my post obviously addresses the scenario where the TCM swap or similar workaround does not solve your intermittent PDK issue, leading to the PDK swap

 

991s also 2013. New car. Similar issue, parked up for a few minutes returned no gears pdk error. Also occurred when in heavy traffic on hotish days. Turned out to be a software threshold temperature setting. Dealer said it was a known issue, software update altered this threshold and have never had the issue again. Some 35k miles on and all is good.

 

Yeah. No one looking to buy this car in the future will question why a low-mileage, two-year-old car needed a new transmission.

 

get it fixed under warranty and trade it.
Appears that this car could be from a bad batch.

 

What a lot of drama in some of the responses.

 

You win.

Just spoke to the Service Adviser......the control module didn't remedy the situation so a new transmission is on order and will be installed.

 

I think that was a pretty fast resolution of a major (and expensive) problem. Bravo to Porsche.

 

Kudos to the Service Adviser team at Rusnak Pasadena.....at the same time, i've been a good customer to them, have seen them way too many times with this car, and feel as though i deserved the attention given up to now. still have the windshield sitch to deal with!

 

these are complicated electro- mechanical devices ...( today's DCT computer driven transmissions ) ....and a history of one swapped when car was newer , like here, is more indicative of a bad one off the assembly line ....I would worry more about a human driven manual gear box swapped so soon and what that meant about the early owners' skills and mechanical sympathies

same reasoning why I would never consider a pre owned manual transmission vehicle..the great unknowables are the conditions of the gear teeth and synchros of the tranny and the gear sets of the differentials if previous drivers were careless or clueless or evil down shifters...the wear item clutch, t/o bearing and flywheel are trivial by comparison

 

^^^

I see your point and appreciate your explanation. The OP will want to keep detailed records to document the reason for the swap.

 

I hate to hijack, but...

I looked at a slightly used Boxster a couple of years ago. The owner/seller took me for a ride, and I couldn't help but notice that at 55 MPH as he slowed for a stop sign, he's run it down through the gears (clutch disengaged the whole time) until at about 40 MPH he'd slide it into first. This did not impress me. Seems to me that it's unnecessary synchro wear. I wait until the car is stopped or nearly stopped to go into first, but maybe I just don't know how to drive? He didn't beat up on the clutch or do anything else particularly bad, but that jamming into first at a high speed really bothered me.

His attitude on the price and refusal to let me test drive (no insurance, he claimed) led me to not buy the car. He ended up selling it back to the dealer.

 

imagine if that owner traded it in instead ...someone eventually bought that car off a dealer lot ...that buyer had no inkling how this guy drove it ( my previous point ) ...then a few thousand miles down the road he posts on a Boxster board complaining that his car pops out of second gear constantly or " hits a wall " trying to slot into third gear if accelerating hard or grinds occas ...usual peanut gallery on line advice is " simple fix ..your shift cables just need re-adjustment " ....uhhhh yeah right !

 

Coming from the S2000 I can sympathize with rowing through the gears except I would have waited for the appropriate road speed before picking each gear. The S2000's transmission didn't take skipping gears very well because each synchro was only designed to take the loads from its neighboring gears. As a result there are a lot of S2000s that are effectively locked out of 6th gear due to synchro wear.

Here's a common scenario: you accelerate hard in 1st and 2nd then realize that you're really loud and breaking the speed limit, so you immediately shift to 6th and go about normally. The problem here is that the 6th gear synchro on the S2000 is tiny since it's only designed to accommodate the small RPM drop from 5th to 6th. The correct way to go about getting to 6th in that situation is to clutch in, row through 3rd, 4th, 5th, and finally 6th before finally clutching up. The same applies when downshifting unless you clutch up in neutral at some point to slow down the input shaft.

This is highly specific to the S2000, though. Nearly every other car has synchros that are beefy enough to slow down or speed up the transmission from just about every gear. But out of habit I end up rowing through all of the gears anyway.

 

I bet that " WOT 1st and 2nd , then quickly into 6th gear " behavior occurred daily with some S2000 drivers at their freeway on - ramp , merging in quietly to heavy traffic at 60 mph like a choir boy !

 

Exactly! And I have to admit that I was guilty of that too until I started reading about S2000 gearbox teardowns and the reasons behind the failures. The fragile synchros on that car are a blessing and a curse. It's got some of the most precise and satisfying shifts of any manual gearbox I've ever used. On the flip side it can't take very much abuse.