower cover off, with the cams being held in with special tools P…something. Honestly, you can pull the cams just using the timing tool you see on the end of the camshafts in one of the previous posts (the long silver tool), but I prefer to use the bearing bridge tools as well as the actual cam hold down tool (one on the end). If you do not undo the cams slowly and evenly, you do risk snapping one or both. The bearing bridge tools allow you to do that a little more evenly.

Once the front chain gear was removed, and the associated bearing bridges and tensioner, both cams and the chain tensioner come out as a unit, somewhat similar to the old 944 twin cam / 968 motors. There is an upper and a lower plastic chain rail that will be replaced.

With the cams removed, you can see how the single row cam chain has dug into the plastic tensioner pad. The new one is on the left.

Two new pads and a new chain installed on the cams and ready to go back on the motor.

After checking all the lifters, they are replaced in their bores with redline assembly lube.

And the cams back in place with the new stuff installed. Here you can see the cam timing tool of the end of the camshafts. This tool times the exhaust cam to the front chain sprocket. The intake cam is automatically timed due to the chain that connects the two. Tomorrow I will put the cam cover back on, rotate the crank 360 degrees and do the same to bank 1 (the other side). Stay tuned.

996Cam Chain Tensioner PadsIMS UpgradeLN EngineeringM96Porsche