Video: The dealer wanted $15K to fix this Porsche Cayman. Can we do it for less?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/fi62527j19U

We bought a 981 Porsche Cayman for $15,000. What’s the catch? Its six-speed transmission has only four working gears.

[$15,000 Porsche: Are we stupid, or the smartest bargain hunters you know?]

The dealer quoted to replace the transmission for $15,000 as it’s not a serviceable part. Can we fix it for less? Let’s find out.

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you never showed us driving the car in 5th and 6th, I am sitting here with blue balls now :-(

In reply to EricM :

We're headed to the track in the next video. Watching me drive a stock Cayman in a straight line at 70 mph isn't exactly the most exciting footage. 

Please fulfill my fantasy and tell me you paid $5000 for the Cayman with a 'bad' transmission and then you fixed it for $50.  It's the stuff dreams are made of 

In reply to DavyZ :

$15k then drove it clear across the country 

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/project-cars/2014-cayman/the-best-road-trip-car-is-a-four-speed-porsche-cay/

Nice work! Modern dealers not willing to tear down a transmission to even see what the issue is unless you buy a whole new transmission is scary. As long as you were paying them I can't see why they would object to that.

In reply to kb58 :

Actually, there was no option for a dealership fix of the transmission, just replacement, and the accepted wisdom was that it was non serviceable for a reason. Hence the question of whether we could fix it ourselves.
 

Calling any article that asks a question click bait has sadly become epidemic.

Margie

My guess, and hope for the project, is that as long as you can remove and replace the transmission on your own, you can get this done for way way less than the quoted price. No dealer is willing to mess around inside a transmission but, provided the major internals are available a specialty shop for the win. The only thing I'm clueless on is the availability of the internal parts. Curious to know the answer and how this project moves forward.

In reply to IKR :

Watch the videos. Tom already fixed it.

In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :

Nice, thanks!

In reply to IKR :

Check out the video at the top of this page--we fixed it and covered the process. 

If you took the trans out yourself  , what would it cost to have a Porsche transmission  shop repair it , as an unknown trans with no 5th and 6th ? 
 

And how much would the trans shop learn by driving it before you pulled it out ?

this is assuming the trans shop gives you at least a year warranty. 
 

I am glad you were able to show us how to fix it , but it was probably more important how to R & R it and let the shop fix the trans for most of us , 

Great job 

I just ran into something like this with my Elise. 3rd failed (I'm guessing the dog ring), and I cannot find anyone willing to rebuild it locally. I'm in Mooresville, NC, for crying out loud. I've had a couple leads that haven't panned out and a couple more I've still got to try. There are some national-level gurus who charge appropriate prices in other states, but a brand new box was just over $3k. I may one day get around to rebuilding the old one and using it as a basis for an upgraded transmission, but you've got to love Toyota prices when comparing these mid-engined cars. 

Personally, a $30K 918 Cayman still sounds like a bargain to me. 

My 15k Porsche's all look like this. 
 

No really I have been offered two fire damaged 911s in the last six months  I almost took the plunge on the second one as it had a clean title and car fax but the voice in the back of my head said I was being dumb so I did not do it  

so jealous. Nice find. 

That's a nice deal. It's kind of sad that the dealer had no ability to even attempt such a fix. Personally, if I were the guy I would have taken it to a transmission shop to get a look at it before dumping it off. Even if it needed new gears or synchros I'm sure it would have come in at way less than $15000 to repair, it's just a manual trans.

Hands up anyone who's looking for a cheap Cayman with a trans that won't shift into 5th or 6th.

Oh I already set a Marketplace alert for more of these.... The pins came in a box of 25, so I'm obligated to fix 24 more cheap Caymans, right?

Harvey said:

That's a nice deal. It's kind of sad that the dealer had no ability to even attempt such a fix. Personally, if I were the guy I would have taken it to a transmission shop to get a look at it before dumping it off. Even if it needed new gears or synchros I'm sure it would have come in at way less than $15000 to repair, it's just a manual trans.

You'd be on your own for trying to find parts. Or specifications.  One side effect of "no parts available" is they don't bother to tell you how to measure anything, set up gears, etc.  That's after you try to cross reference parts to something else.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

Harvey said:

That's a nice deal. It's kind of sad that the dealer had no ability to even attempt such a fix. Personally, if I were the guy I would have taken it to a transmission shop to get a look at it before dumping it off. Even if it needed new gears or synchros I'm sure it would have come in at way less than $15000 to repair, it's just a manual trans.

You'd be on your own for trying to find parts. Or specifications.  One side effect of "no parts available" is they don't bother to tell you how to measure anything, set up gears, etc.  That's after you try to cross reference parts to something else.

Doesn't Getrag make these? There must be specifications and parts somewhere, because someone has to build them and repair them. I would assume the broken trans would be shipped back to the manufacturer or is it just chucked into the trash?

I tried for a few weeks to get diagrams from friends in the industry and just flat out failed. Whoever has the specifications and parts, they keep them close. 

In reply to Harvey :

If Getrag makes them, that explains everything.  Getrag are notorious for refusing to make service parts available for manual transmissions.

There are boutique shops that rebuild the Getrag transmissions for Volvos and 3000GTs but I have a feeling that a lot of their parts are self sourced, and the rest are scavenged used parts.

Tom Suddard said:

II tried for a few weeks to get diagrams from friends in the industry and just flat out failed. Whoever has the specifications and parts, they keep them close. 

I was thinking this is strange, but then again the auto industry is notoriously closed to third party repair. $1 clip fell out of your $15000 transmission rendering it inoperable? Well, buy a whole new one! I suppose if it was under warranty the dealer would just put in a new one and pass the old one back to the manufacturer and get some sort of compensation and the manufacturer would I assume fix it and reuse it?

The dealer is really not there to fix things that can be replaced entirely. I remember we had an E36 BMW 325i convertible and it had an underbody brace that was connected to the front subframe to stiffen the thing, because without it the car was like a wet noodle. Well, that brace had to come off at one point for a transmission repair (whee! German transmission reference) and the way it was connected was via nutserts in the front subframe. It was already an older car when we got it and some of those nutserts just didn't like having those bolts removed and fell out. I took it to the dealer and told them what I needed them to do, put some new nutserts in the thing. They wanted to replace the whole front subframe. At the time there was no Amazon.com where I could just order a tool for installing nutserts so I ended up just getting some nutserts and making a makeshift tool out of some nuts and bolts and put the nutserts in myself. Worked fine!

I have a buddy who works on skidsteers and there is a company that blows up an engine in 3 at the end of the warranty. They drop a new engine (no repair just crate motor in) and dump the old one in the scrap bin. It's insane.