Porsche PDK Transmission Officially Pushed Past Its Limits.
While pushing his 2015 Porsche 991 Turbo S limits at the drag strip, the owner found the failure point of the PDK transmission.
The Porsche PDK transmission has a reputation for strength and durability. Which is useful, because they also have a reputation for being expensive to replace. That’s why we cringed when we saw a 6SpeedOnline forum post titled: ‘Cracked my PDK wide open like an Egg.‘
Before breaking his PDK, Mark Blackwell had been testing tunes for the TCU (Tiptronic Control Unit) on his Porsche 991 TTS. His car’s 0-60mph time was down from an already impressive 3.3 seconds to 2.6 seconds. Testing is one thing. Putting it on a 1/4 mile clock is another matter. So when a friend called suggesting going to an event he jumped at the chance. Unfortunately, the PDK failed on its first run at the test and tune day.
Nobody wants to be the guy that dropped oil on the track, but when someone’s pioneering at the limits things do break. The weak links will show themselves, and demand more strength.
This could be a case of bad luck with a bad housing for this particular PDK, we will see. Mark is running double the horsepower of a stock version of his car. We know Porsche transmissions are overbuilt, but we don’t know exactly how overbuilt that is.
Thankfully Mark is already on the case. Forum sponsor By Design Automotive Group have already sourced a new PDK transmission for him, and a new clutch will be delivered soon. We hope to see what that car will do on the quarter mile soon.
We are also interested to see that another board sponsor, ES Motor, are developing a billet PDK case for high power Porsches leading the hard launching life.
You can follow the whole thread here.
