986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners

Hi

Have a problem with a '97 986. It seems a typical problem but is maybe slightly different:

The transmission units started "knocking" when the clamshell closed. On inspection one of the red sockets had broken so it was replaced. Next time it was tried and the same knocking occurred - looked again and this time the V-arm had twisted!! on the same side (right), so bought a new one. Tried again and the same thing happened - another twisted V-arm. Now decided to get the big mallet out and re-shape the arm. Looked again and noticed that the 3 bolt/lugs holding the transmsision unit in place on the right were bent upwards resulting in the transmission canting over a few degrees and causing the clamshell (and roof) to be out of sync. I Persuaded the lugs back to level with a gentle tap on the wood end of a hammer and started to run the system without the push-rods in place to prevent any more disfigurement. I noticed that the left side transmission was stopping right at the end of the "roof close" but the right side continued for some reason (this being the cause of the damage). The left side seems to be disengaging the worm drive (you can see it when looking directly at the transmission that the end of the worm is pulling inside the transmission and disengaging. Microswitch on the clamshell is working OK. Transmission cables seem fine

My conclusion is that the left side transmission unit is Bu*&^$%d and so I am going to replace - unless anyone has any ideas?

The main question though is can I replace the early transmission units (with moon gears) with later units that may be more effective? And if so is there anything else than needs to be done or changed?

Cheers
Mat