I found a small amount - a tablespoon maybe - of tranny fluid on my driveway and took it to Matrix for a look under the CTT. We found the bellhousing seal wet up the sides. Next step to check the tranny is to pull engine and tranny together as one unit; dang Porsche design. Cost to pull and reinstall $1700. Fingers crossed they find a $20 repair part or this little leak could see be at $3K or more.

While the CTT is down, I am having them preemptively change our the plastic coolant pipes as well. One less thing to worry about while rolling over the pass at midnight in a snow storm.

Stay tuned to see how high this goes.

 

good luck.....remember you can always bury in it a snaw bank and wait for a snowplow to come snuff er out!!

 

Now why is it this sentence seems so familiar???

"While the CTT is down, I am having them preemptively change our the plastic coolant pipes as well. One less thing to worry about while rolling over the pass at midnight in a snow storm."

David

 

I am sure my service manager giggled inside when he told me that I had the start of a $1700 bill coming and I said "Can you tack on another $700 worth of work for starters". ;-)

 

You may be lucky and it could just be the torque converter seal. I had my tubes burst first which I fixed myself. The tranny seal started leaking a week later. My indie mech changed out the seal for $1200. They just removed the trans and fixed the seal. While they had the C apart, I had them change out the cardan shaft as well

 

What are the symptoms on these bad torque converter seals, post-coolant rupture?

 

Should I be considering changing the cardan out now as well? 60K on the truck now.

 

I would inspect the shaft for any signs of center bearing degradation before spending money on something that might be o.k., just my thoughts.

 

Its just a $150 bearing part that fails; don't change out the entire thing.

 

I've got a cardan shaft coming. $780 for the part alone. At least the CPO is covering that and labor. These beasts are no cheap to feed.

 

No real "symptoms" per se. A week after I changed out the coolant tubes, I noticed that red tranny fluid was leaking out of the bottom of the bell housing through a couple of drain holes.

Anytime a fluid accumulates in the valley under the intake manifold, it drains out through the bell housing. When the coolant tubes fail, the very hot coolant contacts the torque converter seal(TCS). The heat and coolant chemicals eventually weaken the seal. This seems to happen with higher mile vehicles.

About a month after I changed out the tubes and TCS, I had another coolant leak. It leaked out of the bell housing. Had to take the tubes off again. I failed to properly fit one of the screw clamps on the rubber house adapter. I installed it at an angle with part of the clamp over the end of the tube that has the ring(for lack of a better description). Installed a new rubber tube adapter and thermostat housing gasket and I was back in business.

I was worried that the new leak was going to attack the TCS again. Fortunately, since I installed a fresh new seal, I did not have any problems.

One thing that I noticed is that I had the coolant tube failure and 2nd coolant leak after doing some spirited driving. Getting on the freeway at WOT, manual shifts and some +100 MPH sprints. I guess those V8s produce some serious heat and high pressures.

 

Do you have any recommended suppliers to order just the center bearing?

 

saw this on ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/PORSC...Q5fAccessories

Many for sale .. this is just one of them. Porsche sells the shaft and bearing as one unit.

I think there is a special alignment tool as well .

 

Here is the engine outside of the CTT. Defintely a big boy.
https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...p?albumid=4195
Would be a great time to do an exhaust swaps.

So far -
We may have found your oil consumption culprit; the driver side boost hose had a considerable amount of oil in it—much more than the typical small amount that we always find in boost hoses. The pass side boost hose had a typical amount in it.

Now to find out why the tranny seal is leaking.

 

Here is an update.

Update; while we thought that the only issue was a leaking torque converter seal(sits in the torque converter and engine side of tranny), we dug a bit further and found what broke in the tranny. Pics are att’d of our initial findings. I’ll have pics of the broken stuff and more info on what’s going on by end of day or in the am---the techs are working now on compiling it all and we’re also checking with Porsche to see if replacement parts are available.

Guess it is not supposed to be leaking here:
More photos in my gallery:
https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...p?albumid=4195

I have a bit of stomach ache just thinking about this bill...