My car broke down on me last Friday! I'd driven about 7 miles to go see a friend and there were no symptoms, nothing wrong whatsoever. Pulled up, reversed into a parking bay; still no problems. 2 hours later, I go back to the car, fire up the engine, select 1st and let out the clutch......... nothing. The damned car won't move!. Clutch feels OK. Gearbox feels OK. Just nothing!

This morning, I had it towed to my local Porsche independent. They took the gearbox off expecting a broken clutch (I was sceptical as the clutch is only 10 months old and I don't give them a hard time). Box off and the technician goes to unbolt the clutch cover..... and half the flywheel fell straight off the back of the engine!

Turns out the dual-mass flywheel is an inner portion that bolts to the crank and an outer portion that sits on a bearing on the inner portion and can move relative to it. The clutch bolts to the outer ring. The drive from the inner to outer ring is by 8 steel pins approx the thickness of M8 bolts. All 8 of these had sheared clean off so there was no drive from the inner flywheel to the outer.

The guy who owns the shop (ex-dealer technician) said he's never seen anything like it in the history of working with Porsches - not even on race cars (and he runs several of these regularly). The 8 pins are far, far stronger than the fingers of a clutch plate (or for that matter the clutch pressure plate) and either or both of these should have exploded if sufficient force was applied to shear all the flywheel pins. It would also likely have caused severe damage to the transmission and maybe even the crank bearings.

However, the clutch looks like it was installed yesterday and has no evidence of abuse whatsoever (I'm thinking of the previous owner here) let alone being subjected to this amount of force. The engine runs smooth, powerfully and sweet and the transmission is typical of a 997S.

So we haven't the slightest clue what could possibly apply sufficient force to shear the 2 parts of the flywheel apart without causing immense damage to any other parts of the car.

Has anyone got any ideas? We're baffled

Ian

 

sorry i dont know much about this stuff, but i had a leak under my car, took it in and flywheel needed to be replaced. i am not sure if it was the same problem but he just said parts were "all mangled up". replaced under warranty

 

No idea what would have caused this, but I would put an aftermarket lightened flywheel in.

Good luck with this one, very unique.

 

This I would really love to do but can't find anywhere in the UK that sells them.

Ian

 

If you have time you could order this one;

http://evoms.com/marketplace/ViewPro...3CD0F56E553%7D