Winterreise

I wanted to post this youtube video of my 1:15 hour job installing the Vertex cardan shaft carrier bracket on my 2005 Cayenne base. The original bracket failed at 104 k with the loud thumping sound emanating from under the center arm rest. Sure enough, the original rubber seal of the bracket had failed. porsche of Rochester wanted $1600 to replace the entire shaft with a factory one, my INDY
porsche mechanic could do it for $900 but Sidney at Vertex sent me this 2 half moon clamp style bracket for $420. With this design the shaft does not need to be removed. It was straight forward and now the car runs symptom-free. I am very happy with this solution.

westy66

Nice video. A shot of the new part would have been nice to see

Winterreise

Yes, that would have been better to do. I had the part away from me while under the car doing video... It looks like this:
Attachment 760097

Attachment 760098

joeyvaz

Great vid. I'm about to replace my cardan shaft this weekend. Just ordered from Vertex as well.

Winterreise

You won't be sorry. Just confirm that the shaft bearing is quiet and smooth. Also, so that the two halves of the clamp seat perfectly around the bearing, the bearing must be completely free of the residual rubber. Take your time with a razor blade - I went through 5 of them to get mine clean. its so easy and saved me over $1K in repair costs. It also permanently rectifies the original design problem. You'll never replace the cardan unit again.
Bob

endless_corners

As long as the vertex clamp is robust enough to last for life.

JD305

This is a upgrade that is offered by one of my local porsche mechanics...he shows a video posted on how it's done.

HansStuck

Yep, I can vouch for this one too...did it a couple weeks ago (although my price was more like $489 from Vertex, how'd you get $420?).

It took me right around an hour, but I have no doubt I could do it in 45 minutes again if needed, and that's without a lift. The job was completely easy except for scraping the old rubber off the bearing as you mentioned, and that was a complete PITA (I also used a razor blade but only used 1). I will say that I did have a thin amount of rubber in a couple places on mine after I finished, and it has caused zero issues, so it probably isn't necessary to completely clean it.....I definitely wasn't going to take a grinder to the bearing to clean the rubber off like they did in the Vertex how-to video.

In response to endless_corners comment, the clamp would definitely last for life----the little rubber bushings that dampen driveline shock may go over the long haul, but they are individually replaceable (and I imagine they must be cheap), and that's a fix I think I could do in under a half hour if ever it was needed.

Anyway, just wanted to throw in another vote for this fix......the enginerd in me appreciates ingenuity like this applied to our cars.