Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/470908
March / April 2015 18 And well…..you have to get rid of that stock heavy muffler, so we chose to go with a Fabspeed Maxflo exhaust so we can hear this car sing at wide open throttle ☺ In the picture you will also notice red rear tie down points for trailering the car to the track. When on the track under hard cornering, a weak link is keeping the oil around the pickup tube in the oil pan. We added a 2qt deep sump plate with improved baffle system to help prevent oil starvation. This is a bit of a Band-Aid fix to a larger issue, but should be an improvement until we start running much stickier tires. In this picture below you will see the deep sump spacer plate, but you will also notice a spin on oil filter adapter. This allows you to use a fully filtering filter in place of the OEM canister filter. The OEM canister filter contains a bypass valve in it, and when it gets dirty, it will start bypassing oil around the filter instead of through it. You can have up to 30% of the oil not being filtered in the engine with the OEM system….not good! I recommend this conversion in all m96/m97 engines. And then there is the elephant in the corner, the IMS bearing. Unfortunately the M97 engine does not allow removal of the bearing easily as with the M96 engine. They used a bearing that was larger than the hole in the engine, so it can not be extracted without a full engine rebuild. Below you can see the IMS flange removed, and the bearing inside the engine. While this updated bearing has proven to be incredibly reliable on the street (estimated 1% failure rate), the larger bearing is not designed for sustained high RPM loading, and they are known for failing on the track. So the solution is to get as much lubrication into that bearing as possible, and we do that by removing the outer seal to allow as much splash lubrication as we can get. While lubrication is only part of the failure mode, this will greatly help to sustain the longevity of the bearing. This is a must do if you track a 997.1 911 or 987 Cayman/Boxster.