JFP in PA

This one is by Proform, and my personal favorite because all of the cutting wheels and bearings are replaceable:

True, but for the average DIY fix where it would only be used once or twice in its life, sometimes a cheaper but not as capable alternative fits the budget better.

Basically, but it gets the job done.

2005 was a transitional year for Porsche, some of the engine's had the serviceable (read replaceable) IMS bearing, while others carry the non serviceable (read total rebuild to change the IMS bearing). Unfortunately, there is no way to tell which bearing is in the car without pulling the trans and looking at it. If it is the non serviceable unit, remove the rear bearing seal and put the car back together. If the car carries the serviceable unit, upgrade the car to the LN replacement unit (now you can put a dual row LN replacement in a car that came with the OEM single row) and you are golden.

Motul is a good oil which performs well. Only downsides would be it can be pricey (what isn't these days) and not everyone carries it.

Just be aware that oil discussions often start off well with strong opinions backed up by well founded technical backgrounds, and then often promptly degrade into shouting matches and personal verbal assaults, which will not be tolerated on this site. Oil specs are critical, and often very, very confusing. With the US API moving from being the technical gatekeeper of the North American petroleum products markets to becoming the lobbying arm and public relations department, the people that produce the products are left to certify that their products meet the standards, with no independent verification or oversight. The API also allows the manufacturer's to substitute ingredients or even totally reformulate without retesting. The European ACEA, on the other hand, require that member's join their technical concord agreement (read spend serious money) and then submit finished products only to approved independent lab for testing to verify that they meet the ACEA specs (read expensive and time consuming). Under the ACEA technical concord, any formulation change, no matter how slight, requires resubmission and recertification before the product can bear the ACEA ratings. As the direct result of the cost of the ACEA protocols, and the fact that a lot of well known products do not fare well in them, a lot of smaller "blenders" do not have any ACEA ratings, nor do they participate in the stringent testing. This clouds the view even more; Joe Gibbs products are very well thought of by many people that both test used oil and understand the technology, but the Gibbs products are not ACEA, simply because they have chosen not to become ACEA members. Other well known brands use a marketing linguistic tricks to appear ACEA when they are not ("approved for use in ACEA applications" is one of my favorites; approved by whom?). So to get to your question, how do you know what to look for? Look for ACEA A3, B3, B4 ratings; products that meet these three ratings have ability to stand up to high heat/high shear conditions and still remain in grade (demonstrate the original viscosity ratings such as 10W-40). They also do well under fuel dilution events which are more common with direct injection engines.

The other thread was not marked solved, it was locked by the site owner after the postings went off topic and became personal in nature. Keep this thread on topic and unemotional and it will stay active...............

Check your fuel pressure, I have seen this happen when the pump gets marginal.

They are an aftermarket item, you can get them from Jegs, Summit Racing, and Amazon online:

Not a problem with the correct tool, but not everyone has one.

Just about everything is wired to the ignition switch in one fashion or another; the switch is a $15 part and an easy DIY replacement.

We have something that is like their chassis and engine ear combination kit, but from a different manufacturer. They are extremely useful for isolating noise sources, but the DIY'er can do something similar with a simple doctor's stethoscope for a lot less money. Not as elegant, but very practical for around $15:

OK guys, let's not turn this into a pissing contest; like I said, it was ancient history.................and it is over. :D

We have installed many of these, they are an excellent upgrade for the car. Along with about a 30% finer filter media, the spin on filter offers "full flow" filtration (read no by pass) at all times.

As weird as this may sound, try taking off the serpentine belt and run the engine (very briefly) to see if the sound goes away. If it does, check your water pump and other pulleys for looseness and/or noise.

The right way to do is with the car's suspension fully settled and loaded up on a drive on ramp style lift, but you could probably simulate that with a high enough set of drive on ground ramps as well.

Look, you kind of got off on the wrong foot with some of your comments, but that is now ancient history. As I mentioned earlier, there is a very broad base of technical expertise available on this site, but in spite of the numbers of very knowledgeable contributors, not every problem has been seen before. Rather than speculate, or give you bad information, we tend to sit tight to see if anyone has any direct experience with the specific problem at hand. The longer the lack of response, the higher the probability no one has encountered that specific problem before. Yours appears to fall into that category. It is not a matter of not wanting to answer, but Turbo Tip cars are not exactly an every day occurrence, even in a busy shop, and your problem is not a common one even with the numbers of Turbo Tips we do see. On 911 variants, it is often very difficult to work on the Tip with the engine in the car, there simply is no room to get at some things, particularly on a Turbo car, so the prevailing method is to drop the engine and trans as a unit to make it more accessible, it simply saves time. I would suggest that you ask your chosen shop why they want to drop it to replace the second gasket, their rational may be completely valid. In any case, I have never met anyone that would drop the engine and trans out of a 996 TT simply because they had nothing better to do.

Always a good idea, as is a small dab of anti seize on the plug threads when you put it back.

It is entirely possible that you correctly coded the first side you worked on, after which the other side crapped out, just by a coincidence of timing. These vehicles are well known for having coil pack related misfire issues; when we get one in, we always recommend doing all the coil packs and the plugs. That is often cheaper, and easier on the digestive system, then a repeat of the entire process.

On an S Boxster, yes. The six speed cars have an exaggerated axle angle as the suspension moves up and down, which leads to early CV joint issues.

OK guys, this is TTTTOO cool. I got the WIKA gauge JFP found. It has a standard threaded fitting on the back for NPT compressor stuff. It looks very heavy duty and is quite heavy. If you look at 6 olck just above the WIKA label you will see a calibration screw. Very cool. The new Oil cap is coming. I do believe I can drill and thread right into the top of the cap and mount the gauge directly with epoxy support. Better yet I think it will actually fit under the hood! I can keep it on all the time if the heat does not get to it. I will take pictures when the job is done. Ours are mounted to the oil cap and only used as a diagnostic's tool, so they don't remain in the car.

They can always be saved, but at a price. With topflight rebuilt engines (with upgrades to known problems) running north of $14K, and reman factory lumps in the $15-17K range, it is no surprise that running engines out of wrecks are commanding high dollars. Just be glad it isn't one of the Metzger engines out of a TT, remans for those start at over $50K............. :eek:

You might say that........................ :drive:

Silver TT, these transmissions are not bad they are just not as good as the G50 made by Getrag. I have just finished a 1 and 1/2 year experiment using 5 different transmission oils in my car through all the weather conditions we have up here in New England and I will be posting a DIY on transmission oil changing including all of the results of this experiment. It took so long because I had to use all the oils in winter conditions and it took two winters to get them all in. In most circumstances but not all, Millers is the best and my personal favorite. But, you are welcome to chug along with PTX. That is why Howard Johnson's made 28 flavors. A34735, when someone tells you something that is wrong they are full of it. I myself have been full of it on occasion. I am with you on the voltmeter but the water temp gauge is important. As you have noticed there is a lag between oil temp and water temp. This is because the oil is down in the sump where the water is hopefully not. Going the other way, if your car starts to over heat, under some circumstances you will see it sooner in the water temp Wouldn't ever think of putting anything but the OEM PTX in the gearbox. I have first-hand experience with the damage this will cause. $6K for a gearbox rebuild, or you can buy a reman from Porsche for $10K (before labor). The OEM PTX is an oil which is unique in that it literally has properties that no other oil has. Using the non-OEM will cause wear inside the gearbox over time (some people notice right away, in other cases this can take many thousands of miles). A lot of things people do with their cars I think are obsessing more than anything else, but with this topic I know first hand that if you use anything but the OEM gear fluid, you're asking for trouble. Silver TT, these transmissions are not bad they are just not as good as the G50 made by Getrag. I have just finished a 1 and 1/2 year experiment using 5 different transmission oils in my car through all the weather conditions we have up here in New England and I will be posting a DIY on transmission oil changing including all of the results of this experiment. It took so long because I had to use all the oils in winter conditions and it took two winters to get them all in. In most circumstances but not all, Millers is the best and my personal favorite. But, you are welcome to chug along with PTX. That is why Howard Johnson's made 28 flavors. A34735, when someone tells you something that is wrong they are full of it. I myself have been full of it on occasion. I am with you on the voltmeter but the water temp gauge is important. As you have noticed there is a lag between oil temp and water temp. This is because the oil is down in the sump where the water is hopefully not. Going the other way, if your car starts to over heat, under some circumstances you will see it sooner in the water temp Wouldn't ever think of putting anything but the OEM PTX in the gearbox. I have first-hand experience with the damage this will cause. $6K for a gearbox rebuild, or you can buy a reman from Porsche for $10K (before labor). The OEM PTX is an oil which is unique in that it literally has properties that no other oil has. Using the non-OEM will cause wear inside the gearbox over time (some people notice right away, in other cases this can take many thousands of miles). A lot of things people do with their cars I think are obsessing more than anything else, but with this topic I know first hand that if you use anything but the OEM gear fluid, you're asking for trouble. +1 I have to agree with Silver_TT on this one. While some have gotten away with using aftermarket gear oils in these gearboxes, most have not. Problems have ranged from pronounced noise, to poor shifting, and actual mechanical failure problems. Considering the cost of either rebuilding or replacing these gear boxes, and the simple fact that the OEM lube is a full synthetic made to Porsche specs and not an API "GL" catagory, it seems counter intuitive to start playing around. The OEM product is readily availiable, not all that expensive, and works very well. Take a deep breath. OK. What makes these transmissions special is they are transaxles. The transmission and the hypoid final drive are in the same case. The transmission itself is the rather standard constant mesh synchronized transmission which Porsche was the very first to introduce in the 1952 356!! I'm sure JFP knows the deal well. For those of you who do not check this out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOo3TLgL0kM . The problem with the transaxle designs is that hypoid final drives generate a lot of friction and require heavier lubes. Syncromesh transmissions do not like their oil to thick or the baulk rings do not clutch correctly, they float. Revs don't match up and you can't get the car in gear. So, what Porsche did was spec a gear lube that is at the very thinnest of the SAE 75W90 range with a very high Viscosity index. The higher the viscosity index the less the oil's weight changes with temperature. The oils had to have a cSt less than 600 at 0 C. The first to meet that spec was Shell with what was then called Shell Transaxle. It is now called Spirax S5 ATE which you can get in 20 liter drums. Ferrari uses it in their transaxle cars. Porsche use to use it but then Mobil made a marketing deal with Porsche. Thus Mobilube PTX (Porsche TransaXle) was born. These two are the only 75W 90 gear oils that meet Porsche's entire spec. The problem with them is that they are very thin when warm. Why a problem you ask?? All of these transaxles have a degree of drive train lash. Individual cars better or worse depending on luck and the weather. My car is a bit worse in this department. Don't believe me?? Next time you have your car up, put it in gear with the e-brake off. Grab a rear wheel and rotate it back and forth. You will have between 5 and 10 degrees of free play. That is the lash. You can feel it when you drive. Rapid large transitions on an off the gas produce a "thunk" which you feel in seat of your pants. Drive with the window down. You will also notice a lot of transmission noise as say compared with an Audi manual. This stuff is what got me started. Science and specs tell us what to do. An SAE 90 oil can have a viscosity of any where between 13.8 and 18.8 cSt at 100 C. PTX is 14.5 cSt with a viscosity index of 194 (perfect is 200) Spirax is pretty much the same. All the other oils except Millers are around 15.5 cSt at 100 C with a viscosity index ranging from terrible like Delvac at 140 up to Redline at 176. Millers is special because their EE Nano oil has a viscosity of 17.8 at 100 C with a viscosity index of 183. These oils perform exactly as you would expect. With the exception of Millers none of the oils do much to soften the lash and quiet the transmission. Delvac is just plain stupid below 10 C. If you try to jam the car into gear you might score the dog teeth on your syncro rings. Until the transmission reaches full temp, which can take a while, shifting with Delvac ranges from poor to worse. The other oils are OK if you live and drive in environments that are always over 15 C. But if you live and drive anywhere where the Temp drops below 0 C Stick to the PTX or Spirax with ONE exception. Millers is an interesting British company that has been around for a while making lubricants for industrial machines. In the last decade they started getting into motorsports and recently started formulating synthetic oils with nano particles. These particles have been absolutely proven to lower friction by up to 25%. All the science is available on-line. The stuff is very expensive. The gear oil got me to try the motor oil which I now use. Anyway, The Millers most definitely quiets the transmission enough so that even my wife notices it. It takes about 50% of the sting out of the lash. It most definitely shifts better when warm than PTX. At 10 C shifting into 1st and second get a bit stiff but then something strange happens. The other oils including PTX get stiffer as they get colder. Millers starts to get stiff at 10 C but then gets no stiffer all the way down to -8 F. Which is as cold as the car has gone so far. I have used Millers EE exclusively for almost 10,000 miles and everything is just peachy keen. The only things special about PTX other than its viscosity is that it is overloaded with very expensive viscosity modifiers which dilute the oil's friction reducing capability and Mobil has a marketing deal with Porsche. If you don't like marketing deals and you are paranoid about using other oils by all means go with the Spirax. Glad you like it, but we have had customer's that had zero luck with it. That is right JFP. They were using the wrong oil. The EE just came out. They were using the racing formulation which came out several years ago. It has a spec very similar to the Delvac. (yuk) Go to Millers web site and check it out. Millers made the EE just for our transaxles and the stuff is nuts. I have absolutely no interest in Millers by the way. Did you disagree with anything I said above?? I can only go by the feed back I get from customers; and those that tried the Millers line had a lot of complaints,particularly about low temperature performance (shifting was number one, followed by noise), in very low temp conditions (0F to 10F) where the products was supposed to excel. Another common comment was about the prices they paid for the Millers, but that has to be taken into account with their obvious displeasure on how the product performed. I also do not know, other than from what they told us, which product's were installed as we were not involved in that end of the process. I have noted, however, that you seem to see multiple types of Millers products with rather confusing designations, almost as though Millers might be doing some kind of "private label" deal with certain distributors of their products, which can also make both selection and comparisons difficult. One comment I will make is that we have tended to stay with the OEM Shell product rather than the Mobil version, and the Burmah TAR 21 for the early Boxsters.