Paul P

1 hour ago, phazed said:

Yep. I believe some specialists can spray them with metal and then machine back. What the longevity is like I really don’t know.
I don’t see why the crankshaft prices should be so high. It was only a few years ago when I had a special V8 cranks snap on my TVR. It cost me 500 pounds for a brand new crankshaft blank and another 1200 pounds to machine it to the right dimensions. considering it wasn’t mass produced, you would think the cost should have been higher.

A long time ago in a galaxy far away I had a recon motorcycle engine that had been through the spray and machine process.  
 

lasted about 7 month / 2k miles.  1 month longer than the warranty.  
 

Yeah tech moves on but once bitten.  

Obvious question and apologies of its "Doh!" - but are these available form Porsche or Heritage Parts?

You can buy a spare wheel kit from Porsche for the 987 I reckon it’s the same as the 986.  Issue of the original remains.  Has anyone actually put a 987 deflated wheel on the passenger seat - I assume it would fit but in reality does it fit front to back or side to side.  
 

Regular 981 wheels don’t fit a 987 apparently so it stands to reason the same holds true for the spare.  
 

in 40 years of car driving I have had 3 occasions where I couldn’t just pump the tyre up and drive slow.  
 

one genuine blow out on the boxster, one where I hit a displaced man hole cover flicked up by a bus that took out two tyres and a wheel and one sidewall ripped out by a German lorry driving into me whilst stationary as he decided to change lanes.  

I carry the diy plugs and I should get a jack like @iborguk but two of the above occasions a recovery was effective within 45 mins of event   The other the car did have a spare so I was able to sort it myself but otherwise …

I drove my  daily on the space save for about a mile. ( that was the manhole cover.  RAC patched one tyre to get me to somewhere who could supply a couple of replacements )  It was horrible.  

Honestly. I don’t know if i would want to drive a boxster at anything more than 15 mph for a similar distance on a skinny 20 year old pram wheel

as an aside I have always wondered if it’s technically legal - I doubt you would pass an mot  with 3 proper tyres and said pram wheel.  

that does help a lot.  Thanks.  

3 hours ago, duff said:

It appears the airbag fault has gone away all on it own which is a plus.

The after market camera failure is down to me bolting the handbrake down onto the wire that runs to it which has basically destroyed it. A quick attempt at cutting out the bad bit of wire and re-joining the cores has not worked so I suspect I will need a new wire and/or camera. 

I still haven't worked out what the roof issue is, but as the sun is out and the Mrs wants to be able to run around with the roof off so I have jerry rigged a new switch that bypasses the logic in the control module and allows the roof to be raised and lowered. Not quite Porsche engineering, but it works!

Totally selfish requirement but if you are poking around are there any part numbers on those two 12 way plugs ( brown and black ) looking for something like 60Q 972 833 with or without an “A” on the end.  
 

If so.  Which is which. If the “catches are at the top” which one is on the left or the right. 
 

(I have a bit of a side project on at the moment - trying to see if the rear control unit from another model line (not 9x7) can be “re purposed” and the wiring diagrams don’t differentiate between those plugs - the pin layout is the same the externals are different - that’s the A suffix )

please ignore if you can’t be ars*d.  no issue. But I have spent a few hours trying to prove or disprove a theory and this would help. 

43 minutes ago, entdgc said:

I thought the same as the OP talks about 'service brake' which I thought was another name for handbrake?

I thought mot speak was emergency brake for handbrake and service brake means “brakes” but I may well be wrong on that.  

Sticky caliper - pistons not retracting properly.   ? 
 

Surely they could tell which wheel was grabbing or if it’s one axle or the other.  
 
possibly a pedal/master cylinder thing if it’s all round.  

1 minute ago, Wigs said:

Thanks for the info, Any idea if it’s an easy fix or not?

If it’s the module it’s relatively straight forward but does require stripping out the door.  That needs to be done with care and put back together properly otherwise it’s a source of water ingress. 
 

there will be YouTube vids and howtos around but perhaps a job for someone who has done loads if you are unsure. 

30 minutes ago, Sword said:

I had slow crank on mine and found that if you follow the positive battery cable to where it enters the car there is a push fit connection. This corrodes over time and leads to poor connection and slow crank.

Push the red tab down and pull off to look inside the connector.

My solution was to thread the metal post, take the connector apart and used a nut to hold in place rather than push fit. Cranks no problem now

Just a thought..

That’s a good point.  There is a “repair “ kit from Porsche for that issue I think.   I remember it could be the cause of non starting issues but makes sense that it could also affect charging as well as cranking speeds.  

I have a topdon battery tester - no app, but a good bit of kit - just never used it in anger on a battery in situ for charging - just the "static" tests - and not needed to use it for charge testing since I got it.

48 minutes ago, Slomofo said:

Constant charging profile at idle and up to 2.5k, no squeaks!

Hmm - that feels like an issue with the regulator - the 987 is "old school" ( no stop/start agm cleverness) - so I would expect "charging" to be at a fairly constant level (small variation for idle I guess ) - I couldn't say if thats unusual - never observed it close up - but it feels wrong especially if it's an irregular fluctuation.

I have only observed a couple of cars with a multimeter for charging - and I seem to remember that was "about 13.7 ish" when running - so seems you may have an kicked ants nest, be intersted in hearing other folks thoughts and experience.

Interesting observation.  

My thoughts / questions - no experience or answers 

Engine running at idle if so does it smooth out to the higher end if you raise the revs ?

any squeal from the belt ? 

11 hours ago, Dubdubz said:

is your car a BOSE equipped one? Erisin doesnt have MOST interface as far as I am aware. I did test drive a car that had one installed and it looked pretty good actually - was in a non BOSE car... maybe a converter could be used?

 

Other consideration with Bose is that even with an adapter box you lose amp control.  So whatever it’s set to when you change the head unit that’s how it stays. Again. Matters more to some folks than others but you can’t alter anything so I guess you need to set it, swap, check you like it before you button everything back up. 

47 minutes ago, Ti Rich said:

I have a once-a-year thing where I lubricate all the moving points on the roof system. Car cleaned, serviced, and ready for the summer again. Following two new Michelins on the rear the first drive out showed a surprising lack of rear grip - do these need time to bed in? It was spinning the rears far too easy, the pressures are correct.

I love driving this machine so much..................

 

there will be some "release agent" on new tyres - but i doubt that would be significant - suggest check the pressures - garages seem to have a fast and loose attitude to pressures.

think I may have the porsche doc somewhere - their method for handbrake adjusters is to set them so a certain torque is required to turn with the handbrake on a certain number of clicks - was a 20 min faff when I did my rears but was easy enough.

1 hour ago, moospeed said:

Potentially dumb question. If you replace the PCM with one of these does it mean there's no link to the little round screen next to the speedo?

I.e. does the map view go away on the dashboard binnacle?

Yup.  You lose whatever integration you had.  Newer the model /pcm more closely integrated. I guess the functions of the window remain but anything sat nav or audio is lost.  
 

that’s why most people seem to go for the addition of CarPlay / AA for the 981 / pcm3.1 and to some extent for the pcm3 in the 987.2 although that really depends on what options tou have as to how much you lose when when you remove it.  For me it would be individual memory settings, the 3 (or 4) different trip computers and the “lap” map thing for sports chronos as well as the limited nav integration into the cluster.  
 

matters more to some folks than others.  

.

20 minutes ago, Wigs said:

Yes it drops fine when holding handle open but as soon as I let go of the handle the window goes back up, I’ve only noticed this with the outside handle, pretty sure it’s the same with the inside handle.

Probably will do the same - there's 4 or 5 switches in play in the door - one on the outer handle, one on the inner, one on the latch, one to tell it to "lock" if you use the key and another that says "locking worked" - the latch one sounds like it's not working so you let go of either handle, car thinks door is shut and raises the window.

Does it drop ok when you open the door from the inside ? If so then I would say it sounds like the door module (or rather the micro switch that tells it “door is open” ) 

I guess another variable here is what the car reports vs what it sees. It doesn’t know what’s wrong just that it’s seeing something is not as it should be.   The 986 systems are “primitive” (not a bad thing) in some ways compared to later models and the 2.5 the simplest. Perhaps the dme just doesn’t log that full spectrum of what is going on.

also.  What code reader is being used.   ? The 2.5 was barely OBD compliant so perhaps only part of the picture is available in the “general power train (P) codes interface 

30 minutes ago, iborguk said:

Or as happened in my case , replace both.

I meant which cylinder.  Easy to figure on a 4 cyl Audi by the side of the A2 by a process of pulling the connections.  Not so easy on a boxer engine. 

Honestly.  Didn’t know Porsche provided one.  My goto place is incartec but if there’s OEM I would go there first.  
 

fascia’s are just that.  Plastic surrounds.  They need to colour match  and fit the hole.  
 

don’t know what the price delta is but if it was me I would look at Porsche first just because I would expect the for and finish to match - then incartec because they have been great in the past on other cars.  

47 minutes ago, nelmo said:

you are not using Carplay/Android Auto on them

Yes - you are - thats exactly the point - that's ALL that runs on them - in that scenario (if you choose not to install apps onto the head unit). 

47 minutes ago, nelmo said:

you cannot just decide to use AA/Carplay instead - you have to bin the AliExpress unit and get a new one.

Yes you can - apps run on the phone - head unit just displays them. If you use TOMTOM on your phone and connect it up to the head unit - tomtom is there. If I get in your car and connect up my phone with (random app) "Scenic" on it then that app is available on the head unit.

not talking about installing anything on the head unit - just use the built in out the box carplay/aa interface and never update the OS or install stuff on the head. Uless it physically breaks or apple / google stop supporting carplay/aa then it keeps working with whatever phone you plug in.

2 hours ago, nelmo said:

I don't think it works like that, does it? Android Auto is an app on the phone that connects to a non-android device that supports it - that device then can run some apps (Waze, Google Maps, TomTom etc).

You can't run Android Auto on an android device as a standalone app and those AliExpress units are an android device. I do not have an icon on my phone that I click to start AA - it runs in the background and kicks in when you connect via USB to a device that then can use some apps that have been written to work under AA - make sense? Or have I got it wrong?

But you do get much more functionality with the AliExpress units, although you'd need to shell out for a SIM card to make it simpler (can you connect an android device to another android device and share apps?), unless you want the hassle of switching on a hotspot on your phone every time you get in the car?

Tech, hey? Supposed to make life easier....

You have it both right and wrong. 

Android auto and CarPlay are the “same thing” for the two platform. CarPlay for iOS android auto for android handaets.  It’s a protocol not an app as such - just a way of working together.  
 

both are “external display/input device” for your phone.  The applications on the phone that are capable of using and being interacted with on the head unit appear when connected   

all the apps run on the phone.  you don’t install apps on the head unit if using them in this way  that’s why I  can use (for example) the Porsche roads app on my daily driver ford - it’s installed on my phone and is CarPlay aware   The ford has CarPlay and I can interact with the app  running on my phone through the cars interface   

some android head units can run the common apps directly.  Assuming they have data connectivity and a gps that’s where having a sim in the head unit comes in (or using your phone as a hotspot). If you had data and gps for the head unit than you don’t need a phone to make anything work.  
 

Suggest a code reader of some kind.  If you were to have an issue that could be fixed with a cool pack or a plug then you would need to be able to figure out which one.