Transfer case was replaced yesterday on my 2015 Macan S @ 40100 miles..

 

Anybody total this out so far by year and model? I know that's a lot of research, but I think the numbers might show some trends.

 

Read the first post. He is keeping a running tab.

 

Transfer case replaced yesterday on 2017 Macan S. 26000 miles.

 

Cayennes also have suffered a lot of transfer-case breakdown:


https://rennlist.com/forums/cayenne-958-2011-2018/986001-transfer-case-38.html


I just can't believe that Porsche has taken so long to fix this problem. Very worrisome.

 

Yeap and Porsche master mechanics have told cayenne folks to change tc oil every 20k miles to avoid this.

 

First post updated with a chart. Don't take it as accurate. Not everyone gave mileages. Some people have had multiple transfer cases fixed. I could also have easily made mistakes but it what I could figure out. It seems to be across trim levels (i.e., S, GTS, and Turbo).

 

Nice chart!

It would be more informational if you add the MY axis on the chart.

 

Color me concerned...
MY15 S with just 23k miles. Purchased new in July of 14, well out of warranty (but barely broken in) and no Transfer Case issue(s)... YET!
Vehicle is gently and seldom driven (wife's).
Makes me wonder who has the most trouble free transfer case miles? I mean, are there any members with 80k+ miles, still on their original TC?
Anyone have to actually PAY for their replacement, yet?

 

Guess we can do the same for Macan TC. It is pretty easy to do.

 

I have never heard of a single transfer case failure in any other vehicle, trucks included. Most people correctly assume it will last the life of the car. I don't know what the cause is, but it must be either a material, design, or assembly failure, and Porsche is responsible for all of those. They should own up to it and cover these well out of warranty.

 

Yes, it does happen in other cars. I just had to have the part that is called a "viscous coupling", but that seems to perform the same function as the TC on a Porsche, replaced on my 2011 6-spd Subaru Outback at 60K miles. The symptoms were the same as described here for the Macan, viz., shuttering/thumping when backing or turning in a sharp manner. The Outback was out of warranty, but Subaru Customer Service paid $750 as a goodwill contribution to the $2,200 bill. It turns out that if one goes onto Subaru forums, there are many examples of this kind of failure. The big difference seems to be that the Subaru replacement costs only a portion of the analogous Porsche repair. Who would have guessed?

I have only about a month's worth of warranty left on my MY2015 Macan S with 25K miles, so I am trying very hard to detect any TC problems within the remaining time.

 

I think the problem is something to do with moisture getting into the TC due to improper design. Regular TC fluid change helps, as does dry climate.

 

I have the factory warranty until the end of this month (March). How did you do the test?

My Macan drives flawlessly so far.

 

Add me to the list of Macan's with a failed TC. 2017 Macan S, purchased April 2016, now with 31,000 miles. Lots of highway miles mostly. Told the service manager what I was experiencing and he knew what it was right away. "Test" drive didn't even make it out of the parking lot; he turned right around and said "yep, I was right!"

Have to order the part; my appointment is set up. He told me I could keep driving the Macan; said there are no safety issues and it won't leave me on the side of the road broken down.

 

Very reminiscent of the BMW e46 M3's diff. The way you determined if the LSD was bad was to turn the wheel and drive in the tightest circle you can. You should not hear anything. Then, cut the wheel the other direction and repeat. Again, you should not hear anything. If you do, as Fahrer stated, it's the viscous coupling. Those plates inside are 'chattering'. They should not. I might add, this applies to the front or the rear differentials. To note, the front diff is called the TC...

 

Yes, that is exactly what used to happen with our 1992 BMW 325i 5-spd with LSD. There was a cheap cure for it, though. Every 15-20K miles, I dropped the differential oil and replaced it with fresh Mobil 1 Synthetic 90W. Cured it every time! Apparently it was very sensitive to lubricant deterioration. Never did have to mechanically replace the differential, even by the time we sold it at 150K miles. Go figure.

 

Anyone has had problem with transfer case on MY 2018 yet?

 

Evidently one in the UK: transfer case replacement needed on a base 2-liter Macan at only 3000 miles and 15 months old (presumably a 2018 Macan, but possibly late 2017 Macan):


https://www.macanforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=8429


There must be a ton of these failures that are not reported on the online forums; I think we'd all love to know the percentage of Macan transfer cases needing replacement in all the manufactured Macans -- a number that only Porsche would know. Do transfer cases fail in 20% of all Macans? 30%? more? Which begs the question: why can't Porsche fix this problem, which as been going on for years?

 

No way. They delivered ~193,000 Macans the last two years. The numbers are insignificant in the big scheme of things. they are significant to those they effect but if it were a big time problem, like IMS failure, the class action lawsuits would be filed. Complaints get blown out of proportion. Important to those effected, more likely in the noise.

 

When you just compare the number of reported problems to the number of owners here on the forum I think you get some idea how widespread the issue is. My own personal thinking is that it likely limited to several percent of the total Macans sold.

But that’s still way too high a failure rate. And what we don’t know is what happens later as the mileage on many cars goes higher. Is the failure rate going to increase?

I’d like to see Porsche step up and extend the warranty on a troublesome part like this to 10 years/120k miles as BMW has done on several occasions.

 

I am sure Porsche will do that as goodwill.

 

Wish I was as confident as you.

If mine needs a TC post warranty I would not expect the dealer where I get mine serviced to pressure PCNA for goodwill. After all the dealer will make a lot more money doing the repair at retail rates versus warranty rates, and will also markup the parts, whereas under a warranty repair they make no profit on parts.

I have a question. Is the transfer case unique to Porsche? We do know that the same dual clutch transmission has been used in some Audi models (of course they don’t call it a PDK when installed in an Audi). But would not those Audi’s be using the same TC? Are they failing in those Audi’s also? I would assume there’s more history there that perhaps might give us some insight into the failure rates on cars with higher mileage.

 

My 2017 GTS is at the dealer now, should have an answer tomorrow and will let you know if you can update with my info. In a base 2019 Cayenne. I can’t wait to have my car back. This cayenne rides surprisingly horrible. I’ve had 4 Touareg/cayenne over the years, 2006, 2011, 2013, and 2015 with and without air and they all rode so much nicer.

 

Hi all,

Have people observed issues post transfer case replacement? Also, can some folks share how quickly their transfer cases have been replaced?

I just had mine replaced by the dealer last week, and while some of the bumpiness is gone from the ride, shifting is still not smooth through 1-3 gears. The car almost seems to want to hesitate to upshift or downshift during low speed operation. Fairly consistently I get a bit of a delay if I put my foot down in 2nd gear (usual use case is rolling towards a stop light and it turns green). Also it has been somewhat cold here in Boston (20s-40s F), not sure if that factors in, most of my daily driving involves short drives from cold start, and the car never gets a chance to truly warm up. Half of me wants to chalk it up to trying to daily drive a GTS in the city but the drive still feels wrong! Would love to know if folks had shift smoothness issues outside of the transfer case.

Also - I dropped my car off at about 7AM and they said it was ready with a replaced transfer case by 11AM the same day. Is 4 hours enough to diagnose and replace a TC? I have no reason not to trust this dealership but also have not had time to build a relationship with them either

Either way I think my next step will be to drop it back off at the dealer.... ��

 

Hi all,

Have people observed issues post transfer case replacement? Also, can some folks share how quickly their transfer cases have been replaced?

I just had mine replaced by the dealer last week, and while some of the bumpiness is gone from the ride, shifting is still not smooth through 1-3 gears. The car almost seems to want to hesitate to upshift or downshift during low speed operation. Fairly consistently I get a bit of a delay if I put my foot down in 2nd gear (usual use case is rolling towards a stop light and it turns green). Also it has been somewhat cold here in Boston (20s-40s F), not sure if that factors in, most of my daily driving involves short drives from cold start, and the car never gets a chance to truly warm up. Half of me wants to chalk it up to trying to daily drive a GTS in the city but the drive still feels wrong! Would love to know if folks had shift smoothness issues outside of the transfer case.

Also - I dropped my car off at about 7AM and they said it was ready with a replaced transfer case by 11AM the same day. Is 4 hours enough to diagnose and replace a TC? I have no reason not to trust this dealership but also have not had time to build a relationship with them either

Either way I think my next step will be to drop it back off at the dealer.... ��

I am in the last resort mode now having replaced not just the TC but Fuel Injectors and dong all kinds of other month long diagnostics by the dealer and Atlanta team. I agree with others that you have to separate the smoothness expectation in cold going at LOW parking or stop/go speeds from actually ACCELERATING from the traffic stop or passing at medium 55mph speeds plus there is certainly a difference depending on TRIM which is not disclosed in your posting.

The Base loaners that we drove over the years are smooth all around under all the conditions above. However, we have a Turbo and the LOW speed mode is confirmed to be the PDK expected behavior as I drove 2018 Turbo from the lot to compare to our 2016 and it does not bother us after getting educated on PDK operation with some nice video posted on how to drive in stop and go to minimize clutch wear.

The issue that we have been struggling with is the hesitation and smoothness when accelerating off the line in Comfort or when slowing down at the turn and then accelerating again comparing Stock, Flat 6, v202, v205 with none have been smooth resulting in out of sync ECU/PDK where the engine overpowers and PDK confused and Macan jolting back/forth making you think that this cannot be right.

I have just loaded teambgb Base map that is a v205 OCT91 with John's Smoothness additions and the first impression after driving for about 45 minutes collecting full throttle data is nothing but smoothness. I have not being able to throw it out of sync but doing another round of repeating the same cases that before are needed before I have the verdict. However, there has been nothing but over the top positive feedback from others regarding John's work on the smoothness front. I think the difference is that John's base map is already much better than anything out there but he goes a step further by analyzing full throttle data that allows him to further refine the map to the specific gasoline variances that may exist in a specific geographic area. We are in Indiana and OCT 93 and at times 94 are available from all the premium brands but we use Shell.

More feedback is due from me today, but going through this process over the years that smoothness for every day comfort driving in a Turbo has been elusive to achieve where it is standard on a Base.

 

Macan and PDK are designed for sport driving. Short cold local drive is not going to be smooth. That’s typical of a dual clutch transmission.

 

2016 Macan S, second owner, originally delivered in Oct 2015. Transfer case replaced at 19500 miles. Took over a week due to part order time.

 

@grim, my apologies and thank you for moving it here. I would like to reply to your question:

Originally Posted by sergeyb: I have just loaded teambgb Base map that is a v205 OCT91 with John's Smoothness additions
grim asked: You modded the car and are complaining about the PDK? Or modded it after complaining?

- Car was not smooth at purchase with jerky and jolty shift in lower gears when going from complete stop so with several drive alongs with a tech, they said it is just the way PDK works since Macan Turbos were new to the techs in 2015 when we bought it

- Then we proceeded to mod the car to see if it improves it by going with Alpha filters and Flat 6 intake carbon fiber attachments to the top of the filters and then Cobb with v202 and v205 and Flat 6 map

- None of the above helped with the smoothness we were looking for so we pressured the dealer to replace TC since there is no other solution after they took a month to gather logs, analyze them in Atlanta, replace fuel injectors, etc.

- I have been driving John's teambgb base map for about an hour and it has delivered on the elusive smoothness we have been looking for. I need more time with it and it must pass the wife happiness test tomorrow but so far I cannot get it to be out of sync as in engine surging and PDK lagging or jolting when pushed

 

I think the BGB tune needs its one thread report...many are happy with it

 

@Teddis, I am happy to start one after it passes the wife happy with it test tomorrow. I consider myself to be the worst case in dealing with the issues it addresses.

 

Great news so far Sergyb! Did you log and send a map, or just get the BGB OTS V205 derived , 91 map ?

There are a few other BGB threads that you could hop on with your experience to avoid duplication. I think Rapido1 is poster.
Looking forward to your wife's review Get out there and Drive !!