ADias

Very sensitive to battery level. This morning I quickly drained my battery (see separate post) and even before trying to start the engine I had errors in most subsystems - PSM, PASM, and a few others. All fixed once the battery was recharged.

booshka823

Aside from the old, tired "manual is more involving, and besides I'm a better, slimmer, handsomer, richer driver while rowing my own gears" argument, let me add that we bought our 997.2S PDK in March of 2014, and she is about to roll over 82,000 miles in daily traffic and club events with absolutely no issues.
To be honest, I know that some of you PDK haters are looking to start some sort of issue with this transmission. A schadenfreude of sorts. But I can tell you that those that hate it have never driven one. Almost everyone to a T that drives a PDK comes away impressed. It doesn't have to be a "leave it in D" transmission. Put it in manual and row away. No overrides. You are the boss.
Anyway I just wanted to chime in and let you know that at 82K miles I haven't seen any issues with the PDK. I WILL add though that a low or bad battery WILL cause havoc in a lot of other areas. But that isn't the tranny. And shops WILL take advantage if they can't diagnose something. Because it could NEVER be the battery!

RLH
Currently:
09 997.2S PDK
84 911 Carrera 3.2 Targa
87 928S4 Auto
88 944 Turbo S Plaidmeister
Past:
'73 911T
'82 911SC
'95 993
'06 997.1S

liu2k3

Mine failed mid-2015 with 47k miles.
2009 C4S, daily driver with ~8 track days / year
It started with a check engine light for "O2 server malfunction" and then a couple hours later I got "Transmission emergency run" fault and the car was stuck in 2nd gear
replacement costs: parts $8.5k, labor $2.2k

Hi Hatzenbach
Mine is 2010 C2 with 33k miles, it stuck in 2nd gear twice and functioned normally after pulling over and restart the engine. It first happened 3 months ago, the dash showed white transmission emergent run twice previously. I then have mine checked at local dealer. After 1 day of exam, the mechanic can't find anything wrong and he reset the PDK computer (?). However, It happened again yesterday. And again, after pull over, shut down, rest a while, then restart. The car act as nothing has happened. I am curios what happened after your car stuck in 2nd gear before the transmission is replaced. Was it like mine can go without problem after restart or just stuck there?

liu2k3

Hi Hatzenbach
Mine is 2010 C2 with 33k miles, it stuck in 2nd gear twice and functioned normally after pulling over and restart the engine. It first happened 3 months ago, the dash showed white transmission emergent run twice previously. I then have mine checked at local dealer. After 1 day of exam, the mechanic can't find anything wrong and he reset the PDK computer (?). However, It happened again yesterday. And again, after pull over, shut down, rest a while, then restart. The car act as nothing has happened. I am curios what happened after your car stuck in 2nd gear before the transmission is replaced. Was it like mine can go without problem after restart or just stuck there?

My993C2

As a new 997.2 C2S owner with the PDK, I am more concerned about adapting to driving a PDK equipped car without a clutch pedal than I am about the possibility that the PDK transmission will crap out on me. You see with the exception of driving the odd rental car (which does not happen that often these days), I have driven nothing but stick all these years day in and day out since the early 90s (my daily driver a Jeep Wrangler is manual and all other cars I have owned since the early 90s have been manuals). So when I jump into my new PDK equipped 997, the first thing that crosses my mind is "Where's the clutch pedal" and "How do I heal toe this thing going into the corners". Of course the heal toe is no longer needed and as long as I remember to brake before the turn and then be back on the gas in the turn, I am sure my experiences of driving the 997 with the PDK will not be all that much different than when I drive my manual 993. However there is one thing that is in the back of my mind and that is "Where is the clutch pedal". Of course I can't really remember the last time I needed to do this in the 993, but it is ingrained in my mind and that is, if I detect that I am losing the rear end, I always had the option to step on the clutch pedal to try and control the situation. But now with the PDK, that option is not available and getting on the brakes could just make things worse. So being more disciplined with the "Get your braking done early and then get on the gas" will be even more important in the 997. Oh and I am in the early days of adapting to the PDK driving style. I am sure in time (especially once the paddle shifters arrive) that everything will be fine. I am just so used to heal toeing every where I go (including when I drive me Jeep) that driving the PDK equipped car is a new experience.

Now with all that said, if my PDK transmission on my "new to me" 997 with only 31,500 kms (or 19,500 miles) was to crap out on me, I hope it happens before April of 2019 because the car is still under warranty until that time. haha

Petza914

In a rear engine car, with the weight pendulum back there, if you feel the rear end stepping out, pushing in the clutch to cut the power, which shifts the weight balance even more toward the front, unweighting the rear even further, is the last thing you should be doing. It's counter intuitive to your reflex, but what you want to do is maintain or add throttle to keep the rear weight how it is even add a little, then countersteer into the skid, with will put you into a nice gentle rear end drift and allow you to power through the corner. If you've never done this in a 911, you're missing half the fun.

With PDK, I believe pulling both paddles toward you at the same time selects neutral, which would be the equivalent of pushing in the clutch in a manual transmission car, but since I don't own any PDK Porsches, someone else should verify that's how you select Neutral.

My993C2

I only ever lost the rear end of my 993 once which was the very first time I tracked the car on the very first lap at speed when I went into turn #1 off the main straight too fast for my experience level at the time, panicked, got on the brakes and you guessed it, spun her up. I never made that mistake again in the following 35 or so track days I did since that first and only spin. Now there were a few times when I tracked the car and when it rained when I did get to experience power on over steer in a 911 and it was fun and a really good experience driving in the wet where you can actually feel what the tires were doing. But my 993 is only a medium speed Porsche generating only about 285 HP and it was a great car to learn on, but hardly a car that would bite me very hard if I made mistakes. However I can understand what you are saying because I once had a conversation with a motorcycle racer concerning a low side slide I once had (yes there are two types of motorcyclists, those who have crashed and those who have yet to crash and I fall into the crashed category). Anyway when I described my low side crash in a corner to this motorcycle racer, what he told me was very similar to what you just said which was to "Just get on the gas a little more, keep leaning the bike and trust that the bike will do what it needs to do". Not an easy thing to do. But yeah unweighting a vehicle mid corners is not what we want to have happen and I am definitely looking at a learning curve of learning to drive the PDK versus the manual transmissions I am used to. But this thread is about the reliability of the PDK, so perhaps I should start a new thread if I want to talk about driving the PDK. But thanks for the info on engaging both paddles at the same time. I am going to have to try that out when my paddle shifter steering wheel arrives. Of course I probably shouldn't be doing it mid corner and would I even be able to do it mid corner. LOL

Charles Navarro

Like I have mentioned previously, my experience is if you keep the gearbox cool and service the pdk side much more often than Porsche tells you, they are very reliable. I've seen cars with hundreds of hours of track only use have zero PDK issues, but we have always added extra cooling and change the fluid after every other event and filter ever other fluid change. May be overkill, but it works.

On all my cars I own with DSG boxes on the street, I will change the fluid every 2 years or 24,000 miles TOPS.

It's been my experience that even on full autos, I can tell when the fluid it getting to about 20k miles. Shifts usually aren't as crisp.

If you wait to change the fluid until you hit 100k miles, the transmission will likely fail after changing the fluid the first time. I've had that happen personally on more than one car with unknown service histories and we're pretty sure had never had their transmissions serviced.

ocgarza

wjk_glynn

With later models (e.g. 991), that feature was supported.

But it's not supported on the 997.2

Karl.

qikqbn

This should be entertaining...

Big Swole

32K miles on my Turbo S PDK. 3 owner with records from new. Now sure how they drove it but I drive it mostly conservative unless I'm in the mountains, but even then the tranny isn't being abused simply due to having to hold only two or maybe three gears at those speeds. Not a ton of shifting.


32K miles...Should I proactively have my PDK serviced?

Fined

I would. The maintenance schedule is 60k miles or 6 years for the first PDK service. My 2011 was also under the mileage but I noticed a big improvement in shift quality after the PDK service. "YMMV".

https://gaudinporschelv.com/images/d...9_911S_997.pdf

Big Swole

Good deal...Thank you!!

sandwedge

FWIW.....to those who have had more than one " Transmission Emergency Run " event, it may or may not mean anything. The failure of the PDK on my -09 C4S was preceded by two of those events. Just the warning on the dash but no other problems. Both cleared themselves by turning the car off and back on. Third time the same warning came on the car just wouldn't move no matter which gear was selected or in which mode. Flatbed to the dealer where it didn't take long to determine the whole unit had to be replaced. Codes they pulled indicated some kind of software failure.

Best I can remember these three events happened within a 1-2 month period.