We had a 997.2 C2s Cab pdk. Circa 20k miles, with Porsche used warranty. Lost drive one day and a nearby OPC said the issue was a faulty sensor. My local PC booked it to change and advised there was an issue within the box, and a new pdk was needed. About 6 months later lost drive again, but they hastily said that was a different issue. As that car then also suffered 2 PCM failures together with a high pressure fuel pump, and this was all within about 8 months it may (probably did!) have one under lying issue which was not generating a magic code. We moved the car on back to the OPC. We bought it with 18k miles on it, and we did not track or race it, and i think i only used launch control once for the experience.
Now whether the issue was a pdk failure or not or another overall issue causing the box to fail the one thing it did make me aware of was at that time OPC's could only change oil, change external sensors and re program pdk's. Anything else required a change of box, old boxes going back to Germany, and I could not find any adverts for 3rd parties doing pdk box servicing, as you can with a tiptronic. The OPC told me that the cost to replace the box was £13k - covered by the warranty. I know plenty of people with pdk's, with no issues, and there are loads of cars out there now with them. At a Porsche Experience centre day 2 of the instructors told me the cars there do multiple launch controls every day, as well as all the track time, and they had never seen a failure. However, i am very aware of that cost, so would not run a pdk car without a warranty that covered the box in cases of failure.
