Can we fix our Cayman's transmission? Or is it a $15K dealer repair?

Marjorie Suddard said:

Tom Suddard said:

wae said:

All those machine tools you bought and you're not even going to just manufacture your own pin?

I know, I know. But it's cheaper to buy the pin than to buy the stock to make one. 

Plus you can sell the other 24 for $250 apiece as a specialty part that solves a known Porsche transmission weakness. Think of the dinners you could buy your mom with the profits! (I'm kidding except for the part about taking your mom out to dinner.)

Margie

Fantastic!

Makes me almost regret that I'm unlikely to gamble even broken-Porsche money on a broken Porsche.

Nice win!

Way to go Tom, livin' the dream!

So it was the most simplest of fixes, Congratulations!.  Okay so are you now going to buy a lottery ticket?  Will the new pin get welded in place?

Interesting reading on pin types found here;

 https://www.spirol.com/assets/files/cldp-wp-how-to-select-the-proper-pin-for-your-application-us.pdf

In reply to Tom Suddard :

Old drill bits can be used as dowels, you probably have a zillion of them in your inventory.....just a bit of work with a bench grinder, and Voila !!

P.S., NOT the groovy end !!

Fantastic! Love stories like this :-)

Awesome that it was a simple and inexpensive fix.

I know it doesn't help with dowels, but my "race built" mazda gearboxes got safety wire to hold in the roll pins if you wanted to go that route.

GREAT NEWS, hoping to see it set a FIRM time.

Yes, take your Mom out to dinner.

To celebrate the straight forward fix, of course.  Take your wife too, she had to listen to that fine 4200 rpm howl all the way back from Seattle.

Yeesh, how lazy is the Porsche service manual writing team these days.

Amazing Porsche didn't have "keeper" on it if it falls out that easily.

Reassembling that trans😳Much respect🤩

akylekoz said:

Machinist here, I would ream the fork and shaft to a common size and pin it.  Definitely remove the slop or worn portion that caused this problem in the first place.   A coiled roll pin has a lot more strength than a normal roll pin, that's where I would look.  Coiled pin are over sized so will fit tight in a standard reamed hole.  May need a carbide reamer if the shaft is too hard.

I have taken apart a few pre WWII machines assembled with tapered pins, those do not come out unless told to.  

 

Agreed on all counts.

So it WAS a roll pin! (Pin, dowel, whatever).

I knew it! 

(Does the snoopy happy dance)

By the way, I happen to have a quantity of coiled roll pins that just might fit your application, if you decide to go that route and use safety wire through them like Sevenracer showed in his comment a few posts up. 

So how tight are the other shift fork pins?

In reply to 300zxfreak :

I used a drill bit in this fashion to repair a sun visor's arm on the missus' Supra. Whoever had installed the thing last had put the mount to the windshield frame backwards. It would still flip down, but would not turn to cover the side window. Had no idea they were directionally mounted, and replacements at the time were "you gotta be kidding me" expensive. So, a little creativity with some custom tube halves to hold it in place on the vise, a drill, and some gorilla glue held the thin rod made from the drill bit in place.

Has worked like a charm for about 5 years now.

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

i would guess that the hole got wallered out as the pin made its exit

And queue everyone searching for a cayman with no 5th and 6th gears...

Are you replacing the clutch while it's staring at you or is it way too early?

So I finally put the car back on the ground at about 11pm last night and took it for its maiden voyage....

SUCCESS! Not only do 5th and 6th gear work, but they completely transform the car on the highway (who could have guessed).

More details to come in the next update, but hopefully the Cayman will make an appearance at the GRM track day assuming we have enough staff to get it there. 

Jerry From LA said:

Are you replacing the clutch while it's staring at you or is it way too early?

Way too early, but I did it anyway because it seemed so wrong to skip it. Want to buy a lightly used Cayman clutch? 😂

Duke said:

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

i would guess that the hole got wallered out as the pin made its exit

that's what she said

Just watched the video- what the LocTite a specialized one for pin retention?  Or interference fits- which is what this is anyway....