Manual gearbox went limp on Cayman!

[Gio G]

Just happened a few hours ago and waiting for a low loader to pick it up. I am sure I have heard this problem from other Cayman owners. Cannot select any gears, the gearstick is completely limp, is it some sort of linkage problem? The car has a short shifter.

Mrs was driving it home and it just went, luckily she recovered into a car park. The irony is, going to a Cayman Porsche Experience tomorrow @ Silverstone! Clearly not in ours! Is it simple to fix? No doubt OPC will take days..

Thanks G

[miroku]

Almost certainly linkage problem. Easy fix I think. By the way I am at Silverstone tomorrow on the Porsche experience. See you there!

[Rockster]

Something similar happened in my Turbo. Shifter linkage broke. The plastic socket into which the shift lever ball fitted into failed and allowed the ball to come loose from the linkage that goes into the tranny.

Get the car flat bedded to a proper Porsche shop and get a new shifter installed.

[mrdemon]

You can buy uprated gear linkage cables

See you all tomorrow :-)

http://www.numericracing.com/Products.php

[dazren]

This happened in my 996 many years ago. Bought an upgraded shift linkage:

http://www.evoms.com/EVOMS_Billet_Shift_Linkage_p/...

The website shows the same bit as an option on the Cayman. If you can, try buying from a GB/European supplier to avoid expensive USA shipping costs/import taxes etc.

[ianwayne]

Rockster said:

Something similar happened in my Turbo. Shifter linkage broke. The plastic socket into which the shift lever ball fitted into failed and allowed the ball to come loose from the linkage that goes into the tranny.

Get the car flat bedded to a proper Porsche shop and get a new shifter installed.

That happened to me in a Peugeot 405 TD about 10 yrs ago but I'm surprised Porsche use such an arrangement. Using plastic, heat cycling will do it no favours.

[Gio G]

ianwayne said:

That happened to me in a Peugeot 405 TD about 10 yrs ago but I'm surprised Porsche use such an arrangement. Using plastic, heat cycling will do it no favours.

I agree. Having done a little research overnight, it appears to be a common problem and a potential weakness. I think it is frankly quite dangerous, for Porsche to fit parts which are clearly not up to the job. The car has done 20,000 miles, not exactly well used!

[Rockster]

Relax and take a deep breath.

The failure is rare and the odds of it coming again after a proper repair is even more rare.

The design is the same as used by a number of other auto makers and is robust and trouble free, except as noted above in the rare case it is not.

I have driven other manual equipped cars for a big number of miles (Datsun 510: 60K, '89 Tempo: 80K, '96 Ford Mustang GT: 150K, '01 Camaro Z28: 28K, '02 VW Golf TDi: 120K, '06 Pontiac GTO: 40K, '02 Boxster: 280K, and an '03 Turbo: 128K) and the Turbo at around 30K miles was the only one that suffered a shifter linkage failure, any kind of failure in that area, a failure which happened to be covered by the car's warranty.

But like most other isolated failures this shifter or shifter linkage failure is being twisted around into some sign there is some problem with automobile design/implementation at Porsche.

BTW, just to highlight the longevity possibility of the shifter/linkage: The original shifter and linkage in my 02 Boxster is just fine at 280K miles and the replacement shifter/linkage on my 03 Turbo is fine after maybe 90K miles. I expect the Turbo's shifter/linkage -- in spite of all the doom and gloom here -- to last as long or longer than the Boxster.

[Gio G]

Rockster said:

Relax and take a deep breath.

The failure is rare and the odds of it coming again after a proper repair is even more rare.

The design is the same as used by a number of other auto makers and is robust and trouble free, except as noted above in the rare case it is not.

I have driven other manual equipped cars for a big number of miles (Datsun 510: 60K, '89 Tempo: 80K, '96 Ford Mustang GT: 150K, '01 Camaro Z28: 28K, '02 VW Golf TDi: 120K, '06 Pontiac GTO: 40K, '02 Boxster: 280K, and an '03 Turbo: 128K) and the Turbo at around 30K miles was the only one that suffered a shifter linkage failure, any kind of failure in that area, a failure which happened to be covered by the car's warranty.

But like most other isolated failures this shifter or shifter linkage failure is being twisted around into some sign there is some problem with automobile design/implementation at Porsche.

BTW, just to highlight the longevity possibility of the shifter/linkage: The original shifter and linkage in my 02 Boxster is just fine at 280K miles and the replacement shifter/linkage on my 03 Turbo is fine after maybe 90K miles. I expect the Turbo's shifter/linkage -- in spite of all the doom and gloom here -- to last as long or longer than the Boxster.

Rockster, I thin you maybe right. OPC called me yesterday and mention it was a catastrophic cable failure, however he had never seen that happen in a Gen II car before, only on the older cars. So was just a bit unlucky. I suspect the repair out of warranty is around £600-£700, which makes the potential forthcoming warranty of £1k a no brainer! To be fair, this along with a temp gauge failure last year, it has not been too bad.

G

[ORD]

I love the use of the word "catastrophic". In my book, a cable failure would only be catastrophic if it sheered loose and cut off my legs/nuts.

[Gio G]

ORD said:

I love the use of the word "catastrophic". In my book, a cable failure would only be catastrophic if it sheered loose and cut off my legs/nuts.

Yes, agreed, I laughed when the service guy used that term... However losing use of your gears could be quite catastrophic in certain situations..

G