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Old 10-27-2006, 09:17 PM   #12
eslai
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1,052
Quote:
Originally Posted by MNBoxster
Hi,

For that price, I can't imagine they actually changed the Rotors, at list price, the Pads and Rotors total $668 alone (and that's an old Price List). They're correct that you cannot machine the drilled Rotors, too difficult for the lathe and greatly increases the risk of cracking.

As stated, 2-3 Pad changes per Rotor change, a little more like 2 would be the norm. A Pad change at 18,800mi. indicates pretty severe use, even for just City driving. They should go closer to 30k-35k mi., but everybody's driving style differs.

Glad they only took the Arm and left the Leg...

Happy Motoring!... Jim'99
Ah, I missed you, my condescending friend. Very difficult to type these days while missing an arm.

The pads were changed at 20,000 miles, by the way, not 18,800.

I have the service slip from the dealership and they did do the brakes and rotors for less than $700, no baloney! The rotors are definitely brand new--have the honing marks and all that on them, no lip, rust, dust, etc. My old ones were nicely grooved.

It did sound fishy to me--I'm the type of guy that uses rotors until they're really crappy, then smoothe them out with harsh race pads at the track. The funny thing is that my service advisor didn't even mention the fact that cross-drilled rotors are murder for the lathe (although it hasn't been *too* difficult to find shops that would turn cross-drilled/slotted rotors in Los Angeles), instead he just said that "machining the rotors takes them below minimum thickness".

I'm not sure if he just means that the rotors won't last through two sets of stock pads? Don't know. In any case I trust my guy and it wasn't enough money to worry about it too much. If I paid $300-$400 about eighteen months early, not a big deal.

I'm told stock pads last anywhere from 20,000 to 35,000 miles, which is better than I'm used to in general for performance brakes so the brake job didn't have me worried at all.

It's the busted shock and the transmission that bug me. I'm told that there's nothing I could've done to bust the shock in this fashion, that it was a premature failure. No one gave me any grief about that, thankfully, but it does have me worried about the durability of PASM.

Here's the story on the transmission. Both failures were the same--the car would pop out of second gear--meaning that the collar that selects 1st and 2nd was failing, I'm assuming. It would pop out in such a fashion that it wouldn't be completely in neutral--it'd be riding the gear teeth and making a NASTY noise.

It failed the first time at like 5000 miles I think. They replaced it under warranty but pulled my rev counts and told me that they were replacing the tranny under good faith--that my engine rev counts indicated that I had overrevved the engine. THey said further rev counts could void my running gear warranty.

I was miffed. There were a total of THREE engine cycles at level three, which is the beginning of overrev and the first indication that a customer is beating on a car. Didn't really argue the point although give me a break--I maybe misshift once when the car is new (and three engine cycles? Hell, I wouldn't even have had the clutch pedal all the way out before realizing the problem and stomping it back down! The tranny never would have had full engine load) Is this not a Sports Car? Did these parts come off a Golf?!

When I got the car back things seemed to be okay for a little while but things quickly went south. The transmission started popping out again, although a little more subtley--it would feel like you had shifted into second, but when you let out the clutch, surprise!! Grinding noise, etc. It happened very inconsistently though so I tried to wait for it to get worse before reporting it to the dealership.

They replicated the problem at 18,800 and replaced it on "good faith" again, again blaming me for beating on the transmission. However, my level three rev counts hadn't changed since 5000 miles! Still just three rev counts.

So, how can Porsche say I beat on the car and destroyed two transmissions? No one saw any evidence of crazy wheelspin, no one said anything about heat marks or other evidence of a misused clutch/flywheel. Did anyone actually check my shifter cables and the shift mechanism in general after the first failure? The shift throw on these cars is like rowing a boat--are the cable lengths within tolerance? Heim joints? What does the 1-2 shift fork look like? Did second gear get pressed properly into place on the input or output shaft? Has anyone back in Germany actually cracked open the transmissions to look for defects, or is it really Porsche's policy to shoot first and ask questions later?

All I know is that they say that if it breaks a third time, they say that they need my authorization to crack open the transmission (again, what the heck did they do with the last two?!) and if they find that the damage was my fault, they will not cover it under warranty. Which is interesting--you'd think they'd need to also crack open my friggin' car to see if anything external to the transmission caused the failure! It isn't always the nut behind the wheel, y'know.

As an aside, the Southern California Regional Service Manager is UNBELIEVABLE. He started off our relationship by refusing to give me his phone number. He stated that it was for business calls only and that if he gave it out, it would impede his ability to make outgoing calls. How ridiculous is that? How do you start a business dialogue of any sort without providing your phone number to the other party?! Porsche has great people in Customer Commitment, seriously, but the people that actually make the decisions seem to be the classic representation of what you Jim, and Bruce Lee always say about Porsche. Arrogance Defined.
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