First gear going out?

[RandallNeighbour]

First gear gives me a vibrating (repeating) "bdraaaap" sound that does not happen in 2-5th gears. I guess the best way to explain in words is to say that the transmission, while in 1st gear sounds like the engine of a crappy old VW bug taking off under heavy acceleration. It sounds like a nice Porsche in all the other gears.

It makes this noise hot or cold.

My dealer mechanic noticed it and told me about it. Service guy suggested a rebuilt transmission at $3000 plus 8 hours of labor to install it as they don't repair transmission, just replace them.

Should I find a good shop to work on the 1st gear issue versus replacing the whole tranny outright?

Is tranny work what I really need, or could there be other issues causing a first gear to make noise like this?

[ar38070]

It is probably the transmission. Shop around and you can probably find a used transmission for under $2k. There was one listed on the racing board a little while ago for $1200.

If you have the transmission replaced/repaired then do the clutch too.

Eight hours for the replacement work is the same as what I paid two years ago. Some people have said it should be half that.

[peterjoyce]

I do not have any advice but I am curious, what year is your car?

[mrmickeymouse]

In the old day's you would yank [R/R] the tranny and try to fix it, before you jumped into getting a new one.

Get a second opinion, it may just be a syncro, could be cheap to fix, R&R will probably be your only expense, believe it or not the tranny R/R is pretty easy to do.

Try to double clutch and see if it sounds better...

Your example of noise does not really help much on the net.. Sorry...

I was brought up on VW's and the noise your talking about is a blown head leaking, better hope it's not that.

[RandallNeighbour]

Peter, the boxster is a 1997.

[RandallNeighbour]

What do you mean by R/R or R&R?

[mrmickeymouse]

R&R=Remove and Replace; thankfully the tranny is in the back, this is the only good thing about working on a Boxster.

Mid engine cars are unusually harder to work due to the placement of the engine, and that Germans think everyone has spaghetti for arms.

What is really funny is all of my real [Germany born] German friends are huge, so go figure how they do it.

If you need to pull it [R&R], it can be done quickly and easily...

Unlike most cars the transmission being placed on the end of the car makes it easier to work on.