Carquip

Summary: yes it SUCKS having to replace your Porsche’s transmission especially when you’re not planning to and you’re about to drive 3,500 miles across the U.S. But Tom and Carquip made the experience much more positive than it otherwise would have been. I’ll be keeping this car for a while.
Thank goodness for Carquip… I took my 1999 Porsche 996 to be routinely serviced so I could drive it from CA to MA since I’m relocating. I gave my trusty mechanic, who I’ve been to before, a punchlist of a couple of items to look into during the service including a grinding sort of noise that I thought might be a wheel bearing going bad or maybe the LSD clutch pack going bad. My mechanic calls me later that day to tell me that it’s not just the LSD, its the whole transmission. It’s on its last legs and that’s where the noise is coming from. He also tells me that unfortunately the 996 manual transmission can’t really be rebuilt (at least it’s not something that he wanted to tackle) and that a new one from Porsche is $ 12K plus labor. Yikes.
So I start searching for a rebuilt transmission as an alternative. I found a few transmissions between $ 3K and $ 4.5K (I also needed a limited slip differential which was only offered on the 1999 model year so my choices were limited). But as I called around, I discovered that these transmissions weren’t even really rebuilt at all; they’re simply transmissions that are pulled from cars that have been totaled or parted out and these places would just kind of look them over for obvious signs of damage. None of the gearbox internals were even touched or looked at. Since the 1999 Porsche 996 transmission can be prone to failure after 75K miles or so, I didn’t like the idea of installing a used transmission that had 50K miles on it and then look forward to possibly replacing it again in 25K to 50K miles (my original transmission survived to 120K).
Fortunately, I then discovered Carquip and their site on eBay. They had a brand NEW 6 speed Getrag transmission for $ 5.5K. I called Tom at Carquip with a few questions and he said they would swap in a LSD for another $ 2K (a Kaaz unit). Not cheap but $ 7.5K for a new transmission/​LSD vs $ 12K from Porsche is a deal in my book. Tom was great to work with — always very responsive and very reachable and very honest. He followed up with me after he received my old transmission, as a core exchange, to let me know that the freight I’d prepaid for was too much and that he wanted to refund me the $ 90 difference in the shipping. Class act. Highly recommended.