phatz

chargeback slam dunk

hopsis

Oil pump and all other internals need to be checked. The ATSG manual has all the measurements and tolerances. It's the same book all the professionals use.

It's not overly complicated box but there are a million things that need to be done and if You miss one step or install one part wrong, the unit will not work. I'm not saying it cannot be done but it's not something anyone can guide over the internet. Lot of the process is feeling parts wear by hand, smelling if this or that clutch smells burnt, how the oil feels between your fingers, etc. I'm not trying to discourage You, just a friendly warning, when rebuilding automatic transmissions, it's either a 100% success or a total failure. There is no middle ground. My recommendation would still be to haul the boxes to a pro shop, even if it's a two hour drive.

Or maybe, strip one of the broken boxes apart to get a feel for the job. Just keep track of all the small parts like bearing and washers. Most of them have orientation and if You put them back the wrong way, they will fail. All of this is explained with pictures on the ATSG manual, just make sure to pay attention to all the small details.

Petrolhead_007

Well it's really awful what you've been going thru.

Since you already have few tranmissions laying around, can you take apart the original unit to see what went wrong? Maybe you'll learn to rebuild it yourself by taking apart the high mileage original one, then rebuild the one of the lower mileage units you have laying around. Surely, it might be possible to put a good working one from 3 broken ones.

Based on your first post your car already has over 300K miles. so, at some point you might want to consider cutting your losses and just getting another working Cayenne (or any other working SUV for that matter).

Quadcammer

I'm surprised by quality porsche parts. They are my usual go to for used parts and I've had a great experience. Thats a bit disappointing.

brett968

I've also bought from them before without issue. This is what I think is going on (admittedly speculative on my part): My guess is that the company has several dedicated and hard-working employees. These individuals do a terrific job of posting the eBay listings, dismantling the vehicles, and sending out orders. I believe that these individuals are not responsible for, or even permitted to handle, customer service issues, answer the phone, etc. I get the impression that post-sale customer service is handled exclusively by the owner, Mike Burton. The problem is that he is absolutely terrible at this task, to the point where it comes off as complete disregard for the customer. As long as you don't need customer service after the sale, I suspect things usually go OK (as reflected by their good eBay rating). But it's hard for me to get behind a company that has made the conscious decision to place customer service as such a low priority.

I think this is a really good idea and this is what I'll probably do. Since the original unit has over 300k miles on it, it's not likely that I'll be using many of the parts from this one. If I still feel comfortable with the prospect of rebuilding after getting my hands dirty with the original transmission, then I'll proceed with rebuilding a transmission using parts from units #2 and #3.

I've got a lot of time and money in this car and, from the firewall forward, the car is pristine mechanically. The transmission was the last big ticket item that hasn't been rebuilt in the last 30k miles. The engine was rebuilt 10k miles back with nikasil-plated cylinder walls, JE pistons, etc. It has a new starter, alternator, radiator, MAF sensors, injectors, O2 sensors and essentially every piece of rubber under the hood was replaced. The front diff was rebuilt ~25K miles back. The front driveaxles, center and rear propshaft are almost new as are the upper and lower front control arms, tie-rods, sway bar bushings and brakes. Even the plastic undertrays are new.

I've got a complete full leather interior from a Turbo that my daughter and I have been refurbishing to replace the original interior. We've been removing all the soft-touch coatings and repainting with SEM Color Coat, and we are conditioning and redying all the leather using Leatherique's products.

So as you can see, I'm into this car well past the point of no return.

Plus, it's kind of my "challenge" car and I'm not going to let it defeat me.

Thanks and duly noted. I'll take the original transmission apart to get a feel for things. If it makes me nervous, I'll switch to the plan of letting a transmission shop handle it. I don't discount the importance and benefits of experience in the rebuild process. I know I will work at a much slower pace than an experienced professional and that I will have more difficulty in determining whether a part is unusually worn or not--I'm hoping that having the multiple boxes for comparison will help in these cases.

J'sWorld

^That's whats up.^

There are only a couple of hard parts available for this transmission new. You can get clutches and seals and stuff but that's about it.

brett968

Yeah, I'm hoping that between the the two boxes I'll have usable parts for all the low/non-wear bits. Front and rear bearings should be sourceable, I would think. I've found the rebuild kits with all the clutch plates and seals. I'll buy a new torque converter from Porsche--this is by far the largest ticket item. I'll also be getting a new tranny cooler since metal went through my original cooler. The part that I'm worried about the most is the pump since this is a wear item, they are unavailable new, and the lowest mileage one I have has 90k miles on it.

hopsis

TC is pretty much the only item that normally needs replacing. It really is a very robust transmission and even the 300k should not be a problem if the fluids and filter are replaced regularly. When one of these starts to give trouble, it's always the valve body. Get a new one for ~1000$ and it's good to go for another 15 years. VB can also be rebuilt but results might vary, I'm actually doing this to my own VB in the near future, was just a bit disappointed that the company that imports Transgo kits to Europe, doesn't carry that SK09D kit and cannot supply it.

If You decide to strip the transmission apart, the oil pump is one of the first things to remove. Clean it good and take some pictures, people here can chime in and tell You if it looks usable or not. That 90k is not an issue at all (these boxes go for hundreds of thousand of miles) but clearances inside oil pump are tight and if there was metal circulating with the oil, there could be wear. Clutches shouldn't be an issue, they will probably be good as new. Same with drums, gears, axles and other and parts. The most critical parts are bearings on the outer casing. Get all new seals and all the case bearings. Internal bearings are likely fine. No other way to test them but spin them and listen. Clean all old fluid out with brake cleaner and compressed air (dry air), submerge in new clean transmission fluid and keep good track which way everything goes. And get a jar of red assembly goo, it helps a lot.

nodoors

Take some pics when you split that baby open. I have an extra Transgo valve body kit I never used if you need it or any else wants it for a very reasonable price. Just PM me.

cordsig79

There’s an Aisin friendly shop in Austin. I’ve spoken to the owner and he has said he will over build these versions, as I believe they need to meet certain legal requirements for a warranty.

I’ve been told when the time comes, it’s well worth it. I run around with some of the local exotic car mechanics in the non dealer world of Austin.

J knows more first hand knowledge than anyone.

I’m out of commission at the moment because of a hill country mosquito (deer) and debating going full Re during the pandemic..... pulling the engine, L and N updates, bigger Turbos etc vs just repairing the front end deer 🦌 strike.

NewToPig

Sorry to hear this

sweetskillsrk

Sorry you've had such a hard time with all this, Brett, I can't imagine how frustrating all this is. My dad taught me at an early age not to let "it" beat me, whatever "it" was at the time. There have been a lot of "it"s over the years, most of them car related and only been beaten once (Ford Focus engine rebuild, should've never gotten involved in that, still haunts me 7 years later). All that to say, it sounds like you've got a great Cayenne and I'm glad you're not gonna let it beat you. I hope the best for you man. Subscribed.

P.S.-There's an 08 S 20 minutes up the road from me being parted out, same transmission? This thing has significant front end damage so I'm not sure they couldn't have flat bedded it, if you want me to run up there and drop the pan on it, I'd be willing to. It's at a small Duramax shop and the owner bought it to fix it up and drive it, but the front end damage is extensive and way more expensive that he thought so he's parting it. I'm sure the shop would remove the transmssion but I'm willing to go drop the pan and see what's what and get some info on the towing situation. Just an offer.

J'sWorld

Where heck you at now? Msg me! I need to know of this trans shop as I have my 04 trans that I would like to get built. With that being said my trans is holding up fine and we estimate I'm somewhere between 8-900 hp now.

brett968

sweetskillsrk, that is really cool of you to offer to help me out like that! I really appreciate it! I'm not sure if an 08 S transmission would be compatible in my 04 S. I might have another out though.

So I was all set to begin disassembly of my original transmission this weekend and then Dismantler B suddenly became MUCH more responsive in the last 48 hours after I left them negative feedback. They FINALLY sent me a return label for the original transmission (#4) and they also sent me the pictures that I had asked for of the inside of the pan from the potential replacment unit. I think this transmission, let's call it transmission #5 (LOL), is most likely fine. Note how the pan isn't speckled like the images in my first post. Most of those speckles are small fragments of aluminum. In the pictures of unit #5 I see a few dots on the pan but these are probably just air bubbles or dry spots in the film of transmission fluid on the inside of the pan. I looked at unit #3 (the one without metal fragments) and it had this same effect. I wish they had sent me better pictures so I could be 100% certain. I had asked and they sent me the last two images, which were slightly better than the first set but not great. FWIW, they said that they visually inspected the pan on #5 and didn't see any metal fragments (they never inspected #4). The external images of #5 look nice (https://ebay.us/AzRd40), but so did #4. I really don't want to go through this again, but I feel 90% confident that unit #5 is fine.

Assuming that #5 checks out when I receive it, I'll swap in my newly refreshed RevMax valve body and replace the torque converter seal for good measure. Theoretically, this should perform well for many miles.








I am a bit conflicted here though. Dismantler B is desperate to have the negative eBay feedback I left for them removed. I'm also desperate, in a way, as I need a transmission to get this car running. I could rebuild one of the other units that I have but this is a serious investment in time which I would really prefer not to make--and there is the very real possibility that I would screw something up and have to do it all over again. Dismantler B has the best assortment of nice used Porsche parts on eBay or anywhere else that I have found. I have bought some other stuff from them in the past and, aside from one other time, the parts that I have received have been excellent. They are the only outfit that I can find that has one of these transmission with less than 90k on them and they have several. So they kind of have me in a corner, in terms of being able to offer me a relatively easy out to my transmission dilemna.

Yet it took them 11 days to send me a return label and information on a replacement unit. This should have happened within 72 hours. Had this been an interior trim piece or something like that then it would have been somewhat annoying, but here we are talking about an integral component of the car. It's been sitting so long waiting on a transmission that there are literally spider webs between the tires and wheel liners (to be fair, not all this time was due to dismantler B). Furthermore, I told them on two separate occasions that I needed to get the car running for my son before he started back school. Nothing escalated the situation until I left them negative feedback.

I don't blame them for the internal issue with #4 and had they took care of the issue within a reasonable period of time then I still would have happily left them positive feedback.

But now they want me to remove the negative feedback and replace it with positive feedback. I have tentatively agreed because this appears to sufficiently motivate them to provide me with what I want, which is simply the good usable transmission that I had paid for. I feel that this is a disservice to other customers, however, as it allows them to escape from negative feedback and any of the repercussions. This is an inherent issue with how eBay works. I would feel much more comfortable if they promised to take some sort of corrective action to help prevent this problem in the future. I see two things that they could do: (1) do much better responding to customer issues and doing so in a prompt manner, (2) always drain the transmission fluid in the automatic transmissions they are selling, check for obvious problems, and include images of the pan in their listings.

Sorry if this sounds like a post on one of those eBay message boards, LOL.

Thoughts? Comments?

Thanks for all the responses so far. It's nice to know there's a community out there in times like these. (That last sentence feels a bit silly considering everything else that is going on in the world right now!)

hopsis

If You leave the all the emotion out of the equation and forget about the bad experience You've had, the easiest solution in my book would be the to swap the trans #5. That would by far be the fastest way to get the car running again. If You have managed to wrangle the seller to eat the return cost of the previous transmission and send You a new one, consider it a win. Companies have factored these kind of cases into their pricing so it shouldn't have been a problem in the first place, maybe all of this really it's just one guy who doesn't know or care about customer service. That negative feedback is a big red flag they need to get rid of and You have a valid reason to leave it so they need to work with You on it, such is the way with eBay, sadly.

This whole thing has royally sucked for You but clinging on the subjective right for leaving that negative feedback is counterproductive. If You think of someone in the future who has an old Cayenne, is considering to replace their transmission and is willing to do the research... Well, it's pretty much guaranteed they are already reading this forum and know about your experiences.