AdamSanta85

Do the shops that do the sensor replacement need the entire car, or just transmission for a 991 repair? Not thrilled about having to send the entire car halfway across country. Many more opportunities for issues such as shipping damage

Kuro Neko

That depends on if the shop that removes the PDK, can willingly accept someone else's work, reinstall, and then calibrate.
The potential for blame shifting is directly proportionate to the number of parties involved...

Thus, I would source a reputable shipper for the whole car and repairer.
The cost of crating and shipping a PDK is likely to approach the easier ro-ro for the whole car?

Surprised though you cannot find a shop in NY, when I can find one in the near Japanese countryside...

PV997

Actually the point of this thread was to empower people to deal with this themselves. It's called "Guide to repairing a PDK transmission" not "Guide to hiring someone to do it for you." Don't get me wrong, I'm glad this thread led to options for people with more money than mechanical aptitude, but that wasn't the initial purpose.

If you are happy with $500 for dealership oil changes for "peace of mind" then by all means hire someone, preferable one of the shops with a good track record. It will be cheaper than a Porsche Dealership (but frankly what isn't) but it's still going to put a serious dent in the kid's college fund.

For those of you that are bit more adventurous, watch jjrichar's video in comment #1049. This is on a Cayman which is a bit easier than a 911, but watch how quickly he does it. He's not a mechanic but just a sharp guy that likes to tinker. No special tooling needed aside from a puller fabricated from a plate of metal and some threaded stock from Home Depot. You will need a PIWIS to calibrate the transmission but that has been democratized now too thanks to cheap Chinese manufacturing.

Our work on the low-cost distance sensor is coming along nicely with the first breadboard revealing a few surprises. The simplicity of this thing is mind-boggling when you realize people are getting a $20k screw job from Porsche when it fails. What a racket.

I prefer:
1) Encourage
2) Educate
3) Empower
4) Take action

If that action leads you to hire someone then that's great. But do it from a position of knowledge and strength, not as someone feeing sorry for themselves at the mercy of the system.

PV997

That's because you're a smart guy who learned everything you could about the PDK, then worked hand in and with an adventurous mechanic. You took ownership of the situation.

Many people aren't willing to do that unfortunately and just want to hand over the credit card. If this describes you then please take your car to a knowledgeable shop as we don't want to read about your misadventures in a future thread. However, if you are motivated, everything you need to know more than 99% of the mechanics out there is in this post and the comments.

AdamSanta85

A lot of assumptions in this response...

Yes, I trust myself to remove and reinstall the transmission. Yes, I trust myself to click "start pdk calibration" on my Launch X431 or Cobb AP. Yes, I can trust a transmission specialist to do transmission specialist work, just like I've done many times before for engine and differential builds.

My transmission is still in good working order, so I haven't tried to find a local specialist yet. Just planning ahead. I do know someone who does the Audi R8/Lamborghini DSG transmissions locally, so he would be my first stop.

toddlamb

Shops need the car to do diag, programming, and also check wiring. Shops would do a test drive as well to verify perfect operation. The sensor is just one small part of the repair. Kudos to those that want to swap the sensor and hope for a plug and play solution, but in our experience it's not normally that simple, the wiring and programming tend to be the most problematic parts.

AdamSanta85

Thanks for the response, much appreciated.

I have a follow-up about the wiring... is there more than just the 6 distance sensor wires that get spliced that need to be checked?

toddlamb

Not necessarily - we've found several failure modes with wiring that at first glance seemed like distance sensor or TCU issue.

notfastenough

PV997,
I agree with you and believe your desire to target a tiny sliver of late model Porsche owners is admirable. These are not Honda Civics and I'm betting exactly ZERO % of us live in a trailer park. Like it or not, most who read this have no intention nor means to actually replace the distance sensor themselves. Gaining knowledge is crucial but much different than doing the dirty work.

Personally, I have no problem paying a plumber thousands of dollars to replace fixtures and wrestle turds, work that I can obviously do myself, but life is short and I'm smart enough to stay in my wheel house where I can optimize my value. Between family, work, recreation, and church it certainly doesn't make intellectual sense for me to waste my precious time. When sizing up the late-model Porsche community as a whole, most owners feel the same way.

Thank you for all of your diligence and passion. I hope your next Heathkit experiment involves speed sensors because that's the other major failure we're seeing in PDKs.

AdamSanta85

If your time was as valuable as you claim, why are you wasting it reading this thread which has no relevance to you, since it’s no different than wrestling turds in a trailer park?

Ive wrestled transmissions out of cars with brain surgeons and HF portfolio managers… the difference is we just like cars more than you.

Fullyield

Many thanks to PV997 and notfastenough as you have both provided a valuable service to the Porsche community in an area where Porsche’s response and solution is highly unreasonable. I agree with PV997’s comments. I am amazed at how better educated I am on the PDK because of his work and willingness to share it in this thread. But, I also appreciate Beck’s European and Atlanta Speedwerks for providing an additional service for those Porsche owners who do not wish to address their distance sensor themselves for whatever reason. All of you provide viable options to the Porsche $20k solution which did not exist several years ago. Many thanks to jjrichar for his contributions and videos too. You have all made this a fantastic thread and the definition of community.

Fullyield

I am pleased that notfastenough and Todd Lamb are both monitoring this thread and adding appropriate comments and insights. They both have much more experience in this area than I do and their expert responses are always thoughtful. Not everyone has the same mechanical aptitude, tools or a lift to DIY a PDK distance sensor even with jjrichar’s excellent videos, photos and this thread. Other owners may have the aptitude and tools but might be of an age or have a physical issue that they can no longer safely wrestle a transmission even with a lift. Beck’s European and Atlanta Speedwerks both offer a viable option for those owners …….especially compared to the Porsche dealership response. But PV997 has written, coordinated and administered one hell of a great thread with the help of others.

notfastenough

This thread has profound relevance to me and certainly not a waste of 10-15 min of my morning reading and contributing!

I enjoy cars immensely but love other things more.

Floyd540

Maybe the answer lies above! I am going to look in my latest Heathkit catalog and find their PDK distance sensor and also look for their PDK analyzer . If I find it ,I know it will work.
I don't have a dog in the PDK fight, but I am a longterm Heathkit guy.

jjrichar

I understand PV's motivation behind this thread, and wanting to empower the DIYer to repair their own car.

My motivations behind the videos I made were definitely for DIY, but at least as much for the mechanic who thinks the PDK is so unknown and risky they won't consider the work. Let's be clear, compared to a lot of the work a Porsche specialty workshop would do, changing the distance sensor is child's play. I simply hope that workshops see that bloke on YT with vastly smaller tool set can knock it out easily in a day and there is little to it. Yes they need a PIWIS and some basic diagnostic skills if there is wiring problem where you need to dig a bit deeper. That's what they do every day.

99% of the time when a diagnostic system says 'error with this sensor', you change the sensor and the problem goes away. Very occasionally there is a gremlin or two that needs to be worked through. This is very much the outlier. I simply can't understand the quoted standard hours to do this fix. For the 987/981/718 the transmission stays in the car. Put it on jack stands, sit on the ground and it's right there in front of you. It barely gets easier. The transmission comes out in the 911, so you will need a lift, transmission jack and engine support. But the time required is low because there's just not that much to do, especially if the car isn't 4WD and does't have PDCC.

Like everything with these cars, Porsche just makes thing easy. There is this belief that because it's high performance and expensive that it must be difficult. Quite the opposite. These cars are so well designed to make maintenance easy. If only I had a dollar for every time I said the words 'I love Porsche engineers' when working on the car. Compare that to 'WTF was the design engineer thinking' that I regularly screamed at an Audi I used to own. The design philosophy is clearly not just 'make it go fast'. A big part is 'make it easy'. It's only when you start working on them you realise this is the case. You don't know but a lot of what you are paying for is this. Porsche maintenance should be cheaper, not more expensive than other car makes in my opinion.

I feel for the person who knows little about the car they love, something goes wrong and the only option is to truck it half a nation away and spend many thousands to get it back on the road. I just hope that a few more workshops do some reading and watching, and then work out that if a DIYer down under can do it then an experienced Porsche workshop might also be able to with little effort.