I had a new Porsche OEM top put on two years ago. I've driven the car 4,000 miles since and it's garage kept. Over the past few months the rear window began coming unglued, a small rip was happening in the canvas around the window, the locking mechanism on the right front windshield had a gear failure (clicking noise) and the top wanted to slam down when raising it the last few inches.

Took the car into the dealer for inspection and repair. They called me after 3 days and said the repair was going to be about $10k!!!

They said that some of the transmissions/motor mounts in the rear (that are mounted to the inside of the body) had failed and that they would need to be re-welded by a body shop that once they were re-mounted they would have to be inspected and that the cable would have to be re-done and that i had to have a new top because they couldnt just re-glue the window. They would also have to fix/replace the front locking motor on the passenger side.

The $10k aside, has anyone had the transmission mounts fail and what have you done to correct it? Is it possible to re-glue the rear window instead of replacing the entire top?

I love my car but 30-40% of the value of my car to fix the top??

 

Wow, sorry to hear about that, Peter.

It's not uncommon for those welds that hold the transmissions to the body to fail; I had a 95 C4 cabriolet that had a broken weld. The shop that had worked on the top for the previous owner had somehow inserted a good sized washer and a nut behind the sheet metal that the transmission bolt was screwed into, and the washer held it in position.

There was a recall on the latches by PCNA awhile back ... was it performed on your car? I have heard opinions that the replacement latches were inferior to the originals.

If you bought the top two years ago from a Porsche dealer, and it's an OEM top, I thought Porsche parts carried a two-year warranty. If it's been longer than two years, you should try to speak to the zone rep for PCNA about getting some goodwill on that top. It's an expensive piece and it shouldn't have failed. Perhaps it failed due to an incorrect installation?

If you're not getting anywhere with PCNA or the dealer, I would call a few service advisors at the luxury dealerships in town and find out who they take their convertible top problems to. There's usually an independent guy or shop who is the go-to solution ... chances are they can reglue the window and repair the canvas. Particularly with the older cars, the dealer solution seems to be "replace it."

If that doesn't work, there are aftermarket replacement tops from GAHH and others that are going to be significantly less expensive than the factory top. Lots of threads on here about that -- Mike in Boston -- nile13 -- recently did a new GAHH top on his car, perhaps he can share what it cost him.

The slamming top close and dealer's opinion that the cables need replacing are all-too-common maladies for the factory top mechanism. If it were my car, I would pull the cables out of the motor behind the rear seats, remove the entire transmission assemblies, put that 15 or so pounds of extra weight in a box in a garage, and just put the top up and down by hand from now on, using the switch on the console to operate the latches. Because even if you drop $10k on another new top, new cable, repaired latch and re-welding the transmission mounting points, one day it's going to jam on you again and there's another bill you might be facing -- and god forbid it manages to twist the top frame or fracture a support arm.

It's just an antiquated top design that relies on simultaneous brute force to raise and lower the top ... once one side gets out of alignment or has a cable problem, something bad is going to happen.