1BadAction

A little cautionary tale here. If you're going to replace a valve body, set aside 2 weeks and have another vehicle to drive. I thought I 100% had my chit together on this deal and it went pear shaped almost immediately.

I was starting to get small issues with shifting when hot, a little bit of flare, some slightly harsh shifts, etc. All of us Cayenne owners know what that means, and with 112,000 miles I knew it was my time. The first gut feeling comes when I call RevMax to order the valve body. I tell him "Cayenne GTS, NOT an S, there's a lot of changes between the two and I'd almost bet that the VB is one" - I get the "no no, it's not a turbo it gets the same valve body as an S model" I still have that gut feeling but hey they're the ones who do this every day, they know better than me. More on this later.

Everything came apart nicely. No cracked or broken connectors, didn't even spill a DROP of fluid on the floor. Magnets in the pan were absolutely beautiful, over 100k miles and they barely had a thing on them. Fluid also looked old, but still blood red and not burnt. I was feeling real good by this point, going to have nice clean fluid and filter and a fresh transmission. I get it all buttoned up and everything torqued down sans the drain plug. Didn't get a speck of dirt dust or nastiness in it, everything was going excellent. Go to torque it to 28nm and feel like it's starting to pull the threads. (This is a Hazet Torque wrench, no junk, btw.) I tell myself "ahh trust the tq rating, you'll be ok, it's just compressing the aluminum washer" - Sure enough it strips the threads on the drain plug, now the plug will not come out of the pan, so I need to take the pan off and drill the plug out. The threads in the pan itself look like they weren't originally cut all the way, or something else happened when it was manufactured. Whatever. I now have a pan with buggered threads and no drain plug. 2 days later I have a new drain plug, yet another aluminum seal/washer, and a heli-coil kit (10mmx1.5, FYI) for the pan. I'm 4 working days into it at this point ubering back and forth to the office or scrounging rides. It's slowly turning into one of "those" jobs. This is friday. The day my original valve body hit the shipping department at revmax.

Saturday I was bleeding brakes and rotating tires at the same time I did all this, so she is up on 4 jackstands with no tires/wheels ready to fill. I start the fill procedure, by myself. Get about 4 litres in it, start it, and get about 3 more in, so I need to move the shift lever in gear to pull some more fluid in, I do so... and it stalls. WTF? Does it a couple times. I put it back in park still running and start to fill it again. Get another litre in it and figure its going to need to be in gear to get the last little bit in (common with these). Put it in gear and it stalls when I put my foot on the brake. WTF? I figure since it's on jacks in the air, the stability control or some other traction control nanny is freaking out, so I drop it back into neutral, fill it and figure that's going to be good enough. Get about 8.5 litres in it total, it hits 40c and I cap it off. Drop it off the jackstands, put it in drive, and as soon as the clutches apply, it's like someone dumps a clutch in a manual transmission car, BAM it lurches forward and it stalls out. There's no torque converter function. I can feel the TCC clutch LOCKED up. At this point I know something hydraulically is different with the valve body and I am LIVID. I finally get ahold of someone at revmax this morning and he immediately knows whats wrong when he looked at the order. The GTS does in fact use the same valve body as the turbo NOT the one from the S. I was told "the person that took your order is new here"... great, now I get to **** $150 worth of fluid and god knows how much time away to train the newbie. Now, to avoid any other issues, my originally VB is being intercepted and they are going to rebuild that and send it back. Maybe I'll get lucky and have it by this friday. If any damage was done running it 20' down the driveway and back up again remains to be seen, but I am not in the least bit happy about this situation. This is not an in-between year, it should've been an in and out simple straightforward procedure, and honestly I've just spent almost 30k on parts for a project truck, I don't know if I want to swing 5-6k on this transmission if something is broken, hard part or otherwise.

Anyhow, moral of the story. Don't trust anyone, always trust your gut and if you get a bad feeling about the info you're given, press them to get the opinion of someone else. Also, if I had it to do over, I would've waited until my second vehicle was up and running. No core return, no BS, just put the truck up on jacks and let it sit while they do MY valve body.

nodoors

Sorry to hear about the issues. We all feel your pain. At least you will have really clean transmission fluid now that it has been replaced twice!

Let it be known to any rookies, that these are not good daily drivers if it is your only car. I have other vehicles to drive, but mine has been down for many weeks while I wait for a couple backordered parts. I suppose it gives me plenty of time to clean and degrease everything thoroughly while I have easy access.

1BadAction

Some are better than others, that's for sure. Mine has been dead reliable for almost 3 years now. That's one of the big reasons it chaps my *** that this situation bit me like it did, it's almost like it's self inflicted because it ran great when I pulled it in the garage (outside of a few shifting quirks) and I ALWAYS try to be overly prepared. I have a cardan shaft repair ready to go, I have extra fluids, 21" tire, brake pads, sensors, oil filters, o-rings, gaskets, air filters, serpentine belt, cabin filters, and so on. Such is life when you're doing the work yourself though, sometimes things just go wrong no matter how prepared you are. Either have a second vehicle or be ready to walk if necessary. lol. Fact is, I could've dropped the pan and found a lot of clutch material and metal, then what? So it could've been worse.

Also, to note. I'm not complaining about any vendor, or anything at all really. It just happened that I had a few pieces of ****luck in a row that have me out of my driver for a couple weeks, and I'm cranky when I can't drive my Porsche.

PTEC

Not that it helps now but the spec from Porsche on the small drain plug is 20 nm not 28.

oldskewel

28 Nm is the spec for my 2004 S. I never removed the bolt, but noticed some seeping ATF around the plug when inspecting my new-to-me truck. So I checked the spec and tightened it up, finding it a little loose. Nothing stripped in my case.

28 N-m is 20.65 ft-lbs

PTEC

Where are you getting 28 from? The official workshop manual states 20 nm.

oldskewel

Service manual for my 2004 S. I'll see if I can attach the page here.

PTEC

It looks like they changed it at some point to 20 nm.

1BadAction

Now this is an interesting development. Looks like they (Porsche) changed up the tq spec in later service manuals and that points to this not being an isolated incident. I was weary of that amount of torque being put on a short 10mm bolt that wasn't fine thread, but I fell back on 28nm since it is what I have read pretty much everywhere. No matter, with the heli-coil it doesn't leak at all and I can tighten it down enough to squirt the aluminum gasket right out the side if I wanted.

To update on the VB situation, Revmax overnighted it out this afternoon, so it was a less than 2 day turnaround time to rebuild it. I turo'd a 2011 GTS Panamera so I'm not so damn cranky. LOL