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stout stout is offline
Driver
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Posts: 143
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt Monson View Post
I find people's focus on the left foot, and more specifically the clutch pedal, funny. You know what the beauty of an H pattern dogbox is? You can do a number of the shifts without having to clutch it, and you can left foot brake. It's a different kind of footwork than the traditional street car footwork, but something open wheel and rally racers are quite familiar with. For me, I see no loss when they take away my clutch pedal. It's my direct control of the shifter where I feel a sense of loss. So to me, the 991 7MT is no better than a PDK in that respect. Just give me the paddle shifters if you're gonna do that.

I've been daily driving a DSG VW for about half a year now and absolutely love it. I leave it in sport mode all the time. If I want to take control of the shifting all I have to do is grab a paddle, and it automatically reverts to manual shift mode. When I want to give it back, I pull down on the console shifter and the little "S" pops up again and it goes back to it's thing.

I'm really looking forward to Bill Rader finishing up the sequential installation in my Cayman. To be able to drive that car, with left foot braking, no lift shifting, and an all around motorsports experience on a daily basis is gonna be fun. I'm going to need to relearn driving a dog box. My Subaru has been parked for so many years I've basically forgotten all that I've known about that style of driving. Depending on the timing of it all, I would like to fly into Vegas and then drive the car to SoCal to visit a few shops. Then up to NorCal to do the same, before driving across 80 to get home. If I do, I will be sure to reach out and give you a chance to drive it. While the Germans beat me to doing it first with their Saedev installation, their car is a racecar and not street legal. We could take my car on a run on the old Excellence test loop in the North Bay.

I dropped the baby PDK LSD from the product line last year. That gearbox has been showing reliability concerns on track. And people were trying to blame the LSD. Given that I was selling fewer than 10 a year I decided to just pull the plug. I have every confidence that the failures will just keep happening. And then someday someone will figure out why, fix it, and once they do I'll put them back on the market.

I continue to make a PDK LSD to replace the PTV version. It also fits the GT4 Clubsport/MR racecars. We call that the "big PDK diff". That diff fits the 991 7MT. If you've got a 7MT car you are driving these days I can hook you up.
So funny you got to the part about a visit out this way...as reading your first lines had me thinking I'd really like to find a way to spend a day with you. Partly because I always enjoy your posts but mainly because I've never had a chance to spend much time driving alongside someone who works with such a key component every day...

Have to say the 7MT is one of the best gearboxes I've had in any Porsche, not because it shifts the best (while that honor goes to the GT4, I have no complaint with the 991.2 shifter...where I did with the 991.1 shifter) but because of the excellent gearing 1-4 and then the sublime 7th for long runs down to LA. The only thing missing is indeed an LSD, and if I keep this car out of warranty, a proper LSD is a no-brainer...

pete
Old 02-26-2019, 10:56 AM
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