Cayman R Chat

[ATM]

What people seem to forget when talking about the risks of PDK - if there are any - is the servicing cost is much less than the manual. At some point a manual will need a new clutch and maybe also a flywheel. On 9x6 cars it's common to have to change the clutch pipe, slave cylinder and even the master cylinder when they get old. The shift lever can also develop slop and the shifter cables are another service item. In terms of servicing the PDK just needs 2 types of fluid - clutch side and gear side - and that's that.

[Gibbo205]

ATM said:

What people seem to forget when talking about the risks of PDK - if there are any - is the servicing cost is much less than the manual. At some point a manual will need a new clutch and maybe also a flywheel. On 9x6 cars it's common to have to change the clutch pipe, slave cylinder and even the master cylinder when they get old. The shift lever can also develop slop and the shifter cables are another service item. In terms of servicing the PDK just needs 2 types of fluid - clutch side and gear side - and that's that.

If PDK box fails however your limited on who can repair it and your looking at a much higher bill.

[MrVert]

Out of interest, does anyone know of someone personally who’s had a PDK failure requiring replacement or a big bill to repair?

I’ve been in Porsche clubs for over 15 years and not once heard of someone with a big problem.

[ATM]

Gibbo205 said:

ATM said:

What people seem to forget when talking about the risks of PDK - if there are any - is the servicing cost is much less than the manual. At some point a manual will need a new clutch and maybe also a flywheel. On 9x6 cars it's common to have to change the clutch pipe, slave cylinder and even the master cylinder when they get old. The shift lever can also develop slop and the shifter cables are another service item. In terms of servicing the PDK just needs 2 types of fluid - clutch side and gear side - and that's that.

If PDK box fails however your limited on who can repair it and your looking at a much higher bill.

Right yes

One might fail.

But every car with a clutch will need a new clutch at some point.

So 100% of manuals will need a clutch eventually and the other bits mentioned above. A PDK if working fine will just need some fresh fluids.

What % of PDK will fail?

This is the point I am trying to make. Hopefully the point has now been made.

[AndrewGP]

MrVert said:

Out of interest, does anyone know of someone personally who’s had a PDK failure requiring replacement or a big bill to repair?

I’ve been in Porsche clubs for over 15 years and not once heard of someone with a big problem.

Yes, chap round the corner from me has a 991.2 where the PDK box failed. I don’t know the exact cause but he told me the box was replaced under warranty by Swindon OPC. But aside from that instance, I’ve never heard of them going wrong.

[PRO 5T]

There are a number of VAG DSG specialists cropping up over the country as these are now so widespread and crucially, old enough to have the gearbox write off the car when it goes wrong.

I haven't looked to see if they would work on a PDK but the likely story is it will all be down to whether they can order the parts to fix from the (not Porsche) manufacturer. At least with DSG they are so widespread there will be enough replacement stock to bastardise repairs from broken units.

[moonigan]

ATM said:

Right yes

One might fail.

But every car with a clutch will need a new clutch at some point.

So 100% of manuals will need a clutch eventually and the other bits mentioned above. A PDK if working fine will just need some fresh fluids.

What % of PDK will fail?

This is the point I am trying to make. Hopefully the point has now been made.

If my car needs a new clutch and flywheel I can take to any garage and they will be able to supply and fit. In the lifetime of a car that may happen two or three times. If you are lucky you might never need to do it during your ownership. In 36 years I've never had a clutch replaced on a car. That however is about to change. My Subaru has just ticked over 100K and needs a clutch and flywheel which will cost me around £1200. I knew it was coming so it wont come as a surprise. The PDK issue is a bit of a lottery so most owners will mitigate the risk with a warranty. With a 997.2/987.2 car you have another 3 years of the warranty safety net if you buy one of the last ones. After that you are on your own unless the likes of Warrantywise will cover it.

I'm actively looking for a Cayman R/Spyder/997.2 GTS and the only thing putting me off PDK is the possibility of a £20K bill for a gearbox replacement.

[ATM]

moonigan said:

If my car needs a new clutch and flywheel I can take to any garage and they will be able to supply and fit. In the lifetime of a car that may happen two or three times. If you are lucky you might never need to do it during your ownership. In 36 years I've never had a clutch replaced on a car. That however is about to change. My Subaru has just ticked over 100K and needs a clutch and flywheel which will cost me around £1200. I knew it was coming so it wont come as a surprise. The PDK issue is a bit of a lottery so most owners will mitigate the risk with a warranty. With a 997.2/987.2 car you have another 3 years of the warranty safety net if you buy one of the last ones. After that you are on your own unless the likes of Warrantywise will cover it.

I'm actively looking for a Cayman R/Spyder/997.2 GTS and the only thing putting me off PDK is the possibility of a £20K bill for a gearbox replacement.

I changed the fluids on my PDK myself at home and these cost me less than 100 quid. I'd assume any half decent competent back street garage should be able to do the same. I would not tackle a clutch change myself at home on the drive - but would love to say I would.

My 981 write off looked like it might need some PDK fettling and so just out of curiosity I enquired at OPC about the parts availability and what not. They told me it is exchange only if you have a problem and the cost is 6250 - I think, this was 3 years ago - plus Vodka and Tonic. The only stipulation is the old one needs to look ok visually. So no cracked casings. Not sure what else they can check visually. So it's not 20k on the 981 platform or it wasn't then. My PDK did spring a leak and luckily Slippydiff recommended a shop who were willing to attempt a repair and they did. Now the car is fine.

I called several P specialists in and around my local area and none were even interested in looking at the car let alone talking to me on the phone about it. What P have done here by not offering to sell parts for these boxes is effectively rig the market. They are basically saying F you to the cottage industry of specialists and owners alike and I think this is very very bad form obviously but just wanted to make sure that I said this so no one thinks I am 100% pro for PDK. It's not that simple.

[Nurburgsingh]

According to this lots insta they've fixed a couple of PDK boxes this week - https://sportsandclassic.com/

[BillyB]

AndrewGP said:

MrVert said:

Out of interest, does anyone know of someone personally who’s had a PDK failure requiring replacement or a big bill to repair?

I’ve been in Porsche clubs for over 15 years and not once heard of someone with a big problem.

Yes, chap round the corner from me has a 991.2 where the PDK box failed. I don’t know the exact cause but he told me the box was replaced under warranty by Swindon OPC. But aside from that instance, I’ve never heard of them going wrong.

My friend’s 997.1 PDK failed when it was about 6 months old (from brand new). It was replaced under warranty. The paperwork said it was a £14k job.

[Armitage.Shanks]

There's a degree of scaremongering with PDK given the default Porsche response is to replace the box despite elements of it can be repaired. Main dealers are fitters, not repairers so to cut down on the time/effort to investigate and fix it they'll just claim it under warranty. This then provides a false narrative on the percentage of PDK boxes that go bad. Anything can break so the example above of a car 6 months out of the factory is testament - it's unexpected but has some people shaking like a stting dog fearing them or buying the reassurance of a warranty.

Various seals and other bits and pieces can be fixed/replaced by independents and given more PDK cars going over to Independent servicing the ability to rectify them is likely to grow. A lot of the stuff can be interrogated and fixed via diagnostics and low battery state can flag up issues. The deep internal trickery is the complicated bit but there's a company in the US that provides a replacement unit. My PDK has had the clutch fluid changed and it has transformed the gear changes. Prior to my ownership it's had a shaft seal replaced and the dual mass flywheel due to a leak (There's a TSB for that, which if it's minor leak the stock Porsche answer is leave it alone!)

Look at the Ferrari FF PTU. A dogst front gearbox straight out of the factory but third party permanent fixes are available at a third the price of a replacement box that will break again. A PDK is nowhere near this level of incompetence.

The internet is a great place for finding out what goes wrong. Very few write about everything being great.

Back on the subject of the CaymanR, given it's era I'd lean towards a manual as my choice. Others will want a PDK

[Andyoz]

Nurburgsingh said:

According to this lots insta they've fixed a couple of PDK boxes this week - https://sportsandclassic.com/

I was just going to post that and you can trust what they say. Owner there knows his way around gearboxes...

[moonigan]

Nurburgsingh said:

According to this lots insta they've fixed a couple of PDK boxes this week - https://sportsandclassic.com/

Thanks for this! They are only 30 mins away from me.

[Mark-ri571]

MrVert said:

Out of interest, does anyone know of someone personally who’s had a PDK failure requiring replacement or a big bill to repair?

I’ve been in Porsche clubs for over 15 years and not once heard of someone with a big problem.

I had a PDK replaced under warranty within first year and about 5,000 miles. This was in 2011 on a 2010 987.2 Cayman. A new gearbox was flown in from Germany and fitted by Porsche Leeds. On fitting the new box the car still wouldn’t drive. Turned out that when the old PDK was returned to Germany there was nothing wrong with the box. Just needed a full reinstall of the entire car software .The trouble is you are at the mercy of the OPC if something goes wrong. If I hadn’t had a warranty would they have told me that the replacement box wasn’t needed.

[ATM]

Armitage.Shanks said:

My PDK has had the clutch fluid changed and it has transformed the gear changes.

I'd recommend everyone has a go at this. It really is a simple job to do at home. Just the cost of the new fluid.

[PRO 5T]

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGerRFcR3/

PDK U.K. specialists

[ATM]

PRO 5T said:

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGerRFcR3/

PDK U.K. specialists

Brilliant thanks

[Nurburgsingh]

ATM said:

Armitage.Shanks said:

My PDK has had the clutch fluid changed and it has transformed the gear changes.

I'd recommend everyone has a go at this. It really is a simple job to do at home. Just the cost of the new fluid.

I though the PDK service involved a programme that runs the box through all of the gears at various RPM without drive being run through to the wheels to make sure that the fluid is distributed to all of the areas it needs to be.

Could also just be OPC jackanory

[ATM]

Nurburgsingh said:

ATM said:

Armitage.Shanks said:

My PDK has had the clutch fluid changed and it has transformed the gear changes.

I'd recommend everyone has a go at this. It really is a simple job to do at home. Just the cost of the new fluid.

I though the PDK service involved a programme that runs the box through all of the gears at various RPM without drive being run through to the wheels to make sure that the fluid is distributed to all of the areas it needs to be.

Could also just be OPC jackanory

I also read a lot of this when I was experiencing problems with mine. But I decided to just gung ho it because the car was a write off. So it was do or die. I had yellow gearbox messages popping up and the car was not shifting into all gears. I had noticed some droplets where i had parked. I think I even had red messages eventually where it refused to move at all.

So I dropped the gear fluid and put in new. Same problem. I double checked the gear oil level again. It was fine but the problem persists.

Next I dropped the clutch fluid and put in new. Car now worked. Eureka.

My leak still continued so I only used the car sparingly while I decided what to do with it. After a bit of time the car would throw up yellow messages so I knew it was time to top up the clutch fluid.

I also started to feel a jerky change when cold going from 1st to 2nd just after the car was started and figured out this was because the fluid had dropped a little. When it was absolutely full it never did this.

So in summary. I topped up both fluids just using the filler plug as my guide. Same with every other gearbox. When it dribbles out it is full. My car has been fine. I didn't break anything doing this. The car will tell you when it is not happy. I also believe it is clever enough to deal with a ham fisted operator who doesn't know what they are doing. So if the clutch fluid is low enough it won't keep trying to force itself into gears. It will throw up a warning message and go into limited gears or shut down completely in the hope you then fix it.

And with nice new fresh clutch fluid filled to the brim the first shift on a cold day was always very smooth. I've noticed my car getting a bit jerky now only when cold so plan to change the fluid again soon. I'm assuming it will make it better but won't known for sure until I do. The clutch fluid in there is 2 years old tops and maybe done only 5 or 6000 miles.


Drips

[Gibbo205]

Hi there

Owners who have Cayman R with no AC, how is the car, any misting issues on cold/wet days and does it get unbearable hot in Summer?

I've been offered a Guards Red CR which has PDK, buckets and only 39k miles, he wants 37kono but based on lack of AC he is open to offers, but I was thinking based on a Peridot in similar spec selling at 32k at a dealer don't think he would take 30-32k, but I've not asked.

Those with CR's with and without AC, is it a must?

I am in the market for one, but cheap, other car i've seen is Aqua blue, PDK has AC but no buckets and wrong wheels, but is currently 25k, but been for sale for ages and no one is biting no doubt as its 80k miles.

I'd maybe also entertain a 987.2 Spyder again but not in white or black, which pretty much rules them out.