Doug H

sandwedge

Same here. If my GTS wasn't a PDK car I would have self insured after the CPO expired. Bought Fidelity coverage only because of the PDK, especially having been through one $14,000 failure already with my previous car. No argument......very low odds of failure but with the miles on my car approaching 60K, the cost of a failure from her on would get close to 25% of the value of the car.

JohnC4S

11Spyder700

2011 Spyder w/ 40,500 mi, I do participate in PCA DEs but do NOT abuse the car. Transmission failed - needs to be replaced. Waiting to hear from Porsche after the dealer informed me that "we as a dealership are proposing a goodwill opportunity to Porsche"

Steph1

The results seem to steer towards my findings..... If one thing, the PDK is worst that the IMS, therefore the clear reliability winner is a manual 997.2....

From best to worst would be 997.2 with manual, 2006-2008 997.1, 2005 997.1, 1997-2005 996, and worst of all, 997.2 with PDK..... who would have known😜

I didn't vote since they aren't mine, but in my neck of the woods, I know 2 997.2 with PDK and they both failed while their owner don't track them.

Their experience is one of the reasons I went with a 997.1 rather than a 997.2 with PDK, cause I originally wanted an automatic..... but decided on a 6spd.2007 cause the tiptronic while much more reliable, is not a good match for a 911. Would have sucked to have spent some 10K more for a 997.2 to avoid the infamous ims problems, only to find out that the PDK has twice the failure rate!!!!!

Charles Navarro

The pdk from the factory doesn't come with enough cooling for the track, even a DE.

They did add with the 981 a gear cooler in addition to the pdk side cooling, which helps, but it's still not enough.

Balr14

The rates I was quoted by Fidelity for platinum coverage for my car was $11k, for drive train coverage it was $3k. These were both for 4 years and 40k miles on my 09 C2S with 54k miles. There was no difference quoted for manual or automatic transmissions, however manual transmissions had exclusions for clutch and related parts. If the PDK was an issue I would have expected a much higher rate. Quotes from other companies were much lower.

J_D

Lots of hearsay, and speculation in this thread.

Comparing.1 IMS failures to .2 PDK failures...... How is this remotely possible?

My GTS is PDK. I have zero fear of it failing. Can it happen, sure, all mechanical things fail.

You guys sound like the guys on the Rolex forums, afraid to actually wear their watch or debate taking the stickers off.

It's nothing but a watch at the end of the day, not some holy relic to be worshipped. Same as a Porsche. Drive it, enjoy it.

Don't be that guy that only pulls out of the garage to polish it, and panics at the first threat of rain.

PDK, manual, who gives a ........? You bought your car because it pleased you. What else matters?

ADias

I challenge those with real PDK problems to research inside the Porsche community of PDK cars, as well as PCNA sources and post the numbers of PDK failures. Is it 20% of the production, 10%, 5%, 1%? Without real data, one's failure is a personal loss but otherwise meaningless.

This thread already illustrates those (statistically insignificant) personal losses, along with the doomsayers and others with personal agendas (e.g., the manual is the only one to have).

Fined

Hopefully you realize this wouldn't be possible by anyone, not even Porsche. Same goes with other kinds of failures. The only information on this comes by way of hearsay. One shop knows of this many people who had issues, such and such forum member (who owns a manual car and can't shut up about it, of course) heard of this many people who had issues, one other forum member had a problem with his car and made a post... etc etc. Even Porsche couldn't know this information themselves, not to a great accuracy. Since there will be folks who had failures who never contacted Porsche. And there will be folks who had failures who fiddled and made some adjustments and found out it wasn't a failure. And I have no doubt, that somewhere someone has successfully repaired an issue themselves and perhaps didn't report anything about it either. Gathering all of this information as well as various posts from forums... as well as the fact that PDK cars exist globally, and what about those numbers. There simply isn't a way to gather this data, by anyone. Those trying to pin a number on it are just making **** up. flat out.

Charles Navarro

The PDK has proven to be bulletproof. We had zero failures in all the track cars we built and maintained for years. But we service the hell out of them and add extra cooling, etc.

If you track the car, you can't observe the factory service intervals. Even if it's a DE, you have to service the car as if it's a race car. Sorry, in my experience, mixed use street/DE cars are not serviced as regularly as is required.

Bare minimum for street use, the factory service intervals need to be shortened. As I posted on this thread almost a year ago, I follow a two to three year or 24k and 36k for street cars whether it's a PDK, DSG, or automatic.

I'll go one step further and say bare minimum if you track your car, even DE, you have to change the transmission fluid once yearly.

We change the fluid every other track event and filter every second fluid change. Gear lube gets done every third event. Maybe overkill, but we had zero failures following this regimen.

ADias

Hearsay, especially as it is practiced in this thread, is incomplete information. Have no doubt that PAG and ZF do know. They know all the stats, number of failures and failure modes. No doubt about that! And that is what's real.

J_D

I would like to see the ratio of actual failures, vs how many were delivered. Is it less then 1%.....5%?

Of course forum numbers are typically inflated for things that go wrong.

Also, I'd like to know how many people have a car that failed that was poorly maintained to begin with? what was the percentage of poorly maintained PDK issues, compared to ones that weren't. How many were tracked in very hot conditions? So many variables to make such a blanket statement, like IMS which is an acknowledged design issue.

Lots of people I know lease them and barely care about maintenance for the simple reason that it'll be someone else's problem soon. How many people can barely afford the car, and don't also follow the recommended proper maintenance (This isn't only a Porsche issue)

pilfer

good point, I think deferred maintenance is how most german cars got their reputation for poor reliability. I recently bought a B7 RS4, $75,000 price tag new, I got it for under $30,000. The car is over half off in price but maintenance and parts still cost like they do for a $75,000 car.

Steph1

Regarding leases, a dealer told me that while it is a fact that people should avoid cars that were owned by leasing companies for daily and weekly leases, the long term leasee on the other hand has a contract and therefore an obligation to at least follow the recommended maintenance and cares for his/her car to make sure to avoid big penalties for not following the dealer maintenance schedule.