Is PDK the new IMS?
 

Not trying to start arguments about which is better to drive or faster around the track. I'm just looking for info on PDK failures. I personally know of 6 just in my small circle of friends.

Probably one of the most reliable system components in a modern Porsche. More money shifts occurred than PDK failures (during any contemporary period of PDK cars and manual cars) - reason PCNA stopped bringing manual cars to Porsche Experience events due to destroyed clutches and worse.

Just had mine replaced on my 2009 C2 with just 21,200 miles on the odometer.

Bummer!!!


PS: Now you know the real reason why the cat in my avatar is pissed off!!!

Have been going back and forth on PDK or Manual when I move into a 997 soon, so would also like to understand what the failure was and how it happened.

Thanks,
-Skip

One difference between an IMS failure and a PDK failure is the repair cost.

While the list price of a new replacement PDK is ~$20K, per Cloudspin remanufactured units from PCNA (with warranty) can be found for ~$7K (see his comments here and here).

Out of curiosity I called Suncoast and for a 2010 Carrera S PDK (no LSD), they said $8,500 + shipping.

And there'd be a core charge of $5,800.

Not quite as cheap as what Cloudspin found, but I didn't spend anytime hunting down a better price.

So it's still a very expensive repair, but it's not as bad as an engine replacement due to IMS failure.

Karl.

A financially reasonable option is to pick up a Fidelity warranty covering drivetrain only and forget about it. I bought a policy through Michael Jourdan (504-352-8796) for $2300 for my 2009 C2S with 44,000 miles. Covers five years/60,000 additional miles.

As a side note, most of the failures I've heard of have had good luck getting Porsche to contribute to replacement cost.

WOW - there are also rare cases where it happens to 991's as well.


wtf? under what circumstances did these pdk's fail?

All of my friends failures are cars that are meticulously maintained and used as daily drivers AND do a few DE events a year. Only one failure occurred on the track (2010 C2S) last weekend. The others all occurred while driving on the street at normal speeds. 3 on Cayman Rs (2 of them on the same car) another on a Cayman S, and another C2S.
I posted the thread because I have been considering a PDK car. But when I googled "PDK gearbox failure" literally dozens of threads on multiple forums came up.

when I googled "PDK failure" I got 1 page of results. When I went to the 2nd page.. the results weren't in relation to the gearbox (or cars at all). 1 page of relevant results. When I googled "IMS failure".. the first 7 solid pages of results were relevant. It was on the 8th page that results weren't related to cars.

completely unscientific, but a result, nevertheless.

I went with a PDK, but avoided cars which would've had potential for an IMS issue. Choose your battles I guess. Somebody made a post on here in the last week about just having purchased an 6MT and it needing to have a new clutch almost immediately. Any way you slice it, you got potential for multiple $$$ repairs.

Yep. It's a Porsche, not a Toyota.

Be prepared for potential major expenses, and be happy if they never happen.

I keep my fingers crossed all the time that my PDK is OK. I did the 6 year PDK service at the Porsche dealer, so hopefully I'll be good to go and without any PDK issues for a long time. If it does happen, I will have to deal with it. But, I went into the buying experience knowing this could be a potential issue.

PDK failures are almost non-existant compared to the volume of PDK transmissions out there. Out of the minuscule amount of failure most have been attribute to electronic malfunction. At first I had a few issues with the PDK transmission failure appearing once every blue moon on my dash until I changed the battery, and problem solved. Battery has a big influence on badly diagnosed issues with our cars.

Please provide names of your "friends" that experienced PDK failures. Or, maybe post a link to one or two of the "dozens" of threads you claim.

I am sure I am not the only one that would like to know more about your claim.

Battery has a big influence on badly diagnosed issues with our cars.

Makes you wonder ......?

Yes, I kept getting that RED warning sign that says Emergency Transmission Run, please take you car to service ASAP. Also, my car wouldn't drive once the emergency sign appeared. I would reset it by turning the car off and on. I was getting that message almost every 3 weeks, specially after it sat for a while. I took it to the dealer and they couldn't duplicate the issues. They did noticed the codes and told me that the PDK would probably needed to be replaced. I went ahead and install a Walmart battery and the problem went away. This happened almost 10,000 miles ago.