Silver_TT

I hope not. As you said, best thing would flush out the old fluid and replace with OEM fluid (sounded like you need this anyway).

Sounds good. Also be absolutely sure to use the OEM oil and only the OEM oil. If you have this done at a Porsche dealer that's what they will use, but even some good indy's need to be instructed. Gearbox oil that is widely accepted elsewhere in the racing world (Redline, Royal Purple, etc) are huge no-no's in these cars. How do I know? Because it cost me a gearbox.

If it were my car it would be the first place I would start. It sounds like it's due for a change anyway based on what you stated.

It is not the clutch design that makes it to 100K miles plus ... it is the driver and how they use it. If you are doing drag racing starts or downshifting at too high a speed you will increase clutch wear. When I took the engine out of my 1976 911S with over 135,000 miles on it the clutch still looked very good and was just under 50% worn and I did hundreds of autocross and track events in that car. That was the factory clutch - so as I said it is not the clutch material or design it is how then clutch is used. Agree. This is essentially what I was saying as well. Wow though, impressive that at 135K after hundreds of track events the clutch was still under 50% -- not surprising except for the tracking of the car. I would bet that you are much smoother on the clutch than most folks you meet at track events. When I bought my TT the previous owner had just replaced the entire clutch assembly at 40K miles... it's a different gearbox than the Carrera but just using mileage as an indicator, you will really see numbers all over the board. I have seen people needing a new clutch after 25K miles. As these guys said, life of the clutch itself is, for the most part, dependent on the driver. But just remember it isn't always disc wear that is the problem if your clutch is slipping... it can be something else, like the pressure plate not engaging properly as was the case in my situation. If that's the case you will have a decision if you want to replace the other parts while you are in there, since the cost of dropping the gearbox alone is a large part of the labor cost of this job.

There's a guy on this site with a 996 TT that says he has 300K on the original clutch. Does that mean this is normal and should be expected? No, probably not. It's really hard to say using mileage as the only indicator. Take for example someone who drives cross-country on the highway all year long for work.... vs. someone street racing from stop light to stop light. All that said though, the clutch has a number of moving parts. So as I said in my case, the clutch was ok but there was an issue with the engagement of the pressure plate. Sometimes it can be other related parts that need replacement......

More often than not, cold weather shifting effort problems are the result of the wrong gear oil rather than the shifter. We have installed a lot of short shifters, mostly B&M, and as some of the cars are used daily in zero and sub zero ambient temperatures without any shifting issues, while others have had poor cold weather shifting even with the stock shifter when using aftermarket gear oils which were completely remedied by going back to the factory fill, it is difficult to blame the shifters. +1 without question. There have been countless examples time and time again of folks that corrected gearbox issues by either switching from aftermarket back to the OEM fluid, or simply by changing the fluid (OEM fluid changed to fresh OEM fluid). I've talked to people that think that the gear oil doesn't matter or think that it's less important than changing the oil in your engine, for example. A lot of these gearboxes are $10K depending on which Getrag you have and I'm not even talking PDK's (then you're talking more like $20K). Even a repair/refresh from a reputable shop (and I wouldn't even consider anyone but one given how complex these are) can easily run you over $5K. The OEM gearoil looks expensive until you start considering even the starting cost of a repair which would be dropping the gearbox. $$$

When's the last time you changed the fluid in the gearbox (with OEM only fluid)?

+1 on what Loren said about usually it's a 3rd party/aftermarket add-on (stereo, radar, aftermarket lighting kits, etc).

If it were me I would avoid eBay and buy the keyhead from Sunset. Not really that expensive so why take the risk.

Agree. When the clutch went out on my previous 996 C4S it basically just all of a sudden happened one day without any kind of warning. I noticed the pedal felt different and the point of engagement was different. It turned out to be an issue with the pressure plate, rest of the clutch was fine but I had about 50K miles on it so I just replaced it while they were in there.... I would not continue to drive it until you have it repaired to eliminate the possibility of doing even more damage. Even if the valet did somehow cause it, I don't think you would be able to prove it so, as already stated, the best thing to do is not to use them anymore when possible. Good luck, hope it's just the hydraulics since that would save you the cost of dropping the transmission/transaxel.

well said :)

FYI You don't need to take the seat out to do this. I have replaced the seat motor and drive cable and I recall the OEM manual saying to start by taking the seat out but I found after doing it that it was completely unnecessary. I just unscrewed the seat from the car and used a box to tilt the whole seat up while I swapped out the motor and cable. It just took a few minutes -- very, very easy. You need an inverse torx if I recall.... I also would be careful with WD40 under there because there's a lot of dirt and that's a likely culprit to cause your seat motor to start to act up in the first place...... the cable I have found is often the culprit as well. if you do it smart the whole job should only take 10 minutes or so. good luck.

In my personal opinion the TT is just simply hard to beat and the Mezger engine is one of the best. And the 997 is a pretty classic look -- much nicer looking than the 996, but cost a lot more too. If you haven't already, I would drive them both ... I think you will find the TT to be more "raw" if that's what you're looking for.

wow, that's huge

Wow, you are very brave to drive such nice cars in half a foot of snow...........with a summer tire. LOL. :cheers:

For 3-4 inches of snow, you definitely need an extra set of tires suited for the elements. On my C4S/TT I went with Blizzaks -- worked like a charm, the only thing that will stop you is if the snow simply gets too high since these cars sit so low/tight to the street. You can pick up an extra set of wheels used for around $1K USD with some luck...if you get real lucky you could find them with snow tires already on them. Driving even an AWD car, in low temps or with precipitation using a pure summer tire is a recipe for disaster. If the cost of a new set of wheels plus tires seems prohibitive.....imagine how cheap it is compared to even a minor car accident.

Ya, with all problems you really have to find the real cause so you can eliminate it, just like you said, otherwise throwing parts at it can get expensive quick with the price of OEM parts. Hard to really say much since I don't really know much about your car and you said the engine was rebuilt a few years ago. But that engine is one of the most solid Porsche ever made and has no true flaws to speak of. I find it difficult to comprehend that this is basically the second seemingly similar failure you've had in 3 years with a Mezger engine. Not saying it's never happened before but yours is the first I have ever heard of a Mezger timing chain just snapping -- definitely seems like something else is off but I don't know if the engine was modified or what was done to it during the last rebuild. I'm not surprised the values are damaged since the timing would have been completely off when the chain snapped.

By way of clarification, the rattle of the chain at idle is normal and is that way on every 996TT I have ever seen so I don't think is in any way inherent to your problem. It's more coincidence than causation. Yes, if the timing chain snapped (which I have never heard of on a TT before) is it possible it could cause damage to the engine since the timing would be completely off.

Maybe not very likely but another possible reason you could connect but the emissions could not would be if you are running an after-market flash or any other kind of "defeat". I experienced this where Durametric/PIWIS said "pass" for all readiness states and everything looked perfect using them to check for emissions..... but the state's 3rd party software was smart enough to know that the flash wasn't stock and gave an error similar to what you are seeing.

The X50's can be fairly hard to come by, especially if you have any criteria narrowing your car search such as wanting a specific body color, etc...... when I purchased my TT I looked for a clean X50 for quite some time. They are out there, but not a ton of them.

I had the same issue on my 4S. Very annoying since manually unlocking would sometimes set off the alarm. I would try simply replacing the battery in the key head first, it only costs $1 or so. If that doesn't work then you will probably need to replace the keyhead which is about $200 total including the part and labor (for the dealer to program in the code). If you need the keyhead you can order that from Sunset and the dealer should only charge 1/2 hour labor to code it to your car's ECU.

You'll rarely hear him say it and will never see him advertise, but "JFP in PA" has a shop in your state and it may be worth sending him a PM to see if he can help you. He's one of the most knowledgeable folks in the country when it comes to these cars. If your friend decides to do the swap, I would be sure to get someone that knows what they are doing in terms of helping you source a good used engine and also doing the install. Sorry to hear it but I wish you the very best of luck.

Great reference post. Thanks again for sharing that!

Interesting, thanks for pointing that out, I had never considered this. Thanks

All very good points. While not exactly a belt and suspenders approach, my understanding is that the splash lubrication option actually works quite well. JFP, is this still the conventional wisdom ? Probably not nearly as many folks taking this approach but have you heard of any problems using that solution? Also curious if you had more information on the single row bearing being more prone to track failure. If you already have a problem, driving it hard could exacerbate the issue, but is there anything specific about tracking driving which causes the failure?