BGB Motorsports

Ladies and Gents,

I will be the first to admit that I needed to see it with my own eyes before I could have total faith in it, but this past Saturday evening we "used and abused" a PDK Cayman built to ITC spec during a 3 hour NASA enduro at Sebring. To date, this signifies the longest running of a PDK race car on my watch. I was lucky enough to join a new friend Dan Martinson who I met when he contact BGB 2 years ago inquiring as to the PDK's abilities to withstand abuse and asking us what we thought about its abilities to handle club racing.

The car was built by Bob Viau at Auto Edge and was equipped with nearly all of the cooling needs we deem mandatory for PDK transmission setup cars being run in the hot ambient temperatures of the southeast. The car is now looked after by Chris Smith Racing owner Chris Smith where it has undergone some revision with some more to come possibly.

The PDK performed just as I had told him it would but nothing beats a succesful experiment in real world conditions. Bob Jr. added some of his own cooling features to the rear bumper, Chris Smith put a phenomenal setup on it and prepped a car that ran fine and never fell off after 3 hours on the same set of 2 cycle old Hankooks.

Owner Dan M. has shown that he can be very quick in his car at Sebring and Road Atlanta and I wish him luck in future events. I wanted to go on here and thank both him and Chris Smith and the entire Itercontinental Trophy Cup Cayman series for letting me join them. It was a blast to return and run with NASA again. Geoff Isringhausen and Dougie have started a great Cayman series that runs with either PCA or NASA and you folks need to get your Cayamans on track with them!

Back to the topic at hand, for roughly 100 minutes I never shifted a gear, used a clutch or noticed any slow or ambiguous shifting behavior. I was able to drive the car and use the brake pedal and the gas pedal's kickdown feature to manipulate which gear I wanted or didn't want. The car ran like a top. Porsche really does build an amazing street-stock race car and with very little additional prep, you can make it withstand some rather abusive conditions.

Over!

ChrisSmithRacing

John ,
it was great to catch up and work together . Thanks for the plug and good luck this season.
cheers

jcastle

Glad to see Dan back on track after the Road Atlanta crash.

GBoxguys

I could not agree with you more. Chris Smith Racing, from my understanding busted *** to get the car back up and track worthy again for Dan. I am really looking forward to following his upcoming weekend at COTA. Dan has given us great feedback on our new differential, and we look forward to watching him tear up the track again here shortly.

Erik

mdrums

John...what, isn't my years of DE use with my PDK worthy?.... LOL ;-)...seriously though PDK is amazing and very reliable too and glad you guys are racing them and find out.

Maybe someone can let me know about PDK fluid changes. How often should I change the 2 fluids in my DE/Street PDK transmission? Should only the dealer do this work? I'm not sure I know anyone around me in the semi local Tampa area that can do this.

Thanks in advance for any info!

GuyIncognito

another fluid question...does the PDK use the same ridiculously expensive oil that VW uses in the DSG?

if so, what's the life cycle for that oil in a track/race application?

mdrums

Guy not sure if the VW and Porsche fluid are really the same. The Porsche PDK uses 2 different fluids though and they are Porsche part numbers. So far Porsche has not officially said anything about fluid changes for track use. I've tried to ask around to others that race PDK cars like ZSA and Speed Merchants on fluid change info but have never received a straight answer. Probably because those race teams don't know me but yeah...wish race tea,s with PDK experience would share more info to a track guy like me.

ir_fuel

I know there is other good feedback concerning PDK use in racing, but I honestly wouldn't take the "I ran it for 3 hours and it didn't break, so it is reliable" as a proof of the reliability under racing conditions. It could break in the 4th or 5th hour for instance.

I think what someone needs to do is run this thing in an endurance race and then open up the box and measure the wear of the components. That will give an indication of how long it will last without breaking down.

ChrisSmithRacing

CSR went to battle with 2 Cayman pdks at COTA last weekend and results were p1-p2 in class and top 2-3 overall for the weekend . PDK is a great gbox and CSR has several customers with 3-5k track miles on original no failure PDK.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT US FOR MORE INFO ON PORSCHE RACING AND PORSCHE RACE CAR BUILD AND SUPPORT
thanks
Chris Smith team principal

GearTie

The car ran great at COTA...no reliability issues with the PDK...2 days of practice, 2 sprint races and a 1 hour enduro. Heading to NOLA on the 21st for a 3 hour enduro and two sprint races with the ITC guys. I'll let ya know how it goes...