A Gambler 500 CR-V and Whatever Else Shows Up

Glad you are ok,

You sure know how to build suspense with a single quote and a squashed chicken sir.

Here's the video and a few more pics.

Album on Flickr: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBGZBp

Event videos:

Sunrise at camp:

The Gambler 500 stuff:

More video of people driving Xbox on the circle track:

There's been too many cars in my driveway and too little time to work on projects. Glad that I can drop the '04 Parts Car off with captainawesome for a  while so he can pull the transmission and various parts for his wide body 914 project.

Captainawesome worked way too fast with the Boxster parts car and is ready for me to pick it up tomorrow. Maybe dumping this in his yard will slow him down until I clear another parking space.

Meanwhile I checked over the Frog for Sunday's Rallycross. The throttle isn't responding and it has a code for a bad potentiometer. Hopefully swapping out the gas pedal/potentiometer from the parts car will clear it up without having to dive into deep troubleshooting.

I love everything you've been doing in this thread and have been a follower for several years.   I recently had the chance to pick up my first boxster and am really loving it!   I've watched a couple of your youtube videos already about door latch stuff.  Keep up the great work!

edit: on your rallyx car, gambler car etc, do you mess with IMS retrofit at all?  Or do you have enough spare engines that it's not worth the hassle?  

Thanks, I don't worry about the IMS bearing,  but think it should be changed out with the clutch or flywheel.    ...more opinion later.

AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) said:

I don't worry about the IMS bearing,  but think it should be changed out with the clutch or flywheel.    ...more opinion later.

I had a very full schedule yesterday and wrote that sentence while waiting in stopped traffic at a road construction site. Traffic started moving again quicker than expected.

I am not consistent about how I treat my own cars regarding the IMS bearing. I know that the problem is real, but out of the 20+ 986s I've bought, none of them had an IMS bearing failure except for possibly the 2004 2.7L ('04 PartsCar) that had a factory replacement engine when I bought it. I have seen a couple with bad rod bearings. Cracked heads that were most likely caused by pieces of the water pump impeller jamming in coolant passages, causing hot spots. I think that a 1999 that I sold with about 95k miles had a slipped sleeve a year or two later. I have advised people that if they are going to worry about it every time they drive the car, they should have it retrofitted ASAP. Otherwise wait until it's getting other major maintenance and do it then.

The second Boxster I bought (2014) was the white one that's Mrs AAZCD's car. It had a bad engine that looked like it was from a rod bolt failure, but was torn up enough inside that it was hard to be certain. The IMS bearing was not bad. When I put an engine in it I used the PelicanParts IMS bearing which at the time cost $165 and the extraction/installation tool from LN Engineering which was around $250. The Pelican Parts bearing is basically the same single-row bearing that Porsche used, but came with an improved bolt and new seals. Why would anyone replace a bearing that is known to fail with a new one just like it? ...Because the one being replaced had already survived 125k miles without any issues.

I had a 1999 Tiptronic car and had the IMS bearing installed at a shop while they were replacing a leaky rear main seal. My final bill was well over $3,000 and it leaked again less than two years later. The shop has a great reputation, but has caused me to have trust issues.

Besides those, I've done one more Pelican Parts bearing and a Single Row Pro bearing from LN. I have tentative plans to eventually install LN Engineering's IMS Solution in my '04 Special Edition, but the kit costs about $1,900 now (I saw it as low as $1,300 in the past) and I'm having a hard time convincing myself it's worth it when so many other things can kill or degrade a 20 year old engine.

The Frog is running good now. I found that the wires from the gas pedal had been spliced at the ECU. Pressing the crimps a little tighter fixed the problem of no response. When there's time I'll probably re-splice them all, but for now, I just want to get it through Sunday.

I still have a few minor things to do, tightening the bolts for the roof and checking over all the rear suspension nuts and bolts.

The Frog held together well other than one muffler falling off somewhere near the end of a run that got a little too loose. It handles much better than the PartsCar. I have GoPro of most of the runs and it's easy to see where I can get a few seconds faster. Most of the day I was just 'blasting down a dirt road' unwinding from a very busy month. I had fun. I'll probably link some video and pics tomorrow night.

GoPro of one of the runs. I love playing with this car in the dirt.

For contrast, here's my drone video of a run by Blanton Payne who usually finishes at the top.