And that kind of bonding cannot be done by a body shop I guess?

 

Many of the IMSA teams were told to clip the front end of their cars and weld them back on to make midseason repairs easier. I don't know of anyone who cut up a brand new car.

 

Was at Oreca Magny Cours this week end and they confirmed that the 991 cup are prone to failures and updated every now and then...

 

No problems with any 991s in the UK ..a lot boxes opened and all seem fine so far ..! Preventative maintenance always better than running to many Kms without opening and servicing which might cause damage and more expensive to fix

Gt24 Car was mine as I sold it to him ..box was opened after about 3500km and all looked good to Porsche ..! Maybe open again william in 1500km or so to have a look IMO ...!

 

the issue is not the wear on the parts. on that the 991 is superb. the issue is outright failure of components. i would say the 991 has lower wear than the 997 but a higher failure rate, if that makes sense.

 

Team

Thanks to all for the great responses - you are a mine of information! Apologies also for disappearing for a while, I come on here when work permits!

I will get in touch with Porsche re their 2015 updates - although the main one I am aware of is the change in the shift system from Shiftec to Megaline. Aside from the latter being a German manufacturer and hence closer to home, is anyone aware of a reason why Porsche would do that after one year? If price and supply management issues then I can get my head around that - would there be a performance reason why they would abandon Shiftec so soon? As Karl says, I am not aware of any 991 'boxes grenading themselves in the PCC GB, have you guys had experience of it in
the US?

We are out for our first race in the car this weekend - 500kms so plenty of time to see how the componentry performs!

Thanks again to everyone

Happy racing!

 

PS Karl, yes, I'm planning on taking the box apart over the winter - we have two races coming up, 500kms this weekend and 3hrs of Jarama in December - approx. 1,000kms I guess, so about the right time to take a peek inside

 

William you have email I send you all the costs for the gearbox internals ..all I can say guys the 991 gearbox is much cheaper to rebuild than the 997 ..much ..FACT

 

One has never been able to directly compare the European market prices to the US prices. And with a UK gearbox manufacturer, there's the potential for you guys to pay much less than we do. PMNA controls pricing here. Unless you want to start posting what you pay in Pounds Sterling and we post what is paid to PMNA in US dollars no comparison can be made.

 

You make a very good point. I have been surprised by how much costs can vary from one supplier to another, let alone from one market to another! And manufacturers are notorious in controlling costs and are hence incentivised to maintain an element of opacity around their respective running / repair / rebuild costs.

I've been lucky to have a great source of information and advice in Karl - who couldn't be more charming and resourceful when helping find out information or solve problems!

(No connection by the way, just one happy customer) (so far!!)

I'll let you all know how it goes on race weekend - and of course when it comes to rebuild time!

Happy racing!

 

Just to be clear, my comment is not meant as any sort of challenge to Karl and his expertise. He is a great resource to this community. It is just really hard in a world wide market to make any sort of blanket statement about costs.

One other thing I will add is that feedback I've heard from IMSA Challenge racing, which is our US sprint equivalent of Carrera Cup is that people are mostly happy with the gearbox. It is in GTD endurance racing where the weaknesses show themselves. GTD pretty much never races less than 2.5 hours and has 24, 12, 6 and 10 hour races on the schedule. As always endurance racing reveals what things are really made of.

 

Was only meant to point out that the 991 cup is not in fact more expensive in my Opinion that the 997 in the cup spec to run as has been getting a lot of bashing and scare mongering on here ..! forget the GTD I know nothing about them ..I did see the GTD cars in daytona this year as a friend Farnbacher was racing so I went to watch ..nothing but problems but that's a 991 trying to be a gt3 car it's a totally different machine than a 991cup
4.0 engine
Adjustable roll bars ..etc
Lovely Car but yea lots of problems and massive running costs I agree

I just got prices in today from Porsche for a 991 cup box rebuild and I can tell you than a gear is 390 euros than compare to a 12/13 box is a lot cheaper..! All 991 boxes opened this year have been in great condition ..compared to a 997 at the same kms ..

Yes there are bills on the way eventually but It can be rebuild at very good price ..I forwarded the prices to william above who bought a 991 cup from me a few weeks ago ..but im pleasantly surprised at the prices as in sure william is ..so alls good

 

Karl, I have seen a PAG invoice for a 991 gearbox rebuild. It scared the **** out of me. North of any number I have ever seen for a 997.

 

It appears that the gearbox issues are more widespread than just the "stressed" IMSA GTD cars. I was just forwarded a PAG 2015 update requirement list for 2014 991s. Ring and pinion, LSD, and cross shaft are now mandatory updates to compete. Goodwill pricing on the parts is 6000 Euro.

 

in 2.5 weeks about a dozen of them will line up for Dubai 24 hours. Last year the lone 991 retired a few hours in. This year we will have a good sample set. I don't know if all the cars are updated or not.