SToronto

Good point, maybe a dash cam is in order.

halfmonkey

Oh snap! All of these responses saying that this was a thing on the 981 is not good. Being new to the Porsche brand and these forums, you do miss out on some important discussions. I've spent many hours combing through important and interesting threads but since I'm not buying a 981, I had no reason to visit that forum.

Is there anything else that I'm missing that I should be aware of. If so, could you be so kind to also either PM me the thread link or maybe just share with everybody in case there are others in the same boat as me. I guess I'll be looking for that 981 strut brace thread.

dmk2

So far it appears to be the GT cars primarily.

SToronto

Third gear failure was common for a batch of cars with certain production date range. I know local dealer replaced some along with a friends. Mine was fine on both counts and I tracked the GT4, albeit only a handful of times before trading. Though I believe mine was out of the troubled production rage IIRC. Third gear issue was covered under warranty.

Did you know 991.1 GT3 engines caught fire? Major issue that Porsche finally caved in on and supported replacements with extended warranties.

SToronto

981 GT4 and 718/982 GT4 use GT3 front ends, rest of 981 and 718 range do not.

Jawnathin

Yikes. Very disappointing the issue remains on the 718, you would have thought Porsche would have engineered a solution.

Even though these failures are relatively uncommon, it happens unexpectedly with such severe consequences that it would make me nervous.

Archimedes

This. This was not a common problem on the 981 and every instance was due to hitting something. Shame it's not more durable, but it's not a design or manufacturing defect. Don't hit stuff.

That said, I cringe every time I watch a 718 track video where the driver is just pummeling the car over the curbing.

SToronto

This is correct but it shouldn't happen based on what I recall the impacts were.

Of course as far as was reported and known to the RL community.

I don't read the same in other RL sections.

911F1

I guarantee you can take a run of the mill Toyota Camry with the same size wheel/tire and strut/spring setup and hit the same pothole that some of these GT4 failures occur.
And nothing would happen to the Camry strut tower. It's a design flaw. Shame on Porsche if they didn't update the design. I really hope they did something new with the 718.
Again, really interested to see what happened with this Spyder failure.

hf1

Was hoping this would have been resolved on the 718 with GT3 suspension. Now the Spyder gets infected with it too. Another plus for the GTS 4.0 vs the Spyder.

Spyerx

GT3, 991, I guess the 718 use same front ends. The GT cars have stiffer springs, lower height, that likely contributes to the issue when the shock is bottomed out. I've seen a couple cars live with the issue and been at the track when a GT4 had this happen.

The 992 front end is quite different, hopefully addressed in the next generation....

dmk2

Engineering failure. Material science failure. Quality control failure.

I suspect all in the name of profitability.

Will we see further compromises with new generations?

wizee

I'd argue that it's normal to hit potholes and steps on road. They're just a fact of life. Often they're unavoidable, and every other car that drives an order of magnitude more mileage in regions with crappier roads can handle them without destroying strut towers. Cars should be tolerant of hitting routine potholes. I've hit hundreds of potholes in my life, some of which bottomed out suspensions. Some were avoidable, some were not.

Jawnathin

+1

A $100k+ car should not experience a failure of this magnitude driving on the road. And it is a 12 day old car, likely still in the break-in period without any track time, so its not like it suffered through repeated impacts and fatigue (which still isn’t a valid excuse).

Archimedes

You're comparing a lightweight, high performance suspension system to a heavy, pedestrian system, the latter of which is optimized for the street, to soak up potholes, insulate the driver from the road, etc. Would you prefer that your GT4 had a Camry front end?