September 2009 - Porsche Club of America – Northeast Region

Double Clutching- continued from page 9
grinding or any other problems to report. After getting home
I parked the car in the garage. It wasn’t until a few days later,
as I went to drive the 911 again, when I found that every time I
went to shift into 2 nd gear, that, more often than not, I couldn’t
get into gear. Sometimes it worked fine but for the most part as
soon as I shifted in to second it would pop out and sometimes
it would grind, but not always. From this point I was resigned to
the fact that I had done some serious damage, and a transmission
rebuild was in my future. Furthering my problem was
that the following weekend was the first NCR autocross of the
season, and I didn’t want to miss it, so I just resigned myself
the idea that I would just start in 2 nd gear at the autocross. The
funny thing is that, with four other people in my bracket, I still
managed to take 1 st place. Compounding my problem was that
the following weekend, after the autocross, I was leaving for
16 days in Spain to be followed upon my return in a few weeks
by NER’s second autocross of the season. From there it seemed
that there was an autocross scheduled just about every other
weekend. Between that, my work and my own procrastination
I never got around to getting the transmission fixed. I
must admit though, I got pretty good at starting in 2 nd at each
autocross as I rationalized that since I was going to have to pull
the transmission anyway, I would be replacing the clutch at
the same time so it didn’t matter how much wear I put on the
clutch.
Finally, with the promised assistance of Tom Tate and Chris
Ryan, I was all set to pull the engine and transmission from the
911 and get the transmission issue resolved. For whatever reason,
on the day just prior to going to one last NER autocross on
August 2 nd , while I was changing the street tires on the car for
the R-Compound tires, I got to thinking about the rear coupler
I put in the car way back in May and how, at the time I went to
shift into 2 nd gear, everything worked fine. Now, however, my
gut sensed something wasn’t right. Figuring I had nothing to
lose, I took off the rear plate covering the coupler and decided
to try making an adjustment. With that I backed the 911 out
of the garage and went for a ride. To my surprise, the 911
shifted into 2 nd gear with no problems at all. Not believing my
own good fortune, I continued to drive the car for another 20
minutes, attempting to shift the car into second gear at varying
speeds and rates of acceleration — still no problem.
Now, surely I have done some damage to second gear. No
one could grind second gear as much as I had without doing
something that will have to be addressed at sometime, but for
now all seems to be working fine. And, of course, this doesn’t
even take into consideration all that unnecessary wear on my
clutch by starting in 2 nd gear all those times. For the record
though, even though I don’t tend to be a superstitious person, I
just found myself knocking on wood hoping to not have jinxed
myself by saying, “All seems to be working fine.”
Porsche News- continued from page 25
its proven shift buttons is also available for PDK equipped Turbos.
Mounted directly on the steering wheel, the right paddle
is for shifting up, the left paddle for shifting down.
Porsche Torque Vectoring (PTV) can now enhance the standard
Porsche Traction Management (PTM) all-wheel drive and
Porsche Stability Management (PSM). This new optional system
includes a mechanical limited slip differential and actively
distributes power between the rear wheels, making the car
even more agile and precise in corners for an even higher level
of driving pleasure.
The 2010 Turbo Coupe and Turbo Cabriolet go on sale
January 2010. U.S. pricing is $132,800 and
$143,800 respectively.
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